Cassandra Smith

Dr. Cassandra A. Smith (BFA, University of Tulsa; MFA, MA, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago) is a scholar, curator, and educator specializing in Indigenous art, film, and performance. Alongside her academic and curatorial work, she maintains an active studio practice focused on painting and fiber arts. Her scholarship inhabits the intersections of Indigenous studies, decolonial museum practices, performance studies, and digital humanities. Grounded in themes of materiality, relationality, and strategies of refusal, her teaching connects Indigenous epistemologies with BIPOC, Queer, Feminist, and Crip art histories, viewing art education as vital to cultivating a more just and equitable world.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Digital Knowledge Sharing Fellowship, Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, American Philosophical Society Library and Museum (2020–2021).

“The Archival Prairie: Stories that Shape This Place”" Another Place: Storymaking in the Entangled Prairie, exhibition catalogue essay, University of Illinois Press (Manuscript in preparation); The Performance Strategies of Skeena Reece: Humor, Parody, Kinship, and a Fiercely Uncompromising Ethics of Care (Formal book proposal and manuscript in preparation); “Pueblo Architecture and its Relationship to Place,” Smarthistory: The Center for Public Art History.

Guest Curator, Txem-Sym: A Tribute to Northwest Coast Carvers, Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2024-present); Lead Organizer, Skeena Reece artist residency and Access Granted performance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2024)l; Curatorial and Archival Researcher, Christina Ramberg: Drawings exhibition and catalogue and Oyvind Fahltstrom: The Complete Graphics and Multiples exhibition and catalogue, Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago (1999–2000).

Teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers a vibrant space to bridge rigorous historical inquiry with live, studio-based creative practice. As a scholar and curator specializing in Indigenous art, film, and performance—and as an artist maintaining an active studio practice in painting and fiber arts—my pedagogy is grounded in the conviction that engagement with the arts is essential to developing the analytical skills necessary for a more just world. While my scholarly research addresses decolonial museum practices and performance studies, my personal engagement with studio processes gives me a firsthand appreciation for tactile materiality, craft traditions, and the physical labor of making.

In the classroom and in the galleries, I encourage students to consider how an art education informs a critical global citizenry—inviting them to see art objects as active agents deeply contextualized within social, political, and material landscapes. My teaching and scholarship situate decolonial methodologies alongside BIPOC, Queer, Feminist, Performance, and Crip theoretical frameworks. In courses like Issues in Modern and Contemporary Art, we investigate themes of materiality, relationality, and visual sovereignty—tracing an arc from decolonial critiques of industrial modernity to contemporary strategies of refusal and embodiment. By structuring learning around direct engagement with the collections at the Art Institute of Chicago and other art museums and galleries, I help students interrogate collection displays, label texts, and archival absences as sites ripe for creative and critical intervention.

Working closely with studio practitioners, designers, and emerging scholars, my primary goal is to help students articulate the dynamic relationships between historical frameworks and their own evolving studio practices. Because I navigate a studio practice myself, I prioritize focused, highly targeted primary texts, close visual analysis, and collaborative dialogue over linear "slide-march" surveys. In-gallery micro-prompts and interactive lectures encourage students to analyze material origins, labor, spatial accessibility, and the ethics of representation, empowering them to bring those critical insights directly back to their studio work.

Ultimately, my practice as an educator, maker, and scholar is rooted in mentorship, reciprocity, and stewardship. Whether facilitating in-depth collection walks, guiding student writing, or developing community-oriented public programming, I strive to cultivate an inclusive intellectual environment where diverse epistemologies are celebrated. I view art history and studio practice as distinct yet complementary toolkits that artists and scholars alike can use to critique the present and construct more equitable futures.