Taos jar, c. 1900, micaceous clay, 11½ x 14 inches
“What if this kind of project was used to reform all exhibitions in museums?”
Tara Gatewood posed this question during the opening panel discussion for the exhibition Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). The point being: what if all museums invited groups of people to curate the institutionally held material of their ancestry? Here a collective of more than 60 people from 21 Pueblo tribal communities have selected and curated more than 100 Pueblo clay objects. Fundamentally, this is a break from common museum practice where not only does the race and ethnicity of the curator rarely match that of the peoples who made the exhibited objects, but also, and more broad-reaching in its impact, Euro-American ways of knowing are imposed onto other cultures. The exhibition at the MFAH, initiated by the School for Advanced Research and the Vilcek Foundation, curated by the Pueblo Pottery Collective, and brought to this museum by Chelsea Dacus, is a step toward inclusivity — to allow more ways of knowing to enter the institution.
San Felipe cooking jar, c. 1880–1900, clay, 15½ x 16½ inches
Moving idiosyncratically through the objects, one comes upon a micaceous clay jar from c. 1900 — one of the curators, Brandon Adriano Ortiz, of the Taos Puebloan people, made this selection. In the object label, Adriano Ortiz describes that he appreciates the object’s signs of use, which he further relates to buildings: “As our buildings evolve according to the needs and uses of the inhabitants, so has this vessel evolved, each meal-making a new mark…. This jar is a call for continued function until it completes its cycle and returns to its original state.” Relatedly, Monica Silva Lovato (San Felipe/Santo Domingo/Kewa) is drawn to a vessel because of its signs of wear, which as she describes, evince that the pot has “witnessed life; it has gathered such an assemblage of stories, songs, and history that it now, with a soft voice, whispers segments of collected information to passersby…” It contains, she continues, “generational knowledge.” In these and other objects and their text-panel adjuncts, one sees living objects that exceed the atemporal and impersonal logic of museums, art history, and anthropology.
Pueblo Pardo jar, c. 1550–1672, clay and paint, 4¼ x 6¼ inches
Importantly, the exhibition does more than simply reject standard historical taxonomies; it pushes forward to create new ways of engaging with the objects. One key component of this, as the curators demonstrate, is to value personal connection between pottery and ancestors. Shirley Pino describes feeling a connection to her Santa Ana heritage as she touches one vessel, and Jerry Dunbar (Ysleta del Sur (Tigua)) feels the spirit and energy in a Jar from Pueblo Pardo (c. 1550-1672) and asks, “What attracts us to a piece of pottery? What speaks to us? Is it the style, the shape, the painted designs, or is it something ancestral within us?” And several curators selected objects made by their specific family members: Clarence Cruz/Khaayay (Ohkay Owigeh) selected a beautifully incised jar made by his great-great-aunt Veronica C. Cruz, and describes that “as a potter myself, I can relate to the process of creating this pot and the time taken. I imagine Veronica preparing the clay, smelling its damp, sweet, earthy aroma, like the ground after a rain shower.”
Veronica C. Cruz, Ohkay Owingeh Jar, 1938, clay, mica, and paint, 10½ x 10¼ inches
Out of these recounted interactions with the pottery — from gleaning generational knowledge to feeling personal relationships — spectators grasp that the stakes go beyond the objects themselves. Indeed, one is asked to recognize the continued vitality of Pueblo peoples today. On this note, Dr. Christina M. Castro (Taos (Tuah tah)/Jemez (Walatowa)/Chicana), selected a vessel made by her Aunt Juanita, from Jemez Pueblo, and describes: “This piece is absolutely sexy! It calls to mind the power of the matriarch, the ever-evolving stages of our lives as mothers and caretakers. It also reminds me of the sassy Jemez women and their easy comfort with their sexuality — something not often spoken about in direct terms, but felt nonetheless.” Here and throughout the exhibition, Castro and her peers insist that viewers engage both the pottery beyond simply aesthetic terms and Pueblo peoples beyond a singular western conception of First Nations Peoples as the so-called “noble savage.” Dr. Castro notes the ways this vessel’s corn and butterfly motifs evidence indigenous cosmologies and adaptability in the face of coloniality. And Gatewood (whose quote opens this review) describes that hundreds of thousands of stories connect to each piece of pottery. Many of these stories are delivered to museumgoers through text and audio elements linked to each object, which cumulatively build a more robust, personal, and polyvocal understanding of Pueblo peoples.
Juanita Fragua, Jemez Jar, 1990, clay and paint, 7¼ x 6 inches
In the MFAH’s part of the exhibition’s broader tour — which included the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — one indeed learns from a range of Pueblo voices. Beyond the immediacy of this experience, the exhibition also provokes questions about repatriation and the ways cultural capital accrues. What conditions would allow some, or all, of these materials to be returned? And how is value (broadly conceived) distributed here between the collective members and the institutions exhibiting, underwriting, and housing the objects? Perhaps these questions are as predictable as they are limiting. “Grounded in Clay” ultimately asks a more fruitful one – one that follows Gatewood’s prompt in the epigraph above: what types of institutions would allow for the degree of equity momentarily offered here to be sustained, and indeed surpassed?
[All quotes and paraphrasing taken from museum labels, the exhibition catalog, the opening panel discussion held at the MFAH on October 19, and the online guides “Pueblo Pottery: Stories in Clay” on the Vilcek Foundation website.]
