For more information, please contact IAIA Communications Director Jason S. Ordaz at jason.ordaz@iaia.edu.

South Gallery

February 25–May 15, 2022

The 2021–2022 IAIA BFA Exhibition highlights artwork that reflects the diverse backgrounds of IAIA graduating BFA students. The juried show presents the unique voices of emerging artists that share an interest in themes such as resiliency, self-empowerment, identity, and gender issues. Several of the artworks reflect influences from the artists’ cultural heritage blended with contemporary art forms, techniques, and materials. More information forthcoming.

Anne and Loren Kieve Gallery

August 20, 2021–July 10, 2022

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology documents international Indigenous artists’ responses to the impacts of nuclear testing, nuclear accidents, and uranium mining on Native peoples and the environment. The traveling exhibition and catalog give artists a voice to address the long-term effects of these man-made disasters on Indigenous communities in the United States and around the world. Indigenous artists from Australia, Canada, Greenland, Japan, Pacific Islands, and the United States utilize local and tribal knowledge, as well as Indigenous and contemporary art forms as visual strategies for their thought-provoking artworks.

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology is co-curated by iBiennale Director Dr. Kóan Jeff Baysa; Nuuk Art Museum Director Nivi Christensen (Inuit); Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art Chief Curator and Vice Director Satomi Igarashi; Art Gallery of New South Wales Assistant Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Erin Vink (Ngiyampaa), Independent Curator Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation), and MoCNA Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man.

The hardcover, fully illustrated catalog will be published in Fall 2021 and features artist statements, interviews and essays by co-curators, art historians, writers, scientists, and activists who will examine art practices and artists’ concerns more in depth. Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology is supported by the Ford Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Image Credit: Hilda Moodoo (Pitjantjatjara) and Kunmanara Queama (Pitjantjatjara), Destruction I, 2002, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 46.85 x 38.66 x 1.18 in. Art Gallery of South Australia, Santos Fund for Aboriginal Art 2002, 20025P24

South Gallery

November 5, 2021–January 30, 2022

We Went Wild is an exhibition of emerging students in the Institute of American Indian Arts’ (IAIA) BFA programs. Some of the participating artists are from the American Southwest, Peru, Northern Great Plains, and Japan.

This exhibition of recent work comprises various media, including sculpture, painting, and jewelry, which move as conduits for complex emotions we have all attempted to navigate during these challenging times. This distance has also challenged us to re-examine closeness and the need for connection.

IAIA Museum Studies Junior and Student-Curator Jaime Herrell explains that “We, no matter the disconnect or distance, especially in this existence, are here to create, to share, to feel—to find a peaceful moment or to just be grumpy, just as these artists do in their creative processes. Any distance between people explores the power and significance of genuine feelings, emotions, and cross-cultural expressions between each other, along with the individuality and solitude within us. This distance has also challenged us to re-examine closeness and the need for connection.”

Participating Artists

Image Credit: Suni Sonqo Vizcarra Wood (Quechua Nation), Metamorphosis of Healing, 2021, cast bronze and wood, 7’9” x 1’9” x 2’3” , photograph by the artist

Kieve Family Gallery

On view until May 2022

Experimental exPRESSion: Printmaking at IAIA, 1963–1980 features fifty-one recently-acquired works on paper from the Tubis Print Collection, donated by the Nina Tubis Wooderson Trust. Notable artists in the exhibition include Peggy Deam (Suquamish), Mary Gay Osceola (Seminole), and Sandy Fife (Muskogee Creek), among other IAIA Alumni. The exhibition will be on display for two-years and closes July 2021.

“Printmaking today contains so many variables, so many possibilities exist in the uses of materials. It is unlikely that any contemporary printmaker has not experimented or thought of experimenting with the same materials and processes.”—Seymour Tubis, 1966

The Tubis Print Collection represents the experimentation that took place in the IAIA Printmaking Studio from 1963–1981, which established a standard ofmodern printmaking practice for Native artists. Printmaking students learned skills that were central to the fine art curriculum developed for young Native artists. The process introduced students to the concepts of design, layout, shape, line, texture, and color. Printmaking informed other media, such as painting and sculpture, and helped shape the Contemporary Native Arts Movement at IAIA.

Image Credit: Benjamin Harjo, (Seminole/Shawnee), Microcosms of the Everglades, woodblock print, ca. 1965. Courtesy of IAIA MoCNA Permanent Collection, SE-67

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology documents international Indigenous artists’ responses to the impacts of nuclear testing, nuclear accidents, and uranium mining on Native peoples and the environment. The traveling exhibition and catalog give artists a voice to address the long-term effects of these man-made disasters on Indigenous communities in the United States and around the world. Indigenous artists from Australia, Canada, Greenland, Japan, Pacific Islands, and the United States utilize local and tribal knowledge, as well as Indigenous and contemporary art forms as visual strategies for their thought-provoking artworks.

The exhibition size is 365–500 linear feet (3,500–4,000 square feet) and it is available for booking periods beginning January 2023. (The exhibition size is negotiable.)

To inquire further about the availability of Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology or to receive a prospectus and checklist for this traveling exhibition, contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man at manuela.well-off-man@iaia.edu.

