Linda Lomahaftewa with her grandfather Viets Lomahaftewa at her SFAI graduation in 1970. Photo courtesy Linda Lomahaftewa.

In the Fall of 1965, at the age of 18, Linda Lomahaftewa received a scholarship to study at SFAI where she received a BFA in 1970 and an MFA in 1971. She had recently graduated from the high school program at the “newly formed Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe….Lomahaftewa, both Hopi and Choctaw, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and had attended IAIA as a high school student, focusing on painting in her senior year.” One of her teachers, Jim McGrath, encouraged her to attend SFAI. After teaching for 2 years at Sonoma State University and 2 years at UC Berkeley, Lomahaftewa returned to IAIA to become a legendary teacher and artist. In 1976 she exhibited work in Other Sources: An American Essay curated by Carlos Villa at SFAI.

For more on Linda Lomahaftewa, Native American Students at SFAI, and the relationship of Santa Fe’s IAIA, see Rye Purvis’ online illustrated essay, “An Invisible Partnership: the San Francisco Art Institute, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the American Indian Identity in the 1960s,” in UC’s Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive’s Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories, Matrix, 277

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.