The Met's first community-curated exhibit highlights Pueblo Indian pottery

July 13 (UPI) -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City will open an exhibit Friday of Pueblo Indian pottery in what the institution described as its first community-curated exhibit of Native American art.

The exhibit, titled Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, will include more than 100 historic and contemporary pieces of pottery chosen by Pueblo Pottery Collective -- a group that represents 21 source communities across the southwest United States.

The project originated with the School for Advanced Research, a research center founded in 1907 to conduct archaeological research in the Americas primarily focused on Native American studies. The project received support from the Vilcek Foundation.

The Met explained the importance of this exhibit being community curated in its wall text.

"Although general consultation with a few community members to produce an exhibition is becoming more common, it is still unusual to feature community voices in the form of a group curatorial expression," the museum said.

"Typically, these voices stand behind a single curatorial text that focuses on one narrative, glossing over the richness of community cultures and histories."

The museum further expanded on that significance in a news release, stating that a community-curated show "shifts traditional exhibition curation models."

Instead, each of the curators who participated chose one or two works for the exhibition and wrote about their pieces "in whatever format or style they wish" with editing support from SAR staff.

"This significant exhibition, a first for the museum, not only presents an exquisite range of historical through contemporary Pueblo pottery, it also powerfully foregrounds the voices and perspectives of Indigenous communities and creators," said Patricia Marroquin Norby, associate curator of Native American art in The Met's American Wing.

"It is essential that we present Native American art with guidance from Indigenous source communities, while encouraging inclusive and thoughtful dialogue. We are thrilled to host this exhibition at The Met and to work collaboratively with individual artists and community members."

Works in the show range in eras dating back about 1,000 years -- before contact between the New World and Old World -- and will be exhibited at the museum through June 4, 2024. The works also will be on view at the Vilcek Foundation.

"The featured artworks represent the aesthetic lineages of New Mexico's nineteen Río Grande Pueblos, as well as the West Texas community of Ysleta del Sur and the Hopi tribe of Arizona -- sovereign Indigenous nations where pots and other ceramic works have been made and used for millennia," The Met said in an overview.

"Visual and material languages of pottery and intergenerational narratives are highlighted throughout the exhibition."