Carol Ann Lorenz

Associate Professor of Native American Studies, Emerita

Department/Office Information

Native American Studies, Africana and Latin American Studies

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Carol Ann Lorenz retired in June 2019 as Associate Professor of Native American Studies, Emerita. At the time of her retirement, she was serving as Director of the Native American Studies Program. From Fall 1987 through Fall 2014, she also served in various curatorial capacities in the Longyear Museum of Anthropology of at Colgate, including Senior Curator from 2005-2014, while also teaching courses in her areas of expertise - Native American, PreColumbian, African, and Oceanic art primarily.

Lorenz earned a Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University.

Carol Ann Lorenz has been the faculty mentor to the Native American Student Association since 2000, and has organized the annual Native American Arts and Culture Festival at Colgate since 2001.

Research interests include the art and culture of Africa and the indigenous Americas, Southwest and Northeast Native American art, Haudenosaunee art and artists, Indigenous textiles and pottery.

Lorenz currently teaches Native Art of North America, Art and Architecture of the Ancient Americas, Contemporary Issues in Native American Art, and Art of Africa. Because of the cultural content and approaches used in her courses, most are cross-listed in Anthropology and Art History, as well as in relevant multi-disciplinary programs, including Native American Studies, African Studies, and Latin American Studies.

During her twenty-seven years of curatorship at Colgate, Lorenz researched and organized original exhibitions on a wide variety of topics, including eighty-one in the Longyear Museum gallery, twenty-five elsewhere on the Colgate campus, and another dozen that were shown in various museums and university galleries including the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Edith Barrett Gallery at Utica College, Rome Art and Community Center, Karpeles Museum in Buffalo, and Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia. For many of the exhibitions, Lorenz organized programming of various sorts, including lectures, performances, and symposia. Lorenz also developed the collections of the Longyear Museum, adding thousands of Native American and African objects that have given the museum known standing as a center for indigenous art in Central New York.

Lorenz has authored or edited numerous exhibition catalogs and brochures in association with these exhibitions, as well as having contributed to journals and anthologies. Among them are the exhibition catalogs Creation: Haudenosaunee Contemporary Art and Traditional Stories (2004) and African Shapes of the Sacred: Yoruba Religious Art (2006). Edited catalogs include Birds and Beast in Beads: 150 Years of Iroquois Beadwork (2011) and One Day, One Woman, One Child: The Holocaust in the Art of Gabriella Nikolic (2013). She has given lectures at national conferences as well as public, gallery, docent training, and class lectures.

Lorenz received the ALANA Cultural Center faculty Award in 2014.