MFAH presents “Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery” in October, the First Community-Curated Native American Exhibition at the Museum

HOUSTON—August 22, 2024—Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery will foreground Pueblo voices and aesthetics and will offer a visionary understanding of Pueblo pots as vessels of community-based knowledge and personal experience. On view at the MFAH from October 20, 2024 through January 12, 2025, the exhibition is the first Native-curated exhibition at the Museum and features more than 100 historical, modern, and contemporary items in clay. Although Pueblo pottery has long been exhibited within the context of Eurocentric time lines and Western concepts of art and history, Grounded in Clay gives voice to the Pueblo Pottery Collective, a group of more than 60 individual members of 21 tribal communities who selected and wrote about artistically and culturally distinctive pots from two significant Pueblo pottery collections—the Indian Arts Research Center of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Vilcek Foundation in New York, New York. 

“We are honored to bring centuries of the timeless work and the enduring voices of Indigenous communities to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH. “This exceptional collaboration among American museums and the Vilcek Foundation speaks to the essential need to carry these traditions forward.”

Grounded in Clay shifts traditional exhibition curation models, combining individual voices from Native communities where pots have been made and used for millennia into an Indigenous group narrative. The approach illuminates the complexities of Pueblo history and contemporary life through the curators’ lived experiences, redefining concepts of Native art, history, and beauty from within, confronting academically imposed narratives about Native life, and challenging stereotypes about Native peoples.

“The visual and material languages of Native pottery and intergenerational narratives are highlighted throughout the exhibition,” noted Chelsea Dacus, assistant curator, MFAH, and organizing curator for the Houston presentation. “Choices were elicited from the curators and organized into the themes of Ancestors, Utility, Elements, and Connections, ones which are important to Native knowledge and understanding. Label texts consist of personal reactions, poems, and stories by the curators, which bring the artworks to life and exhibit the intangible force that they have in the lives and cultures of the Pueblo peoples.”

Dating from pre-contact to the present day, the featured pots connect and distinguish the lives of Pueblo communities—from New Mexico’s 19 Río Grande Pueblos to the West Texas community of Ysleta del Sur to the Hopi tribe of Arizona. Grounded in Clay was most recently on view at both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Vilcek Foundation in New York. 

“When we started this exhibition project in 2015, we sought out partners to facilitate meaningful connections with Pueblo artists and cultural leaders,” said Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel. “We identified SAR as a collaborator early on, and together we worked to establish the Pueblo Pottery Collective—a group of more than 60 community curators—to lead the selection of objects for Grounded in Clay. This cooperation allowed us to realize the vision of bringing the lived experiences and cultural knowledge of Pueblo community members to the forefront in this exhibition.”

The Pueblo Pottery Collective includes curators of diverse ages, backgrounds, and professions from Native communities. Curators selected works from the Vilcek and SAR collections and wrote about one or more items, thus emphasizing the exhibition’s focus on personal and community meanings as well as on the visual and material languages of pottery, while revealing their intimacy with pottery at home and in the greater Pueblo world. The curators’ firsthand knowledge of pots and potters, family rituals, traditional materials, and daily use grounds the exhibition’s themes of people and place. A thread of ancestral memory connects individual pots to the pride, pain, and living legacy of Pueblo peoples. These narratives are featured throughout Grounded in Clay, and in the accompanying catalogue.

Organized by SAR and the Vilcek Foundation, Grounded in Clay was previously on view at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico, from July 2022 through May 2023, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Vilcek Foundation in New York, from July 14, 2023, to June 4, 2024. The exhibition celebrated the 100th anniversary of the creation of SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center’s pottery collection in 1922. It travels to the Saint Louis Art Museum following Houston, from March 7 through September 14, 2025.

“We are excited to offer visitors to the MFAH this example of New Mexico’s unique cultural heritage, here expressed through gorgeous Pueblo pottery and the poetic voices of the Native people whose communities created them,” said Michael F. Brown, President Emeritus, School for Advanced Research.

Elysia Poon, Director of SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center, commented: “Pottery permeates the lives of Pueblo peoples. Within each community, there are both individual and shared experiences, and the resulting exhibition reflects these rich and complex narratives. We hope that as visitors experience Grounded in Clay, they will not only learn about the deep history of pottery within Pueblo communities, but also be inspired to consider the many stories embedded in the seemingly ‘static’ objects that surround their own daily lives.”

The Vilcek Foundation has created a digital experience to complement the exhibition. For more information please visit the Vilcek Foundation’s website. 

Organization and Funding
Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery is a collaborative exhibition curated by the Pueblo Pottery Collective, and organized by the School for Advanced Research and the Vilcek Foundation.

Generous support is provided by:
Duncan W. Corbett
Michael W. Dale
Colleen and Andrew Gold
Franny Koelsch Jeffries and John Jeffries
Alice C. Simkins
The Margaret Cooke Skidmore Exhibition Endowment

About the School for Advanced Research
The School for Advanced Research (SAR), a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit educational institution, was established in 1907 to advance innovative social science and Native American art. Its 15-acre residential campus sits on ancestral lands of the Tewa people in O'gah'poh geh Owingeh, or Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.sarweb.org

About the Vilcek Foundation
The Vilcek Foundation is a private operating foundation under IRS 501(c)(3) that raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation for the arts and sciences. The foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 
Spanning 14 acres in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the main campus comprises the Audrey Jones Beck Building, the Caroline Wiess Law Building, the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden and the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building. Nearby, two house museums—Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, and Rienzi—present collections of American and European decorative arts. The MFAH is also home to the Glassell School of Art, with its Core Residency Program and Junior and Studio schools; and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art. www.mfah.org

Media Contact 
Melanie Fahey, Senior Publicist 
mfahey@mfah.org | 713.398.1136