Joseph M. Sanchez (born ca. 1948) is an artist and museum curator.
Although born Taos Pueblo, Sanchez was raised in Whiteriver, Arizona on the White Mountain Apache Reservation, and was named by the Ojibway.[1]
Sanchez lived in Canada from the early to mid 1970s, and was a founding member of the "Professional Native Indian Artists Association”, otherwise known as the Indian Group of Seven. In Winnipeg he met Daphne Odjig, who had opened up the Warehouse Gallery in the early 1970s (now the Wahsa Gallery and currently owned by Gary Scherbain, the Winnipeg Free Press Reporter who originally dubbed the PNIAA the "Indian Group of Seven"). Since Odjig was helping him out and working with him at the time, he became a member of the Professional Indian Native Artists' Association by association.[2] He exhibited in group shows in Canada, Europe, and the United States.
Sanchez returned to the United States in 1976 and, meeting new artists, formed two collectives near Phoenix. He worked at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, the Phoenix Art Museum, and most recently at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.[3] Since 2001 Sanchez has been the curator at the IAIA Museum, and has been acting director there since 2008.