I hold a joint position as cultural anthropologist in the department of anthropology and museum curator at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC. I strive to be both a collaborative museologist and a critical museologist. In this way, I merge practitioner/curator and theoretician/critic as I partner with Indigenous communities to create ethnographic writing, exhibitionary displays, and digital resources that try to feel as true as self-representation, but at the same time be aware and reflexive of the histories, structural inequalities, and contemporary politics in which we are all embroiled.

I research how and why representation is meaningful and often politically charged by studying the ways that visual culture gets variously defined within art galleries and museums, art market economies, world expos and Olympic Games, national and international legal systems, Indigenous cultural centres, schools and tourism sites. In this way, material culture can be mobilized to support or refute claims to identity, status, land, or resource extraction in powerful and evocative manners, which highlight complex social relations between individuals and between cultural communities.

Research Interests

Visual culture and ‘art’ of the First Nations of the Northwest Coast, specifically the Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, and Kwakwaka’wakw.

Art Market Economies, Identity Production, Representation, Repatriation, Cultural Property, Aboriginal Cultural Tourism, Indigenous Modernity, Indigenous Knowledge of earthquakes and tsunamis, and Collaborative and Critical Museology.

Books

2013 Townsend-Gault, Charlotte, Kramer, Jennifer, and Ki-ke-in (eds.) Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas. UBC Press: Vancouver.

2012 Kramer, Jennifer with Solen Roth and Gloria Cranmer Webster.
Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer. Douglas & McIntyre Press: Vancouver and     University of Washington Press: Seattle.

2006 Kramer, Jennifer Switchbacks: Art, Ownership, and Nuxalk National Identity
UBC Press, Vancouver.

Articles/Chapters

2024 Kramer, Jennifer “Past, Present, and Future Indigenous Pacific Northwest Coast Treasures and Belongings” Annual Review of Canadian Studies 44:33-49.

2020 Kramer, Jennifer “Be Prepared, Not Scared” MOA Magazine Issue 10, Fall: 8-10.

2020 Kramer, Jennifer “Restorying Justice: Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: A Story of    Resilience” MOA Magazine Issue 09, Spring: 8-11.

2019 Kramer, Jennifer with Caroline Cassinelli “Dancing Ninini: Learning about Earthquakes     through Culture” MOA Magazine Issue 07, Spring:10-12.

2018 Kramer, Jennifer “Broadcasting Sovereignty: Exhibiting Nuxalk Radio at the University of British Columbia” In Special issue: “Indigeneities and Museums: Ongoing            Conversations” BC Studies 199:151-170.

2017 Kramer, Jennifer “Betting on the Raven: Ethical Relationality and Nuxalk Cultural Property” In The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property. (Haidy Geismar and Jane        Anderson, eds). Routledge Press: New York and London:152-167.

2017 Kramer, Jennifer. “Feeling Implicated in Unfinished Business: A Response to “Is     Cultural Democracy Possible in a Museum?”” International Journal of Heritage Studies 23(9):882-885.

2015 Kramer, Jennifer “Möbius Museology: Curating and Critiquing the Multiversity Galleries   at the UBC Museum of Anthropology” in Museum Transformations: Art, Culture,        History (Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips, eds.) Volume 4 of The International           Handbook of Museum Studies. Wiley-Blackwell Press. 489-510.

2015 Kramer, Jennifer “Exhibiting Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer” in Northwest        Coast Representations: New Perspectives on History, Art, and Encounters. Andreas        Etges, Viola König, Rainer Hatoum, Tina Brüderlin (eds.) Reimer Press: Germany 189-            197.

2013 Townsend-Gault, Charlotte, Kramer, Jennifer and Ki-ke-in “Introduction: The Idea of          Northwest Coast Native Art” in Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of         Changing Ideas. (Townsend-Gault, Charlotte, Kramer, Jennifer and Ki-ke-in, eds.) UBC            Press: Vancouver: 1-14.

2013 Kramer, Jennifer “Fighting with Property: The Double-edged Rhetoric of
Ownership” in Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas.   (Townsend-Gault, Charlotte, Kramer, Jennifer and Ki-ke-in, eds.) UBC Press: Vancouver: 720-756.

2004 Kramer, Jennifer “Figurative Repatriation: First Nations ‘Artist-Warriors’ Recover, Reclaim, and Return Cultural Property through Self-Definition.” Special Issue: Beyond Art/Artifact/Tourist Art. The Journal of Material Culture. Volume 9(2) (July):161-182.

Curated Exhibitions

Shake Up: Preserving What We Value

• Kramer, Jennifer and Jill Baird (curators)
• Museum of Anthropology, UBC, December 2, 2018 ongoing.
• Museum of Surrey, Surrey, BC, March 11 – June 6 2021

Layers of Influence: Unfolding Cloth across Cultures

• Kramer, Jennifer (curator)
• Museum of Anthropology, UBC, November 17, 2016 – April 9, 2017.

Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer

• Kramer, Jennifer (curator)
• U’mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay, BC, May 11 – October 8, 2013
• Museum at Campbell River, Campbell River, BC, October 19, 2012 – February 17, 2013.
• Museum of Anthropology, UBC, March 16 – September 3, 2012.

The Story of Nulis – a Kwakwaka’wakw Imas Mask

• Kramer, Jennifer (curator)
• Museum of Anthropology, UBC, January 22 – December 15, 2012.

• ANTH 431 “Museum Practice & Curation” Student Exhibitions

Under Our Feet, Above Our Heads: The Stories Hats and Shoes Tell

• Rowley, Susan and Jennifer Kramer (instructors)
• MOA Textile Research Room, UBC, September 1, 2020 ongoing.

Nuxalk Radio: One Nation, Many Voices

• Kramer, Jennifer (instructor)
• IK Barber Learning Centre, UBC, March 1-April 3, 2018.

Beyond the Cap + Gown: 100 Years of UBC Student Clothing

• Kramer, Jennifer (instructor)
• IK Barber Learning Centre, UBC, July 8-August 24. 2016.

Together Again: Nuxalk Faces of the Sky

• Kramer, Jennifer (instructor)
• Museum of Anthropology, UBC, April 5 – September 30, 2012.
• Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, December 2012 – July 14, 2013.

Faces and Voices of the Inuit Art Market

• Rowley, Susan and Jennifer Kramer (instructors)
• Museum of Anthropology, UBC, June 19 – September 25, 2011.

2015  Canada Prize in the Humanities, Federation for Social Sciences and Humanities for Native             Art of the Northwest Coast: a History of Changing Ideas (co-edited by Charlotte          Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer and Ki-ke-in.  UBC Press (2013), April 29.

2015  Jeanne Clark Award in Northern History, Prince George Public Library for Native Art of    the Northwest Coast: a History of Changing Ideas (co-edited by Charlotte Townsend- Gault, Jennifer Kramer and Ki-ke-in.  UBC Press (2013), March 22.

2014 Melva J. Dwyer Award, Art Libraries Society of North America – Canadian Chapter for      Native Art of the Northwest Coast a History of Changing Ideas
(co-edited by Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer and Ki-ke-in. UBC Press          (2013), May 3.

2012 British Columbia Museums Associations “Museums in Motion Award of Merit” for             exhibition: Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer, October 19.

2012 2011 Alcuin Society Canadian Book design “pictorial” First Place Kesu’: The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer, Jessica Sullivan (designer), Jennifer Kramer (author) (Douglas &            McIntyre Press), April 4.

2007 Finalist for K.D. Srivastava Prize for Excellence in Scholarly Publishing 2006, UBC Press awarded to J. Kramer for Switchbacks: Art, Ownership and Nuxalk National Identity (UBC Press, Vancouver 2006).

My ongoing research projects begin in museum collections but actually are about contemporary Indigenous relationships to historic material culture (otherwise known as treasures, cultural belongings, or art) and to cross-cultural Canadian, US and global society. With 25 years of fostering engagement and relationships between the Nuxalk Nation and their cultural heritage residing in museums, I am presently working collaboratively with the Nuxalk on a number of long term projects:

I am co-curating an upcoming exhibition at MOA with the Nuxalk Nation tentatively titled “Nuxalk Strong” scheduled for 2022-23. This is one result of a multi-year, collaborative study of historic and contemporary interactions of the Nuxalk with their coastal neighbours: the Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, and Kwakwaka’wakw. With grants from the Smithsonian Recovering Voices Project, the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art, the Jacobs Research Council, and the Peter Wall Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, I am working to bring Nuxalk language speakers, cultural teachers, and artists into dialogue with historic material culture in museum collections in Canada, the US, and Europe. I am interested in the ways that traditional art historic stylistic analysis (ie, formalism, identification of national art styles and individual artists) and anthropological and museological categories and classification systems are employed or refuted by young Nuxalk cultural leaders.

I am working on a book that combines museological, art historical, and anthropological writing styles to reflect upon decades of decolonizing engagement with Nuxalk cultural workers (artists, language speakers, ceremonialists, drummers, singers, Elders, hereditary leaders, and knowledge custodians) focusing upon Nuxalk treasures and employing Nuxalk epistemologies and ontologies. This will include my ongoing engagements with the Nuxalk Cultural Coordinator and the It7Nuxalkmcmacw Language and Culture Council as they plan for their own Big House and Museum in Nuxalk Territory.

Associate Professor, Museum/Sociocultural Anthropology
Visual culture and ‘art’ of the First Nations of the Northwest Coast, specifically the Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, and Kwakwaka’wakw. Art market economies, identity production, representation, repatriation, cultural property, aboriginal cultural tourism, Indigenous modernity, Indigenous Knowledge about earthquakes and tsunamis, and collaborative and critical museology.