The Diné are resilient people and know how to adapt to hardship. Before Euro-American contact, the Diné wore deerskin clothing. As Spanish, Mexican, and American settlers came to Navajo land and introduced new materials, Diné art and culture evolved.
Over the course of her Anne Ray internship, Emily Santhanam dove deep into the collections, approaching the objects through registration, collections management, education, and curation work. Each project taught her to navigate Native American arts stewardship in a new way. Yet what she most enjoyed was creating an online exhibition about the bolo ties cared for by the IARC.
Over the last few weeks, SAR Indian Arts Research Center staff members have spent some time reflecting on their favorite pieces from the collection. Here is one of the pieces that was selected by IARC collections assistant Molly Winslow.
Santa Fe’s Youth Development Program houses incarcerated youth from Santa Fe and surrounding areas, many of whom come from Native American communities. As stewards of important cultural works, the School for Advanced Research’s Indian Arts Research Center has developed a program that enables the education staff to facilitate art activities with these youth. Open until February 7, 2020, From Within, shares the work that has been created created out of this partnership.
2019 Ronald and Susan Dubin Native Artist Fellow, Ian Kuali’i takes the stage on August 8, 2019, in SAR’s Eric S. Dobkin Boardroom to share about his fellowship experience. Through hand-cut paper works and ephemeral Land Art/Earth Works installations, Kuali’i bridges contemporary and traditional techniques and designs while addressing themes related to his own history and identity, as well as what he expresses as “intertwined system of bio-cultural landscape and modernization”
During their nine months at the IARC, Garcia and Tracy have strengthened their skills and become collaborators, learning from one another as they shared knowledge, skills, and ideas.