IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts’s (MoCNA) new permanent collection gallery highlights the exhibition Visions and Visionaries. Drawing from the strength and diversity of the permanent collection, the works enable us to see IAIA’s history and the world through different eyes, as well as highlight the role of visionaries who forged new paths that we continue to follow. Collections tell particular stories—in this case the development of Native art in the American southwest in the 1960s and its evolution into a national movement today.

The collection is a testament to the continual risk-taking and innovation that has shaped IAIA, and in turn, MoCNA. The exhibition is divided into different “chapters”—Abstraction, Ways of Seeing, Politics and Perception, and Realism and the Documentary Image. These different sections serve to frame the works, create new connections, and revise established artistic tropes and movements.

Fred Treas, Crown Dancer, Tempera on
board, 30” x 22”, 1964,
MoCNA Collection A-78,
Photograph by Jason S. Ordaz

Artists

Samuel Austin, Jonathan Bayer, Parker Boyiddle, David Bradley, T.C. Cannon, George Crawford, R.C. Gorman, Tom Holmes, Peter B. Jones, John Koschman, James Lavadour, Jerry Lee, James Luna, Maria Martinez, Popovi Da Martinez, Shelly McIntire, George Morrison, Shelley Niro, Audla Pee, Elaine Rice, Ishii Sakahaftewa, Randall Sahmie, Fritz Scholder, Johnny Secatero, Michelle Stokes, Evelyn Teton, Fred Treas, Will Wilson, Wilmur “Duffy” Wilson, Crystal Worl, Steven Yazzie, Tiffiney Yazzie, Francis Yellow, and Alfred Young Man.