2026 Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in residence
Time: 10 a.m. April 6 - 8 p.m. April 17
Location: Detailed schedule of public events coming soon!
Visions of Resilience: Sacred Art & Storied Landscapes
April 6 - 17, 2026
Linda Infante Lyons (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq) is a painter and multimedia artist whosework engages themes of Indigenous sovereignty, cultural resilience, and environmental sustainability. Raised in Anchorage, Alaska, she earned her B.A. from Whitman College before spending 18 years in Chile, where she studied at the Viña del Mar Escuela de Bellas Artes. Her maternal family is from Kodiak Island—her mother was born in the village of Karluk, and her grandparents were commercial salmon fishers. She is a registered Alutiiq Alaska Native and has tribal affiliation with the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq corporation, Koniag.
Over the past 25 years, Infante Lyons's art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum, the Pratt Museum, and the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Her work has been featured in First American Art Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, and Igaruacirpet: Our Way of Making Design.
Prior to being selected as the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities for 2026, Infante Lyons received numerous other honors, including the 2023 Bennett Prize finalist recognition, the 2020 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, two Rasmuson Foundation Fellowships (2020 and 2016), the 2018 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, and fellowships from the Santa Fe Art Institute and the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Faculty co-hosts for Lyons' two-week residency are Chie Sakakibara (NAIS, Geography and the Environment) and Timur Hammond (Geography and the Environment).
Detailed schedule of events coming soon!
Additional supporters:
- Anthropology
- Art and Music Histories
- Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Engaged Humanities Network
- English
- Environment, Sustainability and Policy Undergraduate Program
- Geography and the Environment
- Hendricks Chapel
- Maxwell Dean's Office
- Native American and Indigenous Studies Program
- Political Science
- Religion