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.
Established
In the Collection
Annual Visitors
Upcoming Events
View upcoming events from the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). View all event listings.
List of Events
IAIA A-i-R: Lillian Pitt—Brown Bag It at MoCNA
Bring your lunch and join IAIA Artist-in-Residence (A-i-R) artist Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs Wasco/Yakama) as she discusses her art practice. Pitt is known internationally for her masks of clay, bronze, and cast glass, along with her sculpture, jewelry, and prints—which honor her ancestors from the Columbia River Gorge.
Exhibitions
Current and upcoming exhibitions at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). View all exhibitions.
List of Events
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.
CineDOOM: Narratives of Native Film and Beyond
MoCNA is pleased to present six innovative films made by Southwestern based Native American directors and their teams of writers, producers, editors, and actors.
Latest News
The most recent news, press releases, and updates from the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). View all news listings.
Nancy Blomberg Passes Away
It’s with heartfelt condolences that the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) shares the passing of Nancy Blomberg, the Denver Art museum’s Chief Curator and Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts.
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MoCNA Volunteer and Docent Training Program
MoCNA is seeking candidates for volunteer and docent training. The program will feature instruction in Native American art and the workings of a major museum that will enable successful participants to provide valuable services to visitors to the museum.
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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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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.
