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:
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
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