Building on the groundwork laid in the artist-curated exhibition Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (opening in St. Louis on March 7), Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture asked five Navajo textile artists, photographers, and scholars to delve into MIAC’s historic collections to tell the story of Diné weavng.
Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, on view through February 2, 2025, presents historic and contemporary weavings alongside epic photographs of Navajo Nation landscapes to show the connections textile artist have to ancestors, their mentors, the community, the land, and their materials.
Historic Diné weaving with photomural by co-curator Rapheal Begay. Courtesy: the artist.
Appropriately, the story told by over 30 historic textiles is presented in MIAC’s Masterpieces gallery.
The entrance presents a dazzling display – a pictorial blanket woven in the 1890s set against a photomural of co-curator Rapheal Begay’s family sheep corral. It’s a visual testament to the importance of wool, life, and the 27,000 square miles of Navajo Nation.
The blanket’s creator (unknown today) was an astute observer of the life on the land and translated it all into warp and weft – cow punchers, cattle, boots, birds, and new-fangled railroad cars, that only arrived in Navajo Country around the 1880s. Click here to see the detail.
1885 pictorial blanket created with Germantown wool yarn introduced in the Southwest by the railroads; photomural Navel (Hunter’s Point, AZ) by co-curator Rapheal Begay. Photo courtesy of artist.
Nothing was newer than the railroad, at the time this artist depicted it – a steam-fed invention from the East that would change western life forever, but that also brought a wide array of colorful yarn that could be mixed and matched with vegetal dyes to create new Native designs.
The intertwined history of Diné (“The People” in the Navajo language), textile art, and the land is told through quotes and recollections by the exhibition’s Native collaborators. While examining masterful geometric weaving techniques in 19th-century works, visitors are provided with an historic context – the types of art materials introduced to captives imprisoned at Bosque Redondo after the Long Walk, the images that could be interpreted as a longing for the homeland by the incarcerated, and coded spiritual affirmations.
1850-1860 hand-spun wool child’s (or saddle) blanket with Spider Woman crosses; created with natural cocineal, indigo, and chamisa dye
1880-1897 rug made with Germantown wool yarn, cotton string, and raveled yarn; materials used in weaving at Bosque Redondo era, post-Long Walk.
The participants in the exhibition make sure that viewers also experience how the landscape inspires the work of the past and contemporary Native textile artists. Diné fiber artist Tyrrell Tapaha includes her two-panel dress in which incorporates images of the Utah clouds and mountains that bring her spiritual peace. The masterful wall hanging by Lillie Joe uses the palette of the desert to create a mesmerizing geometric dazzler.
2020 two-panel dress by fiber artist Tyrrell Tapaha with images from Utah landscapes that inspired her; woven from churro, silk, mohair, and marino wool..
Close up of highly detailed 1980s Burntwater wall hanging by Lillie Joe, reflecting colors and patterns of the Navajo Nation landscape.
The curators feature both the photography of co-curator Rapheal Begay and Darby Raymond-Overstreet to allow gallery visitors to experience the awesome beauty of the homeland that inspires artists. Digital artist Raymond-Overstreet overlays geometric textile patterns across his luscious, beautiful landscapes.
2018 digital print Woven Landscape, Shiprock by Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné), overlaying digital landscapes with traditional weavings. Courtesy: the artist
Take a look at some of our favorite works in our Flickr album. And enjoy these historic and contemporary dazzlers.
Detail of 1895 wedge weave blanket made with commercial cotton string and Germantown wool – a dramatic 19th c. weaving innovation. Courtesy: International Museum of Folk Art.
2022 wedge weave by Kevin Aspaas; white and grey wool yarn with indigo dye. Courtesy: private collection.
Detail of dynamic Diné 1960 wool tapestry weave. Courtesy: International Museum of Folk Art
Shape-shifter, beadwork innovator, pop-culture provocateur, fashion designer, and performance artist – it’s hard to know where to start when summarizing four-decades of work by a Native-American contemporary art superstar. But his first retrospective, Pathfinder: 40 Years of Marcus Amerman, does showcases his wide range of work in spectacular fashion. See it at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe through January 11.
Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is best known for his intricate beaded “paintings,” which take center stage.
1994 Stormbringer beaded portrait of Lakota leader Chief Iron Hawk. Surrealist eyes by Man Ray watch from a brewing storm. Courtesy: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
Once Amerman developed his bead technique, which provided a photo-realist spin to a traditional “native” craft, he really felt that he could take on any subject as a contemporary artist – movie stars, historic characters, and cartoon images. The impact is electric.
