Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery

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In partnership with the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Vilcek Foundation presents Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery. Dating from pre-contact to the present day, the featured pots—drawn from the Vilcek Collection and from the collection of SAR—connect and distinguish the lives of Pueblo communities, and include works from 21 Pueblo nations in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.

“When we started this exhibition project in 2015, we sought out partners to facilitate meaningful connections with Pueblo artists and cultural leaders,” says Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel. “We identified SAR as a collaborator early on, and together we worked to establish the Pueblo Pottery Collective—a group of more than 60 community curators—to lead the selection of objects for Grounded in Clay. This cooperation allowed us to realize the vision of bringing the lived experiences and cultural knowledge of Pueblo community members to the forefront in this exhibition.”

Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery is curated by the Pueblo Pottery Collective, a group of more than 60 community curators established for the purpose of this exhibition. The collective includes Native American artists, historians, and community leaders, along with other stewards of Native American art and culture.

“Grounded in Clay emphasizes the underlying, multifaceted, and nuanced understandings that the Pueblo Indian people of the American Southwest have of one of the more ubiquitous and resilient forms of our material culture: pottery,” writes curator Joseph Aguilar. “Historical memories and our understanding of pottery and other cultural patrimonies are tantamount to a form of Indigenous intellect—a physical, spiritual, and intellectual worldview that is inextricably linked to land, people, and history.”

Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery first opened at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in July 2022. The exhibition in New York comprises presentations on view concurrently at the Vilcek Foundation and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through June 2024.

An exhibition catalog, Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (2022), is available from Merrell Publishers, and everywhere books are sold.