Joe Baker, of the Delaware Tribe of Indians is an artist, educator and curator. Baker currently is director for community engagement in the ASU Herberger College of the Arts and has a distinguished career of arts advocacy. As the former Lloyd Kiva New Curator of Contemporary Art at the Heard Museum, he pioneered opportunities for emerging and under-represented artists through a series of one-person exhibitions including Artspeak: New Voices in Contemporary Expression and the controversial Remix: New Modernities in a Post Indian World. He is the recipient of the Virginia Piper Charitable Trust 2005 Fellows Award, recognizing outstanding leaders in nonprofit communities, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s Contemporary Catalyst Award for 2007. In 2003, he was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for painting.

An active artist and teacher, Baker serves as visiting faculty for the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Colorado Springs and serves on the Native American advisory board for Idyllwild Arts in Idyllwild, Calif. He has held various faculty appointments including: The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., and was appointed the Dr. Amy Freeman Lee Chair of Art & Sciences at the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. In 2002, he served as dean for the Center for Arts & Culture, Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.

Baker holds both the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Tulsa and completed post-graduate study at Harvard University’s Management Development Program, Graduate School of Education.