2002 beaded painting Greetings from Indian Country, merging vintage tourism with pointed social commentary on exploitation. Private collection
Amerman garnered a lot of attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s for merging his beadwork into contemporary fashion. He cites his beaded leather motorcycle jacket with a beaded meme of bikini-clad Brooke Shields starting it all – a shock-worthy mix of leather toughness with one of the hottest young stars of the day. He took on custom commissions and leapt at the opportunity to participate in fashion shows. He was overjoyed to see his buckskin fashions featured in Elle.
1982 Iron Horse Jacket with beaded Brooke Shields. Courtesy: Private collection
American eagles beaded on lapels of 1992 dinner jacket; commissioned by veteran Doug Hyde (Nez Perce, Assiniboine, Chippewa).
It’s obvious that Amerman rejects staying put into a single category. He loves collecting vintage “Indian” objects and collaging art-world and historic references in all of his work. Check out those hubcaps!
2023 acrylic painting Old Masters in the New World, showing 17th century Dutch colonizers next to a Santa Fe train. Courtesy: the artist2023 Rattles found-object collage, mixing pop cultural and Native images. Courtesy: the artist
Amerman’s alter ego, Buffalo Man, features prominently in the show, particularly in his collaborations with acclaimed photographer Cara Romero, where icons of Native culture insert themselves into American pop culture.
Cara Romero’s 2013 photo El Graduaté – a collaboration with Amerman’s performance alter ego, Buffalo Man. Courtesy: Cara Romero
2002 Target Jacket with glass beads, worn by the artist in fashion shows as himself and as Buffalo Man. Courtesy: the artist
The gorgeous collaborations with glass artists from Amerman’s time at Pilchuk are a delight – some self-referential and others harkening back to his own culture’s ancestry. He claims that everything he makes is genuinely as “self portrait.”
2010 blown and sand-carved Buffalo Man – a collaboration by Amerman and Preston Singletary (Tlingit). Courtesy: the artist
2006 Glass Shield, one of a series created during a residency at Pilchuk Glass School and inspired by historic Plains Indian shields. Courtesy: the artist
It’s a joyful tribute to an artist who gives back, inspires others, and keeps asking pertinent questions about the role of art and artists in our society.
Enjoy this close-up look at some of Amerman’s masterful beadwork and hear why Amerman continues to create:
Denver has welcomed this mid-century modern painter with open arms, with visitors lounging in several living-room settings surrounded by abstractions from the Sixties and Seventies by a Washington, D.C. painter who born in the late 19th century but who lived to see a man land on the Moon.
1960 Red Abstraction by Alma Thomas. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Alma Thomas grew up in Georgia, and earned the first fine arts degree ever granted by Howard University in 1924. After receiving a masters in education from Columbia, Alma spent the next 30 years teaching in Washington, D.C. public schools.
Ida Jervis’s 1968 photo Alma Thomas working in her studio. Courtesy: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
But she stayed close with her professors at Howard, who founded the Barnett Aden Gallery, one of first racially integrated and Black-owned art galleries in the United States. Alma served as the gallery’s VP, which displayed a who’s who of contemporary African-American artists, like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Henry O. Tanner.
By the early 1950s, Alma’s work was regularly shown in exhibitions at the gallery. When Alma finally retired from teaching in 1960 at age 69, she was finally able to paint full time. The Smithsonian’s exhibition features Alma’s work from this highly productive period.
The exhibition is centered around three subjects that inspired her – nature, the cosmos, and music. Her vivid color paintings welcome you to the exhibition but around the corner you see what really inspired her – a wall-sized photo of Alma’s beloved flower garden.
Mid-century modern lounge in the Denver exhibition with paintings by Alma Thomas inspired by her garden
She loved the changing seasons, the patterns of gardens, and patterns observed by light flickering through the crepe myrtles in her garden or through the trees on her walks through DC’s endless greenways and parks.
1976 oil Fall Begins, suggesting rustling leaves. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Detail of 1972 acrylic, Arboretum Presents White Dogwood. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The exhibition also features an immersive environment where visitors can use colors and shapes from Alma’s paintings to splash supersized across the gallery walls.
Room in Denver where visitors use filters to create lightscapes on the gallery walls.
1976 acrylic, Grassy Melodic Chart. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
By the 1970s, Alma’s love of music and rhythm were reflected in her abstractions, although the titles of her canvases tell us that she saw expressive melodies in nature too.
Captivated by the promise of technology, Alma also reveled in the mysteries and rhythms of the planets, space, and those frontiers of exploration. She really felt that the Moon, planets, and stars represented the peace and harmony that were sometimes lacking on Earth.
