108 Cathedral Place
Institute of American Indian Arts Museum
Santa Fe, NM 87501
The IAIA Museum is dedicated to advancing the discourse, knowledge and understanding of Native art.
In 1991, an Act of Congress transferred to the Institute a Federal building, constructed in the Pueblo Revival style and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The IAIA Museum relocated to its new permanent home in downtown Santa Fe, one block from the historic Santa Fe Plaza and the Palace of the Governors. The Museum’s collection has grown to house over 7,000 works of art and has been referred to as the “National Collection of Contemporary Native American Art.”
The IAIA Museum is a vital space for contemporary Native American arts and culture. Its interpretive approach is to design programs based on the Museum’s exhibitions and collections. The viewer can be exposed to the multiple environments in which Indian artists live and create. With this view, the Museum hopes to cut through the conventional discourse of “Contemporary vs. Traditional” or the “Two Worlds” concepts which tend to sterilize and oversimplify studies in Native American fine art. The IAIA Museum strives to offer the public, instead, a more complex view of contemporary Native art that reflects its diverse cross-cultural influences and explores its complicated historical development through its educational programming.