Yosemite National Park News Release

May 22, 2006
For Immediate Release

Yosemite's Julia Florence Parker Receives Honorary Doctorate Degree from California College of the Arts

California College of the Arts conferred an honorary doctorate agree on Julia Florence Parker during their 99th Commencement Exercises on May 13, 2006 at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco, California. In addition to attending the commencement ceremonies, Parker and fellow recipient Richard Tuttle were honored at a reception at the Oliver Art Center on the Oakland campus the night before and participated in the post-commencement reception on the college's San Francisco campus.

Julia Florence Parker is one of the country's preeminent Native American basketmakers--a prolific artist, as well as a teacher, storyteller, and cultural treasure. Born on March 8, 1929, Julia spent her first summer in Yosemite in 1947, when she worked for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. Since 1960, Julia has demonstrated her skill at basketmaking and shared her extensive knowledge of traditional games, stories, foods, and ceremonies with innumerable Yosemite visitors, school children, and others through her work at Yosemite National Park and with the American Indian Council of Mariposa. Julia's basket designs have been influenced by multiple cultures and individuals, including the traditions of her own native Coast Miwok, those of the Kashaya and Pomo, and those of her husband's people, the Sierra Miwok and Mono Lake Paiute.

Julia's work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Yosemite Museum, Yosemite National Park; the Norwegian Ski Association headquarters, Oslo, Norway; the private collection of Queen Elizabeth II of England; and numerous other private collections. In 2004 Parker's work was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition, "The Past in Present Tense: Four Decades of Julia Parker Baskets," at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, California. She also travels nationally and internationally, consulting, teaching, and lecturing.


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