Object Collections

Individually Catalogued Collections at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology include typological collections of

  • Southwestern textiles
  • pottery
  • baskets
  • jewelry
  • a contemporary art collection including sculpture and works on paper and canvas
  • Dorothy Dunn’s personal collection of paintings made by her students at the formative fine arts Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School
  • extraordinary archaeological artifacts including a 151-foot-long hunting net made of human hair created circa AD 1200 in southern New Mexico and a ceremonial bead cache from Chaco Canyon.

ICC also contains extensive collections of exhibit quality archaeological artifacts including Anasazi and Mogollon ceramics; chipped stone tools such as projectile points; and artifacts, such as yucca sandals and prehistoric baskets, which are highly perishable.

The more than 75,000 exhibition quality objects include some of the first artifacts collected from Southwest Native American communities by the Museum of New Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as materials acquired by the Laboratory of Anthropology from it’s inception in 1931. Foremost among these are the historic and contemporary pottery collection, the oldest collection in the Museum, which spans the mid-17th century through the present and includes examples from all the Pueblos and tribal communities of the Southwest. The textile and clothing collections span the contact period through the present, and its Navajo and Pueblo weavings are considered one of the fines Southwestern textile collections in the world. The collection includes some of the earliest Navajo textiles in existence, dating from 1750 to 1803, and includes a large collection of exemplary Navajo blankets from the 19th century.