Always searching for beauty in the world, continuing to paint, and contemplating a brighter future, Alma achieved unprecedented art-world recognition in 1972 at age 80 –a one-woman show at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Not bad for a gal who grew up in “horse and buggy days” in Georgia! Thank you to the Smithsonian for collecting Alma’s work and producing this joyful, colorful show.
1970 acrylic The Eclipse, based on the March 7, 1970 total solar eclipse. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
1973 acrylic Celestial Fantasy. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Click here to read more in Denver’s exhibition guide and watch this short glimpse of the galleries below:
Listen to curator Rory Padeken discuss Alma Thomas’s life and work with artist Jordan Casteel, choreographer and dancer Cleo Parker Robinson, and floral artist Breigh Jones-Coplin.
Six years before she became transfixed with the drama of the colorful New Mexico desert, Georgia O’Keeffe began translating another magnificent, magical view from her skyscraper home in Manhattan. You can see all her transformational aerial cityscapes in Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks” on view at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art through February 16, 2025.
Created by the Art Institute of Chicago, the show assembles Georgia’s breakthrough city paintings and puts them squarely into the context of her better-known nature close-ups and other modernist takes – just the way she wanted it.
O’Keeffe’s 1927 Radiator Building – Night, New York. Courtesy: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Listen to the Art Institute curators talk about Georgia’s approach to New York landscapes, her life in the city’s Roaring Twenties, and what inspired her walking Manhattan’s grid at a time of of such transformational urban change:
As a total modernist, Georgia couldn’t wait to move into the Shelton Hotel, a brand-new skyscraper, with her brand-new husband (Stieglitz) in 1924. As half of New York’s art-world “power couple” it’s most likely that Georgia was one of the first women to enjoy high-rise living in Manhattan.
O’Keeffe’s 1926 The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. Courtesy: Art Institute of Chicago
The Shelton (still there at Lexington and 49th Street) was an apartment-hotel built in Midtown around Grand Central. Although it was first envisioned as a men’s residence, the marketing team soon pivoted a more expanded market with newspaper ads that would attract women, couples, and artists!
Read more about the Shelton, Georgia’s life there, and see 1920s photographs on the Art Institute’s blog post.
Georgia and Alfred moved in, captivated by the views of the East River and rapidly changing Manhattan skyline, where new skyscrapers were popping up like daisies. Alfred took photographs and Georgia recorded ths shifting light, atmosphere, and moods of the rapidly changing landscape.
O’Keeffe’s 1928 East River from the 30th Story of the Shelton Hotel. Courtesy: New Britain Museum of American Art.
As the exhibition demonstrates, Georgia didn’t limit herself to urban landscapes at the time. She was still depicting the natural world, but was determined to channel the rising modern city. At the time, Alfred and her fellow artists strongly discouraged her from displaying her urban work, arguing that painting cityscapes was “best left to the men.” You can just imagine what our Georgia thought about that! Naturally, it was full steam ahead!
Before Google Street view, Georgia walked the Midtown Grid, exploring (and remembering) her neighborhood streets as they transformed into skyscraper canyons. More high rises! The Empire State Building! Rockefeller Center!
O’Keeffe’s 1926 City Night. Courtesy: Minneapolis Institute of Art
O’Keeffe’s 1925 New York with Moon. Courtesy: Carmen Thyssen Collection
Who knows if Georgia ever experienced Manhattanhenge, but she certainly enjoyed the verticality and sky views between the buildings. A nature-lover, modernist, and virtuoso painter!
Despite Stieglitz’s misgivings about her city paintings, when she finally had her annual one-woman show at his gallery, her city painting was the first work that sold!
The curators have hung some of Georgia’s paintings just as she displayed them – side-by-side flower close-ups, other nature-inspired works, and City views – to provide the full experience of a modern woman’s mastery.
O’Keeffe’s 1924 From the Lake, No. 1. Courtesy: Des Moines Art Center
O’Keeffe’s 1929 Black Cross, New Mexico. Courtesy: Art Institute of Chicago
For more, here’s a longer discussion about Georgia rip-roaring 1920s life and work by one of the Chicago Art Institute curators for Georgia O’Keeffe Museum members.
Contemporary artists say they can hear their ancestors speak across generations. All they have to do is hold their community’s ancient pots – living beings that connect them to the Earth and the people from the past who made them.
You can hear these modern and ancient voices and see ceramic masterworks in Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, an exhibition on view the The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through January 12, 2025; continuing at the St. Louis Art Museum March 7 to September 14, 2025; and on display at the Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque from March 2026 to February 2027.
