I Am Clay: Acoma Life in Figures

This exhibition is a community-curated project that focuses on figurative pottery from Acoma Pueblo. The show will examine ancestral Puebloan precursors to figuration in clay, as well as how the rise of tourism and the market for Pueblo pottery at the turn of the 20th century shaped the development of this practice. 

Included will be 80-100 objects with a focus on Acoma Pueblo women artists who have been at the heart of this tradition. It’s interesting to note that many of the works in the exhibition were collected by Alexander Girard in the 1950s and 1960s.

​​The exhibition is the Museum of International Folk Art’s contribution to the national Craft in America’s initiative, Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, which marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Handwork strives to tell some of the untold or under-told stories of American craft, including Indigenous art, calling for a more complex and diverse understanding of the handmade in the nation from past to present.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website