Renewal: Museum of Indian Arts & Culture closes to install exhibitions

Adrian Gomez, Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
·2 min read

Mar. 5—The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe is closed to the public through May.

According to the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, the closure comes as a precaution for the public's safety for the installation of several new exhibitions.

Cisco Tapia, a DCA spokesman, says that during the temporary closure, the public can still explore MIAC online through online exhibitions and virtual tours and stay connected with the museum by following MIAC on Facebook and YouTube.

When the museum reopens, visitors will be welcomed to "A Place in Clay."

"This exhibition will showcase the work of artist Kathleen Wall (Jemez Pueblo), the museum's 2020 Native Treasures Living Treasure," Tapia says. "With techniques passed on from generation to generation, Wall's art exemplifies the style and beauty of her family's heritage through her creations."

Wall has always considered Pueblo pottery to be an essential ingredient in her life.

"Over the last 30 years, I have begun my creative process with the same actions as my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother before her," Wall says. "I dig clay and volcanic ash in the same places that my mother showed me as a young girl. I have created most of my clay figures using traditionally processed clay from here in Jemez Pueblo ... where I began."

Another exhibit, "Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass," will be the first exhibition of its kind in the country that presents the evolution of glass as a new art form for Indigenous artists.

The two-pronged exhibition of more than 100 glass sculptures will focus on how Native artists have melded ancestral ways with new methods and materials in glass.

The exhibit will feature work from 29 Native American artists and four Pacific Rim artists from New Zealand and Australia, as well as seminal glass artist Dale Chihuly.

MIAC will also reopen the Buchsbaum Pottery Gallery of the Southwest, along with a new traveling exhibition called "Why We Serve: Native Americans in the Armed Forces."

The exhibition will come directly to MIAC from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

"Why We Serve" honors the generations of Native Americans who have served in the U.S. armed forces — often in extraordinary numbers — since the American Revolution.

The popular "Here, Now and Always" exhibition continues to be closed for construction through summer 2022.