IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) is dedicated to increasing public understanding and appreciation of contemporary Native art, history and culture through presentation, collection and acquisition, preservation, and interpretation. MoCNA is recognized as the preeminent organizer of exhibitions devoted exclusively to the display of dynamic and diverse arts practices representative of Native North America.
MoCNA encourages creative expression across the fields of arts and culture as an opportunity to engage, establish, foster, and cultivate in cross-cultural dialogue with communities at the local, national, and global level.
MoCNA’s exhibitions, programs, and its Collection of Contemporary Native Arts are integral to nurturing and growth of the Institute of American Indian Arts legacy, college community, and curriculum across academic and artistic disciplines.
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Upcoming Events
View upcoming events from the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). View all event listings.
Exhibitions
Current and upcoming exhibitions at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). View all exhibitions.
Action/Abstraction Redefined
Action Abstraction Redefined features paintings and works on paper from the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) permanent collection created in the 1960s and 1970s. The artists in this exhibition challenged stereotypical expectations of Indian art by experimenting with American modern art movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Color Field and Hard-edge Painting combined with art influences from their own cultural heritage.
Rolande Souliere: Form and Content
Through the use of Ojibway, Cree, and Inuit syllabics, Souliere utilizes aspects of this writing system to engage in ideas about space, color, form, symbolism, surface movement, and language. Her new mural project is an exploration into the parallels and the multifaceted ways in which simple geometric building blocks such as chevrons, circles, and rectangles have a profound affinity with Indigenous language, culture, and abstraction in Western art.
Art & Activism: Selections from The Harjo Family Collection
This exhibition highlights works from The Harjo Family Collection. The major art collection was recently donated to the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and contains about sixty artworks. These works were purchased or gifted to Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/Hodulgee Muscogee), an important American Indian activist, lobbyist, policy maker, and 2011 recipient of an IAIA Honorary Doctorate.
Latest News
The most recent news, press releases, and updates from the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). View all news listings.
MoCNA Celebrates Women’s History Month
The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) recognizes Women’s History Month and honors contemporary Native and non-Native women artists, filmmakers, poets, writers, curators, art professionals, academics, and students who worked, exhibited, or presented at MoCNA in 2017.
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Noted Multimedia and Performance Artist James Luna Passes Away at 67
IAIA is sad to announce the passing this past weekend of internationally-renowned performance and installation artist James Luna (Payómkawichum (Luiseño)/Ipi (Diegueño and Mexican-American).
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2017–2018 MoCNA Social Engagement Art Residency
MoCNA announces its 2017–2018 first and second round of Social Engagement Arts Residents, and currently, it is funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Previously, this program was funded by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
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The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) is the country’s only museum for exhibiting, collecting and interpreting the most progressive work of contemporary Native artists.
MoCNA is dedicated solely to advancing the scholarship, discourse and interpretation of contemporary Native art for regional, national and international audiences. As such, it stewards the National Collection of Contemporary Native Art, 7,500 artworks in all media created in 1962 or later. MoCNA is at the forefront of contemporary Native art presentation and strives to be flexible, foresighted and risk-taking in its exhibitions and programs. MoCNA is located in the heart of downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico.
