Susan W. Fair (1948-2003)

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Susan W. Fair, folklorist, adventurer, collector, curator, and passionate advocate for Native peoples. Fair died at her home in Tucson, Arizona, on June 1, 2003, three weeks before her fifty-fifth birthday. At the time of her death, she held a joint appointment as Assistant Research Social Scientist/Public Folklorist at the University of Arizona—Tucson, Southwest Center, and the Department of English. She leaves a rich legacy of work and scholarly engagement and a multitude of friends who recall her generosity, grasp of the beautiful, smoldering intensity, and unvarnished approach to life. Those of us who first met her at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Program in Folklore and Folklife are learning daily about our gifted friend.

Susan Wilhite Fair was born in Washington, D.C., on June 22, 1948, the only child of Emily Cottrell Fair and Robert James Fair. The family moved to Princeton, Indiana, shortly thereafter, where her father practiced law and served in the state senate for eight years. Restless and independent, Fair moved as a young adult to Colorado and then to the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the Southwest, settling in Alaska in the early 1970s. She became a certified appraiser of Native American and Alaskan Native art and then general manager of the Alaska Native Arts and Crafts Co-op in Anchorage, initiating stringent policies to safeguard the Native authorship of "Native" art. She earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Alaska (1985), published a book-length essay, "Eskimo Dolls," in an edited volume with the same title (1982, Alaska State Council on the Arts), and published a book, Alaska Native Arts and Crafts (1985, Alaska Geographic Society), during her undergraduate years. She was also an archeologist on several sites for the State of Alaska, Department of Geological and Geophysical Survey.

Graduate study again took Fair across the continent to the University of Pennsylvania's Folklore and Folklife Department, where she earned an M.A. with the thesis "The Concept of Transformation Among the North American Eskimo and the Native Groups of Siberia" (1988). She was awarded departmental honors for her comprehensive exams and gained the Ph.D. in 1994. Her dissertation will be published as Alaska Native Arts: Tradition, Innovation, Continuity (forthcoming, Alaska State Council on the Arts/University of Alaska). Ever drawn to her spiritual and aesthetic homeland, Fair returned to Alaska in 1991, where she worked as adjunct professor of anthropology and art history for almost a decade variously at the University of Alaska at the Anchorage, Eagle River, Homer, Juneau, and Elmendorf campuses.

Fair's academic career was crosscut and bolstered by art dealing and ambitious curatorial projects. Consulting in anthropology, folklore, Native art, and historical photography, she worked in a multitude of capacities, partnering with local museums, Native corporations, village-based initiatives, and personally crafting technical assistance projects with Native artists in grant writing and marketing. She accomplished extensive collaborations in Northwest Alaska with the Shishmaref on toponyms, oral history, and linguistic affiliation; a study of local marine harvesting for the Pratt Museum in Homer; and studies in Aleut oral history. For a time she was Publications and Media Director at Sealaska Heritage Foundation in Juneau and administered special projects for the Tlingit of southeast Alaska.

She handled all aspects of fieldwork, acquisitions, design, and interpretation for several key permanent exhibitions that will forever enhance the public's appreciation of Native arts in Alaska. These include Yup'ik Art and Ethnographic Photographs (Yukon Kuskokwim Health Center, Bethel), Percent for Art installations (Elmendorf AFB Hospital, Anchorage, and Maniilaq Health Center, Kotzebue), and a major display of Native Art at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. She was on the board of the Visual Arts Center of Alaska and served on the Anchorage Museums Commission. Her most recent work involved two essays on Inupiat artists in Northwest Alaska for the catalog Eskimo Drawings at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art (2003).

Fair was a prodigious author of scholarly writing, fiction, and poetry. She published many chapters, articles, and reviews in publications, including the Professional...