You Need to Know – New Indian Arts and Culture Museum, Sunday Funday, Jan. 7

The next ‘Sunday Funday’ will be held on Jan. 7 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, which is located at 710 Camino Lejo in Santa Fe. Courtesy/MIAC

MIAC Update:

Begin the new year with world-class exhibitions and family-friendly art activities. The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture (MIAC), located at 710 Camino Lejo in Santa Fe, hosts “Sunday Funday” on the first Sunday of each month.

This month’s event is on Jan. 7 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and attendees can try beading with a loom and other fun art activities. Residents of New Mexico with a valid ID are free to attend.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture has a long history.

As the nineteenth century came to a close, the American Southwest was undergoing massive change. Tourists from Europe and the East Coast of America flocked to the area, drawn by word-of-mouth from early visitors and eager to take advantage of the newly arrived railroad in the West. One of the Southwest’s most prominent “attractions” was its vibrant Native American cultures.

In response to the unsystematic collecting practices of Eastern museums, anthropologist Edgar Lee Hewett established the Museum of New Mexico in 1909 with the mission of collecting and preserving Southwest Native American material culture. Several years later, in 1927, John D. Rockefeller established the renowned Laboratory of Anthropology with the mission of studying the indigenous cultures of the Southwest. The two institutions merged in 1947, resulting in the country’s most comprehensive and methodically acquired collection of New Mexican and Southwestern anthropological artifacts.

The laboratory’s collection grew, but it was mostly inaccessible to the general public due to a lack of adequate exhibition space. The legislature of New Mexico appropriated $2.7 million in 1977 for the design of a new Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. The MIAC, a 31,000-square-foot exhibition facility for the Laboratory’s extensive collections, opened ten years later, in 1987, immediately adjacent to the Laboratory.

Planning for additional exhibition and collection storage space in the 21,000-square-foot Amy Rose Bloch Wing and the revolutionary new exhibition Here, Now, and Always, which opened in August 1997, began in the following years. This ground-breaking permanent exhibition features the voices of more than 75 Native Americans and was created by a core curatorial team comprised of Southwest Indian peoples and museum professionals.

Here, Now, and Always tells the rich, complex, and diverse stories of Native Americans in the Southwest using their own words and approximately 1,300 objects from the museum’s collections.

The new Living Traditions Educational Centre, a multifaceted education complex with additional exhibition space, a multi-purpose event centre, a classroom, a hands-on centre, a docent library, a resource centre, and a museum studies centre, continues this expansion.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture invites you to its brand-new permanent exhibition, here, Now, and Always, which will open on Museum Hill in Santa Fe on July 2 and 3, 2022.

Here, Now, and Always focuses on the voices, perspectives, and narratives of the American Southwest’s Indigenous peoples.

This ground-breaking exhibition includes over 600 objects from the museum’s extraordinary collection of ceramics, jewelry, paintings, fashion, and other items.