Alan Michelson

Mohawk / Oneida, born 1953

BiographyMichelson is an enrolled member of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, Canada, who resides in New York City. He graduated from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1981. Michelson has taught art history and painting at Hartwick College in Oneonta, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Parsons The New School. In 1988, he won a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship; in 1990, a New York State Council on the Arts’ Visual Artist Sponsored Work Award/Public Art Fund, Inc.; and in 2004, a Visual Artist Grant from the New York Community Trust. In 2010, the U.S. General Services Administration awarded him the Citation in Art for his glass installation "Third Bank of the River" at the U.S. Port of Entry in Massena, New York. In 2012, the Virginia Indian Commemorative Commission selected his design for a permanent installation on Capitol Square in Richmond that will honor the states’ tribes. Michelson employs multimedia installations of video or photographs to fortify his concept-based themes of geography as it relates to Native American history.

Person TypeIndividual