Museum of Indian Arts & Culture receives grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art

August 25th, 2022

Santa Fe, NM - Museum of Indian Arts & Culture (MIAC) is pleased to announce that the museum has received a $75,000 grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to support its upcoming exhibition, Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, opening summer 2023.  

Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles will showcase more than 30 textiles and related items from MIAC’s extensive collection. Historic and contemporary weavings will be displayed alongside tools, looms, raw materials, digital prints, photographs, and audio interviews. Horizons strives to bring specificity to the documentation and interpretation of these items, highlighting the voices and perspectives of contemporary Native artists and makers to express the cultural legacy and continued vibrancy of weaving traditions in the American Southwest.  

Individually and collectively, these items tell multiple stories. They reveal the material traces of artistic innovation and individual expression that have been overlooked until now, while also disrupting the colonial contexts in which they were collected and subsequently preserved. 

Through the exhibition and its accompanying publication, Horizons will generate new scholarship and interpretive frameworks that specifically work with, and towards, decolonial and community-oriented methodologies. Co-curators Dr. Hadley Jensen and Rapheal Begay (Diné) will collaborate with an Advisory Committee of five Diné weavers, educators, scholars, and cultural consultants, MIAC’s Indian Advisory Panel, and the museum’s Indigenous leadership. Together, this expertise will ground the project in Diné knowledges, lifeways, and cultural practices. Shaped by the voices of contemporary weavers and cultural practitioners, Horizons will provide museum audiences with a deeper understanding of Diné artistry and ways of knowing, past and present.  

The Terra Foundation for American Art, established in 1978 and having offices in Chicago and Paris, supports organizations and individuals locally and globally with the aim of fostering intercultural dialogues and encouraging transformative practices that expand narratives of American art, through the foundation’s grant program, collection, and initiatives. The Foundation’s funding will support ongoing exhibition research and development, as well as an accompanying catalogue.

About the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture 

The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, under the leadership of the Board of Regents for the Museum of New Mexico. Programs and exhibits are generously supported by the Museum of New Mexico Foundation and our donors. The mission of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology is to serve as a center of stewardship, knowledge, and understanding of the artistic, cultural, and intellectual achievements of the diverse peoples of the Native Southwest.