In video at Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Clarence Cruz (Okay Owingeh) reflects on a pots’s personal meaning
Clay is central to Pueblo culture, and this show is special, because it’s the first major exhibition of Pueblo pots curated entirely by the indigenous community – artists, leaders, teachers, and museum professionals.
1900 Tewa-Hopi Hno jar selected by Erin Monique Grant (Colorado River Indian Tribes); it reminded her of her Hopi family. Courtesy: Vilcek Collection.
1907-1910 bowl by Nampeyo (Tewa/Hopi) selected by her great-great-grandson artist Dan Namingha. Courtesy: SAR
New York’s Vilcek Foundation co-sponsored the community-curation project, exhibition, and project website. The organizers consulted with sixty curators from 22 pueblo communities across the Southwest to select work from the IARC collection and write about the spirit of these works. Communications weren’t always easy, since Internet service (email) is still spotty on some tribal lands.
But The Pueblo Collective’s inclusive approach to create the exhibition and catalog is now considered a template for major art institutions to work with tribal communities to convey their stories and culture to the public..
The IARC collection is legendary, spanning prehistoric to modern-day works. This video takes you inside IARC archive to meet a few of the Pueblo curators and the pots they selected:
Utilitarian vessels, ancient legacies, and intergenerational connections are themes explored in the 2023 installation at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. The exhibition design artfully integrated the words and thoughts of the curators in, around, and above the spectacular selections. Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr album.
Two 19th-century Tesuque water jars: a jar chosen by artist Marita Hinds (Tesuque), who saw it on a 1980s class field trip; and one admired by potter Bernard Mora (Tesuque) for its personality and imperfections. Courtesy: SAR
In some cases, a curator chose an Ancestral Pueblo pot from the 1100s and reflected on how well it’s survived today. In other cases, a curator discovered their grandmother’s pot stored for decades within the IARC collection. What a joy to bring it out and let it breathe! Listen in….
This statement about Lonnie Vigil’s magnificent vessel by Nora Naranjo Morse says it all. The MIAC gallery space recreated a Pueblo kitchen so we can experience the environment in which most Pueblo potters create their work.
1995 micaceous clay jar made by Lonnie Vigil (Nambe) selected by Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara) because it glitters like stars. Courtesy: SAR
Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s replica of Pueblo kitchen where most pottery is created
And here’s how the Met featured Lonnie’s showstopping work – made on his kitchen table – prominently in the American Wing entrance!
Micaceous clay jar by Lonnie Vigil (Nambe) in the show’s entrance at the Met’s American Wing. Photo by Richard Lee; courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum
The project website presents the curators’ biographies, their selections, and stories.
Listen to the Met’s 2023 panel with five curators behind this magnificent community-curated indigenous exhibition and find out why they believe understanding the vessels’ power is important:
How does it feel to have the eyes of 200 years of art history upon you, peering out from portraits, history paintings, and scenes of everyday people? What stories do they have to tell you? And who gets to tell the history and make the story?
Charles Willson Peale’s 1779 George Washington at Princeton, painted during the War of Independence. Courtesy: PAFA
While renovations are happening at the Academy in Philadelphia, the curators have chosen some of PAFA’s most iconic works to be shipped cross-country and installed “in conversation” with works by PAFA artists who may not be household names but were nonetheless ahead of their time.
It’s all a tribute to legacies preserved in the oldest art museum + art school in the United States, founded in 1805 by the dynamic duo of William Rush and Charles Willson Peale, both Continental Army militia (and artists!) during the American Revolution.
1810 painted pine sculpture Eagle by PAFA co-founder and Revolutionary War veteran William Rush.
Mr. Rush carved the bow figures on most of the ships for America’s first Naval fleet. All of those ships are now long gone, so it’s nice to see that we can admire his majestic Eagle in this exhibit.
Mr. Peale, one of the Sons of Liberty who served under and painted General Washington, later founded America’s first natural history museum on the second floor of Independence Hall. He also passed his talent on to the next generation through his very large family of artistic prodigies.
These two artists of the Revolution walked the walk and talked the talk and passionately felt the young nation needed an art academy.
PAFA’s first hundred years had some ground-breaking firsts – the first exhibition that included both male and female artists (1811), admission for Black artists (1857), and first female instructor (1878).