Image Credit: Hilda Moodoo (Pitjantjatjara) and Kunmanara Queama (Pitjantjatjara), Destruction I, 2002, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 46.85 x 38.66 x 1.18 in. Art Gallery of South Australia, Santos Fund for Aboriginal Art 2002, 20025P24

Last Supper is a conceptual installation pointing to the effects of how the food we consume is making a negative impact within our communities. C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Mvscogee Nation) builds a visual narrative based on private and public memories and experiences to deal with the devastating effect of diabetes throughout native nations. The exhibition Last Supper creates a larger social awareness of the epidemic and its dilemma in all of the United States. The mixed media installation includes her family archives and testimony about the disease and its impact on traditional values and the drastic evolution of diet as well as economy. C.Maxx Stevens is an installation artist and a member of Seminole/Mvscogee Nation from Oklahoma. She has recently retired as a Professor of Art at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

The exhibition requires approximately 600 sq. ft. of space. To inquire further about the availability of Maxx Stevens: Last Supper or to receive a prospectus and checklist for this traveling exhibition, contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man at manuela.well-off-man@iaia.edu.

Image Credit: Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Mvscogee Nation), Last Supper (detail), photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA

2nd Floor North Hallway

On view until February 27, 2022

Daniel McCoy Jr.’s (Muscogee Creek/Citizen Band Potawatomi) ’17 mural outside the Kieve Family Gallery is part of the Experimental exPRESSion: Printmaking at IAIA, 1963–1980 exhibition.

McCoy who also created printmaking illustrations for the exhibition design and didactics. “The mural is influenced by powwow regalia colors, films, and comics from the late sixties and seventies. I tried to imagine what the IAIA students would have liked during this time (1963–1980). My son Noel and I first drew black and white illustrations in ink then roughly based the mural on these illustrations.”

—Daniel McCoy Jr.’s (Muscogee Creek/Citizen Band Potawatomi) ’17

Image Credit: Daniel McCoy Jr.: Experimental exPRESSion Mural (detail), photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA, 2021

Hallway Gallery and Honor Gallery

On view until July 2022

Alexander Lee’s (Hakka Chinese, Tahiti) mural The Dream of the Haere-pō is a study on time and on Indigenous transformation. It depicts in five sections, five tāpa’o (signs, markers) what Lee considers to be memory helpers and instruments for storytelling. Lee created this mural to inspire viewers to question limiting expectations of what Indigenous art is. He invites artists to redraw a narrative through reclaiming visual signs, and to write their own stories of time and space. With this mural, Lee hopes to inspire viewers to question the “Indigenous” and “Contemporary” labels as places of enclosure, and he invites them to imagine futures through an Indigenous perspective. The mural is part of Alexander Lee’s installation Te atua vahine mana ra o Pere (The Great Goddess Pere)—L’ Aube où les Fauves viennent se désaltérer.

Image Credit: Alexander Lee: The Dream of Haere-pō (detail), photograph by Jason S. Ordaz, IAIA, 2021

Allan Houser Art Park

December 17, 2021–August 1, 2022

Continuance: O’Ga P’Ogeh Owingeh is a collaborative visual landmark by Three Sisters Collective, a Pueblo and Indigenous women-centered grassroots collective. Continuance highlights the past, present, and future of the Indigenous people living here in O’Ga P’Ogeh Owingeh or “White Shell Water Place.”

The mural’s story begins with the sunrise over the Sangre de Christo Mountains on the eastern portion of the wall, closest to where O’Ga P’Ogeh Owingeh was located. The White Shell Water was a freshwater spring located in this area, particularly where the Cathedral and Cathedral Park stand today. Before colonization, Tewa people were stewards of the land now known as Santa Fe, sharing place with surrounding communities and tribes passing through.

As the river winds west, we see Tewa ancestors planting corn and preparing the land for their lineage to live and thrive. Continuing, we see a strong cornstalk that has been pulled up by its roots, denoting Spanish and American colonization and their effort to uproot Indigenous lifeways and values. A faceless spirit holds and mourns this link to the ancestors, though the pollen floats on into the future.

We see a young woman spirit in the modern age at the cornstalk’s roots, praying to revitalize and continue what has been thought to be lost. Her community comes from all directions to join her as matriarchs of the future watch and guide this resurgence, even after blood has been spilled and the river runs thin.

The evening ends over the Jemez mountains which holds a tribute to DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo (Taos Pueblo/Diné). When the day starts again on the east side, the light shines on the ruins of Santa Fe, as the ancestors of the future begin again, planting corn and preparing the land for their lineage to live and thrive.

Statement by Autumn Gomez (Comanche/Taos)

image credit: Continuance: O’Ga P’Ogeh Owingeh Mural (detail), Allan Houser Art Park, photograph by Winoka Yepa (Diné)

MoCNA offers special group tours for school, travel, non-profit, and corporate groups. Group tours must be arranged one month prior to arrival. We are currently scheduling group tours for 20 or less. Please email groups@iaia.edu to schedule a tour. (Note: Walk-in tours are currently suspended until further notice.)

Also, please visit our virtual museum online or download our mobile app for a self-guided tour option when visiting the museum.

Programs are subject to change, please visit our website for the most up to date programming calendar or visit our Facebook page.

The Museum Store offers a unique shopping experience, featuring a collection of high-quality, Native-made, and Native-designed products including one of the most extensive collections of books on Native-related topics. The inspiring collection of items also includes prints, textiles, paintings, jewelry, pottery, sculpture, various home goods, and children's products. We are pleased to offer Native brands like Eighth Generation, The NTVS, Trickster Company, Bison Star Naturals, and more.

Over 40 titles coming soon to the Museum Store. Featuring an updated and expanded Pueblo History section, and newly added LGBT2SQ+ texts, including children, and teen books.

Interested in browsing our selection of products not currently featured on our website? Email us at store@iaia.edu or call (505) 428-5912 to inquire about specific artists or merchandise. Phone and email orders are welcome!

The mission of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) is to advance contemporary Native art through exhibitions, collections, public programs, and scholarship. MoCNA's outreach through local and national collaborations allows us to continue to present the most progressive Native arts and public programming. MoCNA's exhibitions and programs continue the narrative of contemporary Native arts and cultures.