Julia F. Parker

Julia Parker was born in February 1928 in Marin County, California. She continued her training with Carrie Bethel, Minnie Mike, and Elsie Allen. ==Career==

Since 1960, Parker has worked as a cultural specialist at the Yosemite Museum and interprets the cultural history of Yosemite Valley tribes to park visitors. She took over for Lucy Telles as the cultural demonstrator at the park. She demonstrates basket weaving and acorn processing. She has taught and lectured across the United States at universities, cultural centers, and schools. She has traveled to Alaska, Hawaii, and Australia to meet with indigenous artists and has been invited by numerous museums, including the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, to consult with specialists about collections stored in their facilities. ==Exhibitions and awards==

In 2004, Parker's work was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition, The Past in Present Tense: Four Decades of Julia Parker Baskets, curated by Deborah Valoma and installed at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. In the same year she was featured in a segment of KQED television's program, Spark. Parker's work is in permanent collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Yosemite Museum, Yosemite National Park; the Norwegian Ski Association headquarters, Oslo, Norway; the private collection of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom; in May 2021 she received an honorary doctorate from California State University, Fresno. In 2007, Parker was the recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. ==Further reading==