Fall 2013

2013 / Vol. 118 / No. 3

Woven Identities

North American Indian baskets are cultural histories—documents of the aesthetics, beliefs, lifestyles, natural environment, and technologies of the people who made and used them. These unique baskets are producible and fully comprehensible only within the social context of the weavers. Just as words take on unique meanings within sentences, baskets take on unique meanings within their social contexts. When anthropologist Deborah Neff collaborated with Tohono O’odham basket weaver Frances Manuel on her life history, Neff recognized that in order to understand something from another world we have to try and step outside our taken-for-granted realities and work on understanding difference.

By Valerie K. Verzuh

Categories: Visual art

Honoring New Mexico’s Creative Visionaries

BY CARRIE B. MORITOMO Edward Gonzales, one of New Mexico’s most popular and beloved artists, is among the seven artists and arts supporters to be honored with the 2013 Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts. (more…)

Categories: Visual art

The Decay of Nature, Suspended

Great artworks have staying power — intellectually, if not always physically. Many contemporary artists use fragile or ephemeral materials that pose a challenge to collections care in museums. When it happens that a remarkable yet vulnerable work is offered to us for the New Mexico Museum of Art’s collection, we turn to the museum system’s conservators to advise us about the challenges that will face us if we acquire it.

By Laura Addison

Categories: Visual art

A Tisket, a Tasket, What’s inside the Basket?

When conservator Landis Smith told me that she was working on an exceptional basket, what came to mind was the array of tours de force of basketry in the exhibition Woven Identities at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. With great anticipation I followed Landis into the bowels of the Museum of International Folk Art to the high-tech conservation laboratory that serves all of the Museum of New Mexico institutions.

By Penelope Hunter-Stiebel

Categories: Visual art

Archaeology of a Desk

BY DANIEL KOSHAREK The final gleanings of Kenneth Chapman’s life as an archaeologist and artist arrived in the Photo Archives in five cartons, in June of 2009. (more…)

Categories: Framework