http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~11777~1936019,00.html

Cornell University officials did their best to discourage
Willena Dutcher Cartwright from pursuing a doctorate in
anthropology in the 1940s.

They wouldn't allow women to go on field trips; without the
trips a doctorate wouldn't be granted.

So Cartwright came to the University of Colorado at Boulder
and got her doctorate, said her longtime friend Roberta
Graham.

Cartwright, who became a curator in the Denver Art Museum's
Native American department, died Jan. 23 at an Englewood
nursing home. She was 93.

"She was an independent woman," said her cousin, John
Clinton of Los Alamos, N.M. She believed thoroughly in the
rights and abilities of women, he said.

Cartwright became an expert in American Indian anthropology
and loved to give presentations to schoolchildren. She
visited many schools in Colorado, often taking models along
to wear Native American clothing.

When she was at the Denver Art Museum, the Native American
collection was at the Chappell House at East 13th Avenue and
Logan Street, said Nancy Blomberg, curator of Native Arts
for the Denver Art Museum.

A constant traveler, Cartwright was a judge at the Gallup,
N.M., Intertribal Ceremony for several years, at the annual
Indian Painting Exhibition Pilbrook Museum in Tulsa, Okla.,
and at an art exhibit in Colorado Springs. In 1954 she was
named Woman of the Year by the Englewood Business and
Professional Women's Club.

Cartwright did watercolors and oil paintings, many of which
she gave away. She also collected artifacts.

Cartwright and her husband, Edward Cartwright, traveled the
world, "and got me started doing the same thing," said
Clinton, who is planning a trip to Cairo.

Willena Dutcher was born in Denver on July 8, 1910, and
earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University in
Ithaca, N.Y., in 1941. She did postgraduate work at the
University of Colorado, University of Denver and Columbia
University in New York City.

She married Edward B. Cartwright on May 16, 1948. He was a
lawyer and longtime city attorney in Englewood. He preceded
her in death.

Before her jobs in Denver, she was a curator at the Newark,
N.J., Museum.

She was a member of the Colorado Folklore Society,
International Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists,
Colorado Archaeological Society and American Anthropologists
Association.

She is survived by her cousin, John Clinton. Her brother,
James Dutcher, preceded her in death.