Charles Willson Peale’s 1822 self portrait (painted at age 81), The Artist in His Museum proudly showing his collection, turkey, and mastodon. Courtesy: PAFA
The show kicks off with a masterful history painting by Benjamin West, a Pennsylvania painting genius who landed in England in 1763, helped to found the Royal Academy, and somehow remained best friends with both King George III and Benjamin Franklin at the same time. He revolutionized history painting by depicting contemporary subjects and taught (in London) a who’s who of Americans artists – Peale, Stuart, Sully, Morse (who invented the telegraph and code), and Fulton (who invented steamships).
Benjamin West’s 1771-1772 Penn’s Treaty with the Indians, an imaginary scene painted to rehabilitate Penn’s image at the time, although it does feature Lenape chief Tamanend;. Courtesy: PAFA
In addition to masterworks by West and Gilbert Stuart, the exhibition showcases many works by female and African-African artists associated with PAFA – Patience Wright (America’s first professional sculptor), Cecilia Beaux (first female teacher), Henry O. Tanner (first successful African-American painter), and superstar Mary Cassatt.
1784-1786 wax relief portrait of George Washington by Patience Wright, the oldest American sculpture in the PAFA collection
1887 A Little Girl by Cecilia Beaux, an acclaimed female portraitist known for her insightful psychological depictions of young women. Courtesy: PAFA
In the day, grand history paintings were primarily the work of men, but the exhibition emphasizes that many enterprising 19th century women still found ways to make it in the art world. They specialized in “lesser genres,” like portraits, still lifes, and scenes of everyday life. Check out our favorites in our Flickr album.
Making American Artists really comes alive by adding 20th century works on the walls. Alongside the Founding Fathers, the portrait section features liberated women, bohemian artists, and proud Black artists with attitude.
Margaret Foster Richardson’s 1912 A Motion Picture – an honest self-portrait reflecting society’s changing views of professional women. Courtesy: PAFA
Barkley L. Hendricks’ 1968 J.S.B III, a fashionable, life-sized, postmodern portrait of his PAFA classmate James Brantley. Courtesy: PAFA
The section of the exhibition on still life focuses on early female painters who made decent incomes from their work, as well as modernist superheroes O’Keeffe and Nevelson. The history painting section presents 20th century show-it-like-it-is artists, like Horace Pippin and Alice Neel.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1923 Red Cana, an early abstracted floral still life. Courtesy: PAFA
Detail of Louise Nevelson’s 1972 South Floral. Still life section. Courtesy: PAFA
We’re reminded that many of the great masters of American landscape, like Thomas Moran, got their starts by painting bucolic views of Philadelphia’s Wissahickon and Schulkyll Rivers. Painting Philadelphia’s river landscapes may have even inspired the rise of the Hudson River School.
Thomas Moran’s 1870 Two Women in the Woods enjoying the green along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia. Courtesy: PAFA
And it was PAFA that gave Winslow Homer his professional start.
Winslow Homer’s 1893 Fox Hunt, where predator becomes the prey; Homer’s first painting to enter a museum collection. Landscape section. Courtesy: PAFA
The entire exhibition is a fresh look at American masters who created an astonishing legacy at one of our oldest art institutions and upstarts who never quite got their due. There’s so much to appreciate from this fresh, 21st century perspective!
Earlier this year, Making American Artists was at the Wichita Art Museum. Its next stop is the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma (September 25, 2024), followed by a spectacular road show: Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse (February 2025), the Peabody-Essex in Springfield, Massachusetts (June 2025), and the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia (October 2025).
Don’t miss it. While you’re waiting, listen in to curator Anna O. Marley’s May talk at the Albuquerque Museum:
Whether she contemplated her surroundings among the greenery at Lake George or the multicolord rocks at Ghost Ranch, Georgia O’Keefe often started by sketching the trees around her.
in Rooted in Place, a special exhibit at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe through November 3, 2024, you are surrounded by Georgia’s watercolors, oils, and sketches interpreting (and abstracting) trees she encountered on her walks and international travels.
Georgia’s 1937 painting Gerald’s Tree I, a tree enjoyed by her friend, science historian Gerald Heard
The curators have selected works from the full span of Georgia’s life. The earliest are from her trips to Lake George, such as the glorious autumn maples surrounding the Stieglitz home.
The show’s curators leverage Georgia’s habit of collecting inspirational bits and pieces of nature from her Ghost Ranch walks, showing the twisted juniper she brought home alongside the dramatic oil painting in which it stars.
Piece of juniper that Georgia collected from the land surrounding her Ghost Ranch home.
Georgia’s 1940 painting Stump in Red Hills
The museum’s collaboration with the Santa Fe Botanical Garden adds scientific insights about the three cornerstone species of New Mexico wilderness that from which Ms. O’Keeffe drew inspiration – pinons and junipers next to the red rock, and wide, leafy cottonwoods along the river.
