About the Museum

Learn more about our rich history.

Honoring Native Voices
through art.

Origins

Clara Bentley, Mary Wheelwright, and Orville Cox at Newcomb Trading Post, Nava, New Mexico, ca.1925, Wheelwright Museum Archives.

The Wheelwright Museum was founded in friendship and common purpose between its founding patron, Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878-1958) and the esteemed Diné (Navajo) ceremonial practitioner and weaver, Hastiin Klah (1867-1937).

Wheelwright enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Boston and had a lifelong interest in the study of religions. After her parents’ death, she made her first trip to New Mexico in 1918 and in summer 1922 at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, Wheelwright purchased a large tapestry-weave textile depicting an aspect of the Navajo creation story, imagery normally rendered as dry-paintings in Navajo healing ceremonies and destroyed after use. Wheelwright learned that the tapestry had been woven by the Diné singer Hastiin Klah. Klah was born near Fort Defiance, Arizona, while the Diné were held as prisoners of war by the United States government. As a child Klah demonstrated an extraordinary ability to memorize the vast and complex narratives and chants of Diné ceremonies. By adulthood he had mastered the practice of more Diné ceremonies than any other known singer of the time.

Recording Diné Traditions

Standing left to right: Hastiin Klah, Mary Cabot Wheelwright, Lucy Alfonso (Klah’s grand-niece); Arthur Newcomb, and Beyal Begay (interpreter). Seated: the Newcombs’ daughters Priscilla and Lynette. Phoenix, 1928. Photograph by Francis Newcomb.

Wheelwright sought out Klah, and she was introduced to him in 1923 by Arthur and Frances (Franc) Newcomb, who operated a trading post about 50 miles north of Gallup, near Klah’s home. To Klah, having witnessed decades of relentless efforts by the United States government to suppress Indigenous culture and beliefs, the future of traditional Diné religious practice was potentially bleak, and Klah was receptive to the possibility of collaboration and sharing this knowledge with allies. Wheelwright and Klah became friends, and over the next twelve years created a substantial permanent record of Diné ceremonial knowledge through chants, weavings and paintings. In this project they were joined by Franc Newcomb as well as others such as Father Berard Haile who sometimes acted as a translator. The extent of Wheelwright’s dedication meant by the late 1920s she had not decided whether to invest in a publication program or a museum. Although she started an architectural competition for a new museum, the reality is that she opted for both, promoting the recording, presentation, research and publication of Navajo ceremonial knowledge until her death in 1958.

The Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art

Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art, ca.1937. Photograph by Ernest Knee. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

After some changes of plan as to where the Museum was to be located, it was built on land gifted by Amelia E. White (1848-1912), with the exterior construction complete in late 1937, and the interior continuing into 1938. The Museum was designed along the principles of a Navajo hooghan conceived by architect and furniture designer William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943), in conversation with Klah. The historic Museum building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Klah blessed the site in 1936 prior to his death and another Navajo singer, Big Man conducted the House Blessing in the company of Klah’s relatives in November 1937. Wheelwright and a small number of guests, including the contractors, attended. The public opening happened quietly a year later. The original architecture meant the visitor descended a staircase and then re-emerged into the central gallery, still the main temporary exhibition space. The Museum was initially named the Navajo House of Prayer and then the House of Navajo Religion, but in 1939 it was renamed the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art. Wheelwright served as the Museum Director until her death in 1958, and during her tenure the Museum was dedicated primarily to research rather than public engagement.

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The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

Poster for temporary exhibit on RC Gorman in 1975. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

In 1970s, the Museum re-assessed its practices of holding and focusing on ceremonial items. In 1977, the Museum repatriated ceremonial belongings in keeping with appropriate protocols. It was one of the first museums in North America to voluntarily repatriate sensitive materials. The ceremonial belongings were transferred to the Ned A. Hatathli Cultural Center Museum, Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona. From this point the Museum became known as the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, with the main exhibition gallery renamed the Klah gallery.

At this point, the Museum shifted emphasis to contemporary Diné and other Native North American arts. A program of constantly changing exhibitions came to occupy the Klah gallery and the Museum held a near unique role in Santa Fe in promoting the work of emerging and established Native artists in solo shows.

Substantial one-person exhibitions have featured Tony Abeyta (Navajo), Arthur Amiotte (Lakota), Clifford Beck (Navajo), T. C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo), Harry Fonseca (Maidu), Darren Vigil Gray (Jicarilla Apache/Kiowa Apache), Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/Seminole), Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache), Bob Haozous (Chiricahua Apache/Navajo), Charles Loloma (Hopi), Judith Lowry (Pit River/Mountain Maidu), Dextra Quotskuyva (Hopi-Tewa), Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo), and Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo). For some artists, these shows marked a turning point in their career. A number were selling exhibitions.

