Saving Southwest Traditions…

The museum’s first recorded vessel is a Maricopa bowl collected c. 1895 by Herbert Brown, the museum’s first curator. From that first pot, the collection has grown to more than 20,000 whole vessels from throughout the region. Over the years it has grown through the generosity of Arizona donors, through ASM research projects, environmental compliance projects and occasional purchases by the museum.

Arizona State Museum exhibit hall in 1936. The museum, founded in 1893, moved around the University of Arizona campus and is shown here in its fifth home just inside the Main Gate off Park Avenue.

Students clean the floor of an excavated room in the Maverick Mountain section of the Point of Pines Pueblo, c. 1950. The Arizona State Museum and the University of Arizona sponsored an archaeological field school at this ruin from 1946 until 1960. Note, the McDonald Corrugated pot in the upper left hand corner is on display in this exhibition.

Ceramics from landmark excavations by ASM and University of Arizona anthropologists form the core of the museum’s collection Among these are the Snaketown, Grasshopper, Point of Pines, Homol’ovi and Marana collections. In addition, when the Gila Pueblo Foundation, a major Southwest research facility run by Harold Gladwin, closed its doors in 1950, its entire collection came to ASM. The museum also curates prehistoric vessels on behalf of Indian communities and federal agencies.

The historic and contemporary pots in the collection are the direct result of donations by friends of the museum or by the makers themselves, as well as from ethnology research projects. ASM’s purchases are limited by funding and have been devoted to acquiring at least one pot from its annual Southwest Indian Art Fair.		The Southwest Indian Art Fair is one of the Arizona State Museum’s premier annual events. In February 2003, the fair hosted nearly 200 artists from Arizona and New Mexico and attracted 5000 people. The fair generates excitement with juried arts and crafts and gives special attention to young artists. The museum-sponsored event, underwritten by the museum, the university and local commercial and tribal entities, is unique because ASM takes no profit from the artists’ sales.
Rupert Angea outside his home in South Hikiwan on the Tohono O’odham Reservation in 1988. ASM photographer Helga Teiwes made periodic trips to photograph American Indian artists producing their work. Angea showed an unpainted “Friendship Pot” to Heather Hatch as he talked about his craft.
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Image credits: Arizona State Museum exhibit hall (1936) - ASM neg. 3016 Southwest Indian Art Fair (2002) - Marnie Sharp Rupert Angea and Heather Hatch (1988) - ASM neg. 69293