Georgia’s 1930 Cottonwoods Near Abiquiu showing the breeze catching the wide branches
A gorgeous photo by Ansel Adams shows Georgia nestled up against one of her favorites nearby in the desert. She loved the fruit trees she planted near her home garden, but she never painted them.
When Georgia was a young student at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905-1906, she studied with John Vanderpoel, well known for being a master educator in figure drawing. Looking at her drawing of a banyon tree from her trip to the Bahamas over thirty years later, it’s clear she employed those early lessons – bringing trees to life as living beings in her work – throughout her life.
Ansel Adams’1938 portrait of George O’Keeffe resting against a dramatic tree stump in northern New Mexico
Georgia’s 1934 figure-like drawing Banyon Tree created on her trip to Bermuda
Listen to the museum’s panel about Georgia’s approach to painting her favorite trees and the role they play in the ecosystem of northern New Mexico:
The curators have gathered loans from private collections, museums, individual artists, and big-name galleries to give visitors a decade-by-decade chronicle of the people, families, maker innovations, and contemporary-art trends that converged to showcase works from one the most exciting confluences of creativity in the United States.
Santa Clara artist Nancy Youngblood’s 2018 polished pottery jar (best of pottery category award), granddaughter of Margaret Tafoya. Courtesy: private collection.
The items in the show – traditional pots, dazzling Navajo weavings, whimsical figurines, elaborately embroidered accessories and clothing, social-commentary photos and paintings – are so compelling that it takes two or three visits to actually focus on the thoughtful, illuminating text that accompanies each portion of the show.
Embellished 1890 buckskin Apache/Ute dress; behind, a 1925-1930 Navajo rug. Courtesy: Cowboys and Indians Antiques, Historic Toadlena Trading Post Museum.
The organizers have provided a revealing chronology of the politics, economics, and social context of each decade of the arts festival, noting changes in the people, processes, power, and patronage over time.
The first gallery brings you back to the earliest days of the market – a time when there were no Indian curators or judges (unlike today!) and when Native makers were not even allowed to sell their own work or interface directly with non-Native buyers.
The wall mural harkens back to the days when Pueblo people sold their pots and creations to tourists along the railroad, which in the late 1890s and early 1900s brought curious travelers, East Coast dandies, and traveling showpeople out to the Western badlands.
David Rock’s mural with early Native-made collectibles – early 1900s pottery and 1920s drum.
Turn-of-the-century tom-toms, curios, and older pots are displayed near the rail-top mural; Navajo rugs and beaded moccasins from the period are arrayed across the way. It’s an arrangement that evokes what might be displayed in an old trading post, or at least in the early 1920s Santa Fe markets.
Many of these makers in New Mexico were still living on their ancestral lands, but across the United States, the majority of Indigenous populations had either been relocated to reservations or boarding schools.
The inter-generational mastery of New Mexico’s Pueblo artists is featured in several vitrines holding examples of black-on-black (and other) masterworks by the Martinez family at San Ildefonso (go, Maria!) and the Tafoyas of Santa Clara, with Margaret’s famous bear-paw imprints.
Work by famed San Ildefonso artist Maria Martinez: 1922 polychrome, large 1942 black pot (award-winner painted by Julian Martinez); and 1928 jar. Courtesy: MICA, SAR
The surrounding gallery features dazzling painted pottery works by Zuni and Acoma from the 1920s – all drawn from the School for Advanced Research (SAR) collection, which began in 1922 to preserve classic works, SAR is the source of the acclaimed exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum, Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery. Sometimes the artists who made the pot is known; but often the maker is lost to history.
1928 Acoma jar. Courtesy: SAR
In the 1930s and 1940s across the United States, tribal mortality rates increased and their other economic lifelines decreased. But these conditions in the Southwest made the Market an even more important source of family revenue. Throughout the 1940s, the Santa Fe Market boomed.
1920-1930 Navajo hand-spun wool rug with figures representing the fire dance. Courtesy: Historic Toadlena Trading Post Museum.
By the 1950s, Federal government instituted policies to encourage Indians to leave their land and move into cities. Unfortunately, Santa Fe Indian Market policies had the same depressing effect – the organizers reduced both the number of artists allowed to show and amount of prize money that could be won.
By 1959, the SF Indian Market was on life support, with a few private donors stepping in with funding just to let it survive.
