Three ways of looking at Pueblo art

Murray Whyte, Boston Globe, August 17, 2023

The image, by Cochiti Pueblo artist Victor Ortiz, is plucked from his future dystopian vision: A second Pueblo Revolution of 2180, five centuries past the real-life first, when his ancestors beat back Spanish colonial invaders in 1680. It marks the entry to “Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village," a new, exhiliratingly complex exhibition that recasts popular notions of art from Southwestern Indigenous Pueblo communities and connects them to a vibrant present. And Ortiz's future vision is jarring enough to shake any preconceptions loose.

Colby's exhibition is one of three in the Northeast this summer focused on art from the Pueblo communities: The other two are at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, soon to build a permanent home for its Native American collection. The overlap shouldn't be surprising. Pueblo art, particularly the majestic clay pots adorned with geometric and animist motifs that span centuries, have been coveted crowd-pleasers in urban America for decades. How the exhibitions diverge — in concept, in presentation, even in what they consider “Pueblo art" to be — is important. Together, they help sketch a broad, evolving reconsideration of what Indigenous representation in mainstream American museums was, is, and could potentially be.

It's a moment rich with significant markers. In July, Jeffrey Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee artist from Colorado, was named the first Native American artist to represent the US at the Venice Biennale, one of the art world's most prestigious stages, next year. And in just the past few years, museums across the country have added curators of Native American art to their permanent rosters.

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