Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, PhD, is the curator of Northwest Native art and director of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Native Art at the Burke Museum, and associate professor of art history at the University of Washington. She is an adjunct associate professor in American Indian Studies.

Her most recent exhibition is Woven In Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving at the Burke Museum (Sept. 2025-Aug 2026). Bunn-Marcuse co-curated this exhibition with the weavers of the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center. This exhibition journeys through the seasonal cycle of weaving. First person voices from the weavers provide insight into the deep cultural and scientific knowledge embedded in every strand. Bunn-Marcuse is the PI for exhibition support awards from the NEA and NEH, as well as the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Her current research focuses on women artists of the Northwest Coast. Northwest Coast art histories have skewed heavily toward carving and painting. These historical biases continue to shape the economic, social, and cultural aspects of gendered art practices, often to the detriment of female and non-binary artists. Creating a holistic vision of the arts in relation to Indigenous ways of knowing and being has the potential to rebalance art practices, and correct historical biases. Bunn-Marcuse is working with Dr. Megan Smetzer on an edited volume of essays by artists and scholars dedicated to foregrounding women’s arts. This volume will contribute to the slowly increasing representation of female artists in exhibitions and scholarship and will explore these marginalized histories. 

Her most recent book is Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast, co-edited with Aldona Jonaitis (University of Washington Press, 2020). This volume unsettles the colonial relations of art history by foregrounding Indigenous understandings of Native art practice. Since Native art has historically been viewed within an aesthetic framework derived from Western art history, this volume integrates the expertise of Indigenous knowledge holders in the evaluation of their own artistic heritage. 

Bunn-Marcuse's publications focus on Northwest Coast regalia, the indigenization of Euro-American imagery, nineteenth-century Northwest Coast jewelry and body adornment, and the filmic history of the Kwakwaka’wakw. In 2014, she curated Here & Now: Native Artists Inspired, which showcased new Northwest Coast artworks that were inspired by historical pieces in the Burke Museum’s collection. In her role as curator, she collaborates with Indigenous artists to activate the Museum's collections in response to cultural revitalization efforts. In 2019, Bunn-Marcuse worked with six Indigenous artists from the Northwest to curate the Northwest Native Art Gallery in the new Burke Museum.

Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse began her tenure-track appointment in the School in 2016. Read a Burke Museum blog post.