Collection

Collection Purpose & History

Purpose of the Collection 

MoCNA collection’s purpose is to document the art history of IAIA and advance the contemporary Native art movement through active collecting, research and scholarship, proactive assessment, loans and exhibitions, improved access through digital publication, fellowship programs, and faculty collaboration.   

Additionally, the collection can facilitate the following activities: 

• support exhibitions that deepen the understanding of contemporary Indigenous art 

• provide practical museum training to IAIA students 

• facilitate public programs that invite dialogue on topics based on the collection 

• encourage IAIA faculty to use the collection in their courses 

• explore cross-disciplinary partnerships with other institutions 

Collection History 

From the time the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) opened on October 25, 1962, the practice of acquiring works by its students was implemented.  This was carried out through selections made by studio art faculty to select good examples of student work for an IAIA School collection called the IAIA Honors Collection.  These included both fine arts (e.g., paintings, graphics, sculpture, ceramics) and traditional art forms (e.g., weavings, clothing, beadwork).  The holdings were multi-tribal from the North American continent including First Nations Communities.  

In the years that followed, the school began to collect works by faculty, staff, alumni, other Indigenous artists, and culturally related forms of art from tribal communities for the students’ study. Additionally, unlike other institutions that have anthropological and ethnographical collections, the holdings were focused on 20th-century fine art forms by Indigenous artists. 

In 1971, the school’s holdings were inventoried for a permanent collection as part of the newly formed IAIA Museum.[add footnote: In 2011, IAIA rebranded the IAIA Museum as the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA).] The collecting practice shifted to acquiring student work through purchases and donations.  In addition, the museum purchased work and received donations from IAIA alumni, which added to the collected student works by providing a deeper look at individual artistic careers.   

Over the years, the permanent collection has been shaped primarily by gifts. Contemporary Indigenous work has been more broadly acquired, including pre-IAIA works such as Cape Dorset prints and sculpture, 1930 painting style created at the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School, and early modernists such as Edna Massey (Cherokee) and George Morrison (Chippewa). Purchases of IAIA BFA work continue through a small institutional acquisition budget and the purchase of works by IAIA Artist-in-Residents through grant funds has created its own acquisition category within the collection.  Additionally, IAIA and MoCNA have expanded their vision to include international Indigenous communities. 

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) strives to continue a collecting practice that creates history for the future. The collection illustrates a continuity of Native thought and aesthetics that reinforce scholarships by collecting works that speak to earlier dialogues and continuing discussions of how Native expressions inform and challenge mainstream perceptions of Native art and culture. As the collection grows, it will not only help to inspire the next generation of artists, who will most likely be represented within the collection itself but also inform generations of scholars and patrons.