Museum News

In 1972, a former Museum of New Mexico employee took a job at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) at its former home, the present grounds of the Santa Fe Indian School, and opened the first exhibition. With the help of IAIA student volunteers, Chuck Dailey organized student work and various beadwork, jewelry, paintings, pottery and [...]

For Debra Yepa-Pappan, her life is her art. Embracing her Native American and Asian background, Yepa-Pappan’s digital images and photographs disclose not only pieces of herself but the urban world around her. “I grew up in the city and my influences have been pop art,” she says of digitally mixing pink teepees and the iconic [...]

In 1959, a successful Cherokee fashion designer in Scottsdale, Ariz., would organize an exploratory workshop for Native American arts and discuss its prospects. “The future of Indian art lies in the future, not the past-let’s stop looking backward for our standard of Indian art production,” Lloyd “Kiva” New said. “… Let’s be more concerned with [...]

Although he started as a Ledger and portrait artist, Gerald Cournoyer has always used symbolism in his expression, in addition to drawing from his ancestry. “My paintings reflect cosmology of the Lakota Sioux people,” said Cournoyer, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge, SD. “The symbolism of the geometric shape, color [...]

For the past 50 years, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) has been the sole school in the country dedicated to the study of contemporary Native arts. As a right of passage, the work of graduating artists is featured in the college’s museum downtown. The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) supports and promotes [...]