This was in tandem with exhibitions on under-acknowledged and under-researched artistic traditions such as Cochiti figurative ceramics (1999), Thunderbird jewelry from Kewa Pueblo (2011) and the curio trade (2008). By the 1990s, the Museum developed an active collecting and research focus on Navajo and Pueblo jewelry of all eras opening the Jim and Lauris Phillips Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry as a major extension to the building in 2015. The new two-story wing included a 1,600-square-foot permanent gallery devoted to Navajo and Pueblo jewelry, a 400-square-foot changing exhibition gallery, classroom, more than 1,000 square feet of space for exhibit preparation.

Jewelry was always an important part of the collection, but a further catalyst was the acquisition in 1995 of the papers of John Adair (1913-1997). Adair wrote The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, a landmark publication continuously in print since 1944. Today the jewelry collections are nearly half of the overall collection of artworks. The Adair archives consist of more than 70 document boxes as well as boxes of film, audio records, photographs and are significant proportion of the overall archives which are continually added to.

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Case Trading Post

Painting by Santo Domingo artist Robert Tenorio in 2012. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

In 1975, the Museum opened the Case Trading Post, named for its sponsor, and a key element of the Museum’s purpose in nurturing relationships with contemporary Native artists who work closely with the Case Trading Post manager. Several hundred Native artists work regularly with the Case Trading Post which showcases their artworks and runs Artists Markets and provides vital income for the Museum to support its exhibitions and programming.

Timeline

1912

Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878 – 1958) in the library of her family’s home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, 1912. Photograph by Florence Maynard.

1925

Hastiin Klah and William Penhallow Henderson at Los Luceros, Mary Cabot Wheelwright’s home near Alcalde, New Mexico, ca.1925. Photograph probably by Alice Corbin Henderson or Mary Cabot Wheelwright.

1930

Hastiin Klah (1867 – 1937), ca.1930. Photograph by T. Harmon Parkhurst.

1934

Hastiin Klah at the Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago, ca.1934, Wheelwright Museum Archives.

1935

Hastiin Klah with Franc Newcomb, probably at Los Luceros, ca.1935. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

1937

The museum under construction, ca.1937. Photograph probably by William Penhallow Henderson. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art, ca.1937, Ernest Knee. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

Members of Hastiin Klah’s family at the Blessing ceremony for the House of Navajo Religion later renamed as the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in 1937. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

1938

The museum’s Klah Gallery in 1938. The works on display are reproductions. The large oil on canvases were reproductions of paintings by Franc Newcomb, the sandpainting in the center, a combination of Diné elements made by non-Diné artists. Photography by Ernest Knee.

1975

The museum’s exhibition on the Kiowa-Caddo painter, T. C. Cannon, summer 1976. The museum has presented numerous ground-breaking exhibitions on non-traditional, contemporary Native American arts. Photograph by Herbert Lotz.

Photograph of Case Trading Post during an event in the mid-late 1990s. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

1977

The transfer of Navajo ceremonial bundles to representatives of the Navajo Nation, 1977. From left to right, Navajo singers Andy Natonabah, Frank Harvey, Hasteen Begay, and Ray Winnie; Harry King, president of the museum’s board of trustees; and Harry Walters, curator of the Ned A. Hatathli Cultural Center Museum at Navajo Community College, Tsaile. Photograph by Herbert Lotz.

1995

Diné jeweler Dooley Shortey teaching a class at BIA Fort Wingate Vocational High School, 1938. Part of the archives of John Adair acquired in 1995 by the Museum. Wheelwright Museum Archives.

2000’s

Opening of the Library building and collections store. Wheelwright Museum Archives

Mid-2000’s

Museum programming, artists talks and demonstrations, art auctions and events, have been an active part of the Museum program since the 1980s. Morris Musket (Navajo) at weaving demonstration mid 2000s.

Mateo Romero (Cochiti Pueblo) at Quick Draw event in 2012.

2015

Silver necklace by Navajo jeweler Ambrose Roanhorse (1904-1982), probably 1950s. Purchased from Roanhorse by architect Winfield Scott Wellington, known for his design of modern residences in the San Francisco Bay area. Photograph by Addison Doty.

Opening of the Lauris and Jim Phillips Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry, featured in the Lauris and Jim Phillips Center for Southwestern jewelry, showing Hastiin Klah (1867-1937) and Fred Peshlakai (1896-1974) at Century Progress Exhibition Chicago, 1933 or 1934. Wheelwright Museum Archives

2020

Masks made in 2020 from fragments of dress fabrics from Cherokee designer, Lloyd Kiva New, made during the during the Covid pandemic by staff with the proceeds given to the Santa Fe Indigenous Center.