Silver Honors Stone: The Work of Julian Lovato
Exhibition Dates
April 10, 2026 – October 17, 2026
Location Details
Schultz Gallery
Exhibition Dates
Location Details
Schultz Gallery
Silver Honors Stone: The Work of Julian Lovato
April 10, 2026-October 17, 2026
Silver Honors Stone is the first solo show dedicated to jeweler Julian Lovato (Santo Domingo, 1925-2018), his career and influence on Native American jewelry. Benefitting from the generosity of private lenders, and institutional loans from the Heard Museum, the exhibition will feature 80 works. Lovato had a long and prolific career, creating works of composed beauty known for their raised dimensional design. Lovato’s career maps the ways in which the Native American jewelry field flexed and changed over the course of the twentieth century. In his teens, Lovato worked for Maisels in Albuquerque, moving after serving in the Japan to the Thunderbird Shop in Santa Fe moving to Packards in the mid-1960s before setting up his own studio in Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo. By the 1970s, he had set up his own studio in Kewa Pueblo, working closely with his wife Marie O. Lovato. As a jeweler, Lovato crossed paths with other Indigenous jewelers who forged independent careers as designer makers, such as Lewis Lomay (Hopi, 1913-1996) and Joe H. Quintana (Cochiti Pueblo, 1915-1991). Lovato’s family remembers him as passionate about jewelry creation, making pieces for the family in his workshop. Silver Honors Stone aims to shine a light on Lovato and his contemporaries, showing relationships, styles, and influences; honoring them as jewelers of significance whose legacy can be seen in contemporary work today. A lead gift to support the exhibition has been given by Stephen Schultz.
2. Turquoise and silver concho belt with scroll design by Frank Patania above (Stephen Schultz collection) and turquoise and silver belt by Hopi jeweler Lewis Lomay below (Wheelwright Museum Collection).