President’s Circle Virtual Happy Hour
“Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery” with Elysia Poon and Matthew Martinez
As members of the President’s Circle and Legacy Circle, you are cordially invited to attend a Virtual Happy Hour with Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) director Elysia Poon and community curator Matthew Martinez (Ohkay Owingeh), Ph.D.
Poon and Martinez will share their experience working with 60 community curators to help create a traveling exhibit, Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, which debuts on July 31, 2022, on traditional Tewa Indian land at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe before traveling nationally in 2023. As SAR’s first-ever traveling exhibition, it also marks the institution’s 13-year effort to bridge the cultural needs and knowledge of Native communities with its public education mission.
Pueblo pottery has long been exhibited and interpreted in the academic and museum worlds through singular, often generic, points of view: as ethnographic remnants of the archaeological past or as examples of fine art aligned with milestones in Western art history and culture. But this summer, SAR, in partnership with the Vilcek Foundation of New York, will launch a unique traveling exhibition featuring over 100 historic and contemporary works in clay that offer a visionary understanding of Pueblo pots as vessels of community-based knowledge and personal experience.
Grounded in Clay is a path-breaking exhibition because it is entirely curated by the Native American communities it represents. The project gives authority and voice to the Pueblo Pottery Collective, a group of over 60 individual members of 21 tribal communities who selected and wrote about distinctive pots from two significant Pueblo pottery collections—the Indian Arts Research Center of SAR and the Vilcek Foundation.
This event is free and open to members of the President’s Circle and Legacy Circle. Please RSVP to Lindsay Archuleta at archuleta@sarsf.org and she will send you the instructions to join via Zoom. Space is limited, so reserve your spot today.
Elysia Poon
Elysia Poon is the director of SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center (IARC). With two decades experience in the museum field, Elysia’s career has demonstrated a commitment to collaborative programming and a dedication to community-based collections care. Under her leadership, the IARC continues to be at the forefront of the national conversation around how collecting institutions and Native American communities can work together to foster and promote cultural heritage and further contemporary art practices. Formerly the IARC’s curator of education, Elysia furthered a Native artist fellowship program that is now one of the most nationally recognized. She developed and led IARC education outreach initiatives and facilitates an annual IARC speaker series that explores Native American arts and culture. She received her BA in art history and criticism from the University of California, San Diego and MA in art history from the University of New Mexico. Prior to coming to SAR, Elysia worked for the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, and Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.
Matthew Martinez, Ph.D.
Matthew Martinez holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in American Studies and American Indian Studies. He recently served as the Deputy Director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Prior, Dr. Martinez served as First Lieutenant Governor of Ohkay Owingeh where he worked to develop initiatives across local, state, and federal governments. During his tenure, he developed relationships with tribal leaders across the state of New Mexico, ensuring a cohesive working platform for new and continued community partnerships. His appointment as Lieutenant Governor succeeds his time as the Director of the Northern Pueblos Institute of Northern New Mexico College, where he continued researching and publishing scholarly works about Native arts and culture.