141. Tess Lukey

About Art

Tess Lukey is co-curator of the inaugural Boston Triennial and Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Trustees of Reservations (The Trustees), the nation’s first and state’s largest land conservation nonprofit. Lukey, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member and lifelong New Englander, previously worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, and the John Sommers Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has also completed fellowships at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Hibben Center for Archaeology Study and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque. Lukey is also a traditional potter and basket weaver practicing the techniques of her own Indigenous community.
She and Zuckerman discuss reciprocity, pairing artists and experts, how artists can address things in ways that no one else can, teaching people about making, her relation with clay, finger weaving, physically working with a place, being an artist, a maker, and a member, how art needs people, gaining family and realizing who she is, working with the land, guiding museums about respecting tribal sovereignty, her studio visit strategy, magical moments, making ceramics sing, and what can contain all the knowledge in the world!