Pueblo Pottery Comes To Manhattan At The Met And Vilcek Foundation

Pueblo pots are not functional things. They are not aesthetic things. They are not one thing or another.

They are everything.

Container. Pitcher. Artwork. Gift. Teacher. Relative. Ancestor.

Nothing in white culture approximates to the significance of pottery within Pueblo cultures. Without needing to ascribe monetary value to everything, deeper values can be imparted.

Listen to descendants of the Indigenous people from what Spanish colonizers would call “pueblos”–towns–across present day New Mexico, west Texas and eastern Arizona talk about their pottery and this truth becomes readily evident.

The pots talk. They laugh. They sing.

When you know how to listen.

To anyone living outside of the Pueblos, outside of their world in the white world, such animation may sound preposterous, but when you see the pots, you know it’s true. If you’re willing to shed your prejudices that such things are not possible.

Pueblo pots have personalities. They are sacred. They are alive.

The pots tell stories.

Stories of joy. Of family, community, festival, harvest, spirituality.

Stories of pain. Of drought, war, removal, genocide.

Stories of ingenuity. Resilience. Survival.

You can become part of their stories during an exceptionally rare dual presentation of Pueblo pottery in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and free of charge at the Vilcek Foundation less than a mile away.

“Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery” has been curated by the Native American communities represented in the pieces. The project gives authority and voice to the Pueblo Pottery Collective, a group of over 60 individual members of 21 tribal communities including New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos, the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo of West Texas and the Hopi Tribe of Arizona. Members selected items and wrote about the pots they chose from two significant Pueblo pottery collections: the Indian Arts Research Center of the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe and the Vilcek Foundation of New York.

No interlocutors.

No interference.

No adaptation.

Collective members hope visitors come away with two foundational understandings about Pueblo pottery.

“Pottery permeates the lives of Pueblo peoples,” Indian Arts Research Center Director and Pueblo Pottery Collective member Elysia Poon told Forbes.com. “For many, it is impossible to divorce the pieces from the people.”

This connection can manifest itself in ways great and small.

“It might be a really strong tie–they come from a potting family, there’s pottery everywhere–or it might be just humming in the background of their lives, you throw your keys into a little plate or something, but it’s still there,” Poon added.

Point two requires a little effort on your part.

“(Collective members) wanted people to think about how within the exhibit they would meet, not just hundreds of people, not just the curators, but also the pottery,” Poon explained. “If you think about the pottery in this collection and take a look at any one of them–just focus on one–and think about its history, it’s not just about who made it, it’s not just the staff who are stewarding it, it’s about all the people in between and all the people that are coming in the future that are going to have a relationship with this pottery.”

Yourself included.

A Story in Every Pot

Pueblo Indian pottery has long been exhibited and interpreted in the academic and museum worlds through singular, often generic, points of view: as ethnographic remnants of the archaeological past or as fine art examples aligned with milestones in Western art history and culture.

One thing, or another.

“Oftentimes, Native American stories are misconstrued and mistold within national museums. That has to do with a lack of contact, a lack of information about these communities and individuals,” Poon said. “(‘Grounded in Clay’) provides this beautiful opportunity for the curators to tell a story that’s not just centered on, ‘how is this pottery made, who were the famous potters, what was the linear progression of this pottery,’ which is how the stories are often told. It provides an opportunity for different kinds of stories, and the important stories to Pueblo people to be told to the public in a way they want it to be told. That is something that is rarely done.”

Curators picked pottery made by relatives, grandmothers; others picked pieces from outside of their communities. Some carefully inspected hundreds of pots before choosing the one or two they wanted included in the show. Others knew immediately which they would select, having had a previous relationship with it.

Such was the case with Marita Hinds (Tesuque) and the Tesuque water jar circa 1880-90 from the Indian Arts Research Center she picked. She was introduced to the piece in the 1980s as a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

“This pot is like an old friend you have not seen in years, but when you meet them again, it is as if you have not missed a day,” Hinds explains in exhibition text and the gorgeous catalogue accompanying “Grounded in Clay.”

In addition to selecting their pots without interference, each member of the collective was allowed to write their own explanations for why they chose the object. No filter. Entries range from matter-of-fact narratives to poetry.

The curators’ firsthand knowledge of pots and potters, family rituals, traditional materials, and daily use grounds viewers in a powerful sense of people and place. At the same time, a thread of ancestral memory connects individual pots to the pride, pain, and living legacy of Pueblo peoples.

Tony Chavarria explains how the ca. 1900 stone-polished blackware olla from his home pueblo of Santa Clara sparks a memory of his grandmother’s favorite vintage dress: “I see the flared collar and high neck in this jar. I see my grandma in the beauty from the earth.”

Acoma Pueblo Governor Brian Vallo praises the skills of the unidentified maker of an extraordinary ca. 1880 Acoma polychrome storage jar: “The master potter had the skill not only to form a jar this size, but to carefully execute other steps in its creation, including a successful outdoor firing. The designs on both the neck and body are classic Acoma pottery patterns depicting clouds, rain, and corn fields. This jar sings loudly to me through its design and its lived experience at Acoma.”

Each community’s pots are as distinct from one another to the trained eye as a Caravaggio painting from a Joan Mitchell. And no less relevant.

“This show challenges the concept of historic pottery as relegated to the past,” Poon said. “A bulk of the pieces were made in the 20th century, contemporary with the works of Kandinsky or Warhol. As long as they exist within the living memory of Native peoples, their stories are vibrant and alive.”

National Tour

“Grounded in Clay” debuted in July of 2022 at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe across the street from the School for Advanced Research. The exhibition celebrated the 100th anniversary of the creation of SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center’s pottery collection in 1922. That astonishing assemblage is available for public tours one day a week.

While it was not the intention of the makers of any of these pots to have their work displayed at the most prestigious art museum in the world, that symbolism can’t be overlooked when applied to America’s most marginalized population. In addition to autonomy over the items selected and exhibition text, “Grounded in Clay” identifies artworks and curators both as “who we are vs. how we are known.”

These communities had names predating Spanish titles for centuries. Tay tsu’geh Oweenge for Tesuque. Tuah tah for Taos. Halona:wa for Zuni and so on.

“(The exhibition) speaks to the importance of Pueblo pottery and more importantly to the stories behind (it),” Poon said.

After leaving New York in June of 2024, “Grounded in Clay” travels to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in fall of 2024 and early 2025, then on to the Saint Louis Art Museum in spring of 2025.

Go.

Listen.

And try understanding why these pots elicit reactions like this from contemporary art superstar Rose Simpson (Santa Clara), who, while fighting back tears in a PBS documentary on the exhibition, addressed a circa 1880-90 Santa Clara water jar thusly: “I love you for all that you are. All the layers. I see your power. I see your fragility, your vulnerability.”