‘An invitation to shake hands with our ancestors’

For 50 years, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque has served as a vital community gathering space for members of New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos and a gateway to Pueblo culture for visitors from around the world.

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, IPCC is hosting two exhibitions, “50 for 50: Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 1976–2026” and “Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery.” Both exhibitions showcase significant works of Pueblo pottery, past and present.

“‘50 for 50’ is really exciting. We are representing all 19 Pueblos with pottery, and we’re giving a behind-the-scenes look into our collections and archives,” Michelle Lanteri, IPCC’s head curator, said. “We really want to give people a sense of what those images from 1976 looked like — what our beginnings looked like — and then tour people through these different aspects of our collections throughout the years. So, we’re bringing in our mural sketches. … And we have a proclamation in there from Friends of the IPCC, a nonprofit that started the same year as the center opened. They did a lot for us. They really got us off the ground.”

Lanteri said her curatorial team put a lot of thought into how to condense 50 years of history into a visual form and decided to present 50 objects, many of them rarely seen.

“We decided to approach the exhibition from a behind-the-scenes standpoint,” Lanteri said. “So, we’re taking you into our collections and our archives to give you a vault tour of sorts.”

“50 for 50” also includes a selection of video interviews conducted by Carey Tully, the IPCC’s digital content producer, which will be updated throughout the year.

“We’re trying to showcase a mosaic of different voices in the gallery and keep it really fun,” Lanteri said. “So, you’ll get some insider perspectives on the origination of the mural collection, different ideas about the archives, some important faces from our history … who have brought us here today and are carrying us forward to what we're doing for our future.”

“Grounded in Clay,” meanwhile, is a major traveling exhibition of Pueblo pottery, past and present, which debuted at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe in 2022. It traveled to several major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, before returning to New Mexico for its final stop at the IPCC. A Wall Street Journal review called the show “enchanting.”

Elysia Poon, who directs the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, was the project facilitator for “Grounded in Clay.” Unlike most exhibitions, which are curated by a single person or a small team, the 100-plus objects in “Grounded in Clay” were selected by various members of the Pueblo Pottery Collective, which includes artists and writers from all 19 Pueblos.

“Not everyone in the group was a curator, and we just met everyone where they were,” Poon said. “Some are nationally known writers and academics, and they just did their own thing, while others weren’t so confident in their writing. So, we had staff sit with them, take oral histories … and figure out what they wanted to say about their piece.”

Rather than imposing a grand narrative onto the exhibition from the start, Poon and her team kept the parameters wide open, allowing participants to select any work of Pueblo pottery, from the most ancient to the most contemporary, that spoke to them.

“It was really about understanding pottery as vessels for stories,” Poon said.

Community-curated exhibitions like these show how Pueblo pottery is understood within the communities themselves, rather than from an outsider’s perspective.

“A lot of the work that we do (at the Indian Arts Research Center) is based in policy work and creating more equity between museums and the communities that are represented in collections,” Poon said. “‘Grounded in Clay’ is just one example of that — of providing opportunities for community voices to shine and (showing) how important it is to privilege community knowledge and Indigenous knowledge.”

One of the community curators selected for “Grounded in Clay” was Tara Gatewood (Isleta Pueblo, Diné), a broadcast journalist who recently retired from her role as host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “Native America Calling.” Working on the exhibition allowed her to physically connect with her ancestors through the sense of touch.

“We were able to welcome and greet them with our own fingertips. On a lot of these pieces, you can feel where that ancestor touched (the clay),” Gatewood said. “I mean, we talk about connecting to our ancestors, but this was a moment of that true manifestation, where you are literally touching where they touched. You know where their fingerprints were. To be able to have a moment like that is something we dream about … It’s an invitation to shake hands with our ancestors.”

The IPCC campus encompasses the site of the former Albuquerque Indian School, a boarding school that operated between 1881 and 1981, which some members of IPCC’s current staff attended.

“Dave Chalan was a graduate of Albuquerque Indian School … and to think about this campus being a huge part of his life – he’s been employed here and worked as our construction manager for 40 years,” Monica Fragua (Jemez Pueblo), president and CEO of IPCC, said.

Fragua said she is proud of the way the IPCC has always honored its past while expanding its business operations and cultural programming over the decades.

“Our forefathers were very innovative in the way that they thought about the land. They came together as all 19 Pueblos to take stewardship of a land that was dilapidated but full of this rich history,” Fragua said. “They would be blown away to see what it is today. It’s beyond their wildest dreams.”

Amy G. Johnson (Isleta Pueblo), the IPCC’s curator of collections, has worked at the center for 24 years. She was one of the community curators for “Grounded in Clay” and a co-curator of “50 for 50.” Johnson said the innovative, community-oriented curation practices of both exhibitions are helping to change the way Indigenous work is exhibited elsewhere.

“I’m really happy that there’s been a shift. It’s a little slow, but there’s a shift now — especially here in New Mexico — where museums are doing better with collaborating with descendant communities,” Johnson said. “It’s their voice that we want to represent.”

As the center celebrates 50 years of accomplishments, Fragua is looking to the future.

“I hope that 50 years from now, when the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center is celebrating its 100th anniversary, they’ll look back and say, ‘Wow, 50 years ago they did something great to set up our success,’” Fragua said. “That’s what it’s about. It’s about taking pride and ownership, and trusting in the leadership … and values that helped to shape this campus over many years.”

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at @loganroycebeitmen.