But during the 1960s, changes were afoot. The Institute for American Indian Arts began in Santa Fe, where Lloyd Kiva New gave Native artists “permission” to throw off traditional conventions and make contemporary art. Across the United States, social-justice movements focused on indigenous people’s rights demanded policy changes to reverse the impact of oppression. By 1968, Congress had passed the Indian Civil Rights Act.
What did that mean for the Market? The majority of works on display in the museum gallery are from the post-1970s period, when the scope, range, voice, virtuosity, and experimentation reflected the times.
1974 pottery canteen with turquoise and silver by San Ildefonso artists Rose Gonzales and Tse Pe. Courtesy: private collection.
Here are some examples – the glorious, gleaming, turquoise-inlaied 1980s vessel by by Zia/Jemez/San Ildefonso artist Dora Tse Pe and the virtuoso painting on a jar by by Acoma artist Dorothy Toriio.
1980s pottery jar by Zia/Jemez/San Ildefonso artist Dora Tse Pe. Courtesy: private collection.
1990 pottery jar by Acoma artist Dorothy Toriio. Courtesy: King Galleries.
Or, consider the virtuoso silverwork and inlaid belt by Aleutian master Denise Wallace; edgy, theatrical 1990s Cochiti figurines by Virgil Ortiz; and a 1999 horsehair basket woven by Tohono O’odham artist Leona Antone. See more in our Flickr album.
Silver 1986 “Aleut Dancer Belt” by Aleut artist Denise Wallace with abalone, fossil ivory, and lapis; Best in Non-traditional Jewelry Award. Courtesy: private collection.
The show’s finale catapults the story of Indian Market into the future. First, there’s a cluster of sculptural and video works by Virgil Ortiz, featuring his sci-fi, super-powered, time-traveling warriors from the future who travel back to 1680 to fortify the success of the Pueblo Revolt and save Pueblo culture.
“Kootz (Runner-twin brother of Tahu)” 2018 high-fire clay sculpture with “warning” LED lights by Cochiti artist Virgil Ortiz. – a character from his sci-fi 2180 ReVOltage Series. Courtesy: the artist
“Tahu (Blind Archer)” 2018 sculpture with LED lights by Cochiti artist Virgil Ortiz.. Courtesy: the artist
Second, there’s a photo wall of families and their young children, who create work to enter in to the children’s division. It leaves visitors with the strong feeling that not only will forward-looking artists keep innovating and creating, but that the kids will be all right.
Still of 2022 “Made in Native America” video by Cochiti artist Virgil Ortiz, featuring sci-fi costumes. Courtesy: the artist
You first see a group of anonymous protestors – statues that appear to be taking it to the streets with placards and bullhorns. Elevated at different levels, they present a monument to non-violent protest – a fitting opening to Pedro Reyes: DIRECT ACTION, on view at SITE Santa Fe through May 1.
Reyes believes in participatory art projects that transform art-making into social action.
The Protesters, Reyes’ 2016-2017 monument to unified voices that bring about change from non-violent protest. Courtesy: the artist, private collectors.
Memento, 2022 – vases made from gun parts by Albuquerque and Santa Fe students. All for sale.
The products of his 2022 Memento are right behind you – an array of fun flowers popping out of tall vases. Look closer.
The airy containers are transformed guns from a New Mexico buyback program that incentivized people to exchange their guns for grocery or home-store gift cards. The vases, made by welding-class students from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, are all for sale, with proceeds going to fund activities by New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence.
Turning the corner into the next installation, you encounter a wall of videos and shovels in a similar transformation – Palas por Pistoles – that Reyes organized in a particularly violence-prone community in western Mexico.
Reyes’ Palas por Pistoles (2006-present) – shovels made from melted-down gun parts, which were used by schools and museums to plant trees.
Reyes asked people to donate guns to be melted down for an art project promoting environmental peace. He received 1,527 weapons, crushed them in a public-art event, and commissioned a foundry to make shovels. Schools and museums used the shovels to plant 1,527 trees.
Every turn in the gallery reveals a different type of installation and project – libraries for “the people,” sculptures referencing language systems, posters protesting nuclear arms, and musical instruments and contraptions created from weapons.
You can’t miss the artist’s large volcanic-rock hand with pencil – an emblem of Reyes’ Amendment project that held community meetings where rewrites to the Second Amendment were proposed and discussed. The idea is that with so much discussion on policies these days, it’s better to write down the “amendments to the Amendment” in pencil! A list of suggestions is prominently posted nearby.
2002 Amendment volcanic stone hand writes the Second Amendment in pencil to facilitate changes in wording as necessary. On wall, multiple drafts of the Second Amendment generated in a Tampa, Florida community project.
Reyes’ 2022 marble sculpture, Colloquium (Parafrasis) depicting the architecture of speech; in background, icons of solutions to social problems from The People’s United Nations (pUN) project – food insecurity, population, gun control, mass incarceration.
Visitors tend to linger in the Disarmgallery, closely examining the various automated musical instruments created from firearms. Every few minutes, one of the pieces awakens to pluck a string or tap out a slow sequence. It’s a bit startling, not knowing which of the seven is going to activate next.
Harpanet and Cañonófono in Disarm Mechanized, mechanized instruments made from recycled gun and rifle parts. Courtesy: Enrique Rojas.
Reyes’ 2012 Disarm (Violin) from destroyed weapons, played in SITE Santa Fe concerts in 2023. Courtesy: the artist.
Take a look at our Flickr album to see more of the exhibition and to hear the sounds made by the Disarm instruments.
SITE Santa Fe provides “activators” for Reyes’ Music Machineinstallation – an experience that demonstrates how one artist’s imagination can make you stop and think, even if it’s toward the end of a deep, contemplative show. Reyes features iconic firearms from three European countries – Austrian Glocks, Swiss Carbines, and Italian Barettas – that have been transformed into classy music boxes. When activated, each plays a musical composition by a famous composer from that country.
Gallery educator Red Hart about to activate Reyes’ Machine Music – crank-operated music boxes made of Swiss Carbine rifles, Italian Barettas, and Austrian Glock pistols.
Hear the artist talk about each of these works in the SITE Santa Fe audio guide, and take time to ponder taking direct action as you visit this beautifully installed, socially relevant, and thought-provoking show.
No Nukes installation with series of 2022 hand-painted Zero Nukes posters in different languages, representing many countries. Courtesy: the artist.
Pow! Wham! What? It’s superheroes, avatars, and mixed-media channeling sci-fi social consciousness in an engaging, colorful, thought-provoking mix in the super-fun Fronteras del Futuro: Art in New Mexico and Beyond exhibition at Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center through March 12.
These artists love mixing pop culture images, found objects, and historic iconography to question where we’ve been and where we’re going. Take a look at our favorites in our Flickr album.
Some artists use pop culture to get our attention on deeper issues. The back-to-the-future B-movie poster series by Angel Cabrales prompts reflection on societal attitudes about immigrants and border issues.
2016 B-movie poster by Angel Cabrales to spur discussion on immigration and border issues. Courtesy: the artist.
Gilbert “Magú” Luján’s silkscreen merges the epic scope of Mesoamerican history into a contemporary context. A stylish Aztec couple takes a cross-border journey from Aztlán to Texas in a pre-Columbian-styled low rider.
1983 silkscreen Return to Aztlán by Gilbert “Magú” Luján; a cross-border journey and reflection on pre-Columbian roots and heritage.
One of the most epic achievements is a wall-length, accordian-folded letterpress codex – a collaboration by Enrique Chagoya, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Felicia Rice. Codex Espangliensis features pop-culture superheroes, pre-Columbian imagery, comics, and social declarations to explore New World history from 1492 to the present.
Designed to be read right to left: cover and first pages of Codex Espangliensis from Columbus to the Border Patrol, a hand-colored letterpress accordian-folded book.
Pages from 1999 Codex Espangliensis from Columbus to the Border Patrol, a hand-colored letterpress book by Enrique Chagoya, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Felicia Rice.
Marion Martinez’s 2002 Pierced Heart/Milagro; circuit boards and wood. Courtesy: the artist
Esteban Borjorquez’s 2018 Zena of Urion – a sci-fi creation from discarded items. Courtesy: the artist.
Marion Martinez grew up near Los Alamos National Laboratory, and started visiting its salvage area to find components from which to assemble her artworks – transforming discarded tech into beautiful icons of Northern New Mexican heritage.
Eric J. Garcia’s 2005 lithograph Tamale Man.
Roswell political cartoonist Eric J. Garcia takes another angle on mixing New Mexico’s cultural, culinary, and nuclear history. His Tamale Man series features the transformation of a guy munching a tamale at the first blast at the Trinity Site into a radioactive superhero.
Ryan Singer’s painting series blends his childhood fascination with Star Wars and other futuristic sagas with his Navajo heritage and upbringing.
Ryan Singer’s 2021 acrylic, Rainbow Flavor.
Meet Ehren Kee Natay, a Diné artist, whose work opens the exhibition with a loving tribute to his grandfather, the first Native American to release a commercial record:
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