DENISE WALLACE’S (Chugach Aleut) stunning Craftsperson Belt hangs in a glass case, welcoming visitors to the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), in Santa Fe. A part of The Stories We Carry, on exhibition through August 2026, the intricately crafted belt depicts people, animals, and symbols from Wallace’s Native Alaskan culture in silver, ivory, and gemstones.

Spreading across three rooms, the exhibition showcases beaded medallions, concho belts, hand-tooled belt buckles, bow guards, and an array of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, pins, and rings.

“Each piece tells a story,” says chief curator Manuela Well-Off-Man. “Most of the work exhibited was made by the Institute of American Indian Arts [IAIA] students, faculty, staff, and artists in residence.”

Grouped by styles and themes, the works are an expression of Native identity that combines tribal traditions with modern perspectives, Well-Off-Man says. With works by 100 Native artists that span a half-century of jewelry making, The Stories We Carry powerfully reflects IAIA’s remarkable role at the forefront of Native art.

Founded in 1962 as a high school, the tribal university south of Santa Fe opened its downtown museum in a historic two-story Pueblo Revival–style building, a former post office, in 1991. Now with a permanent collection of 10,000 Indigenous artworks, MoCNA is the country’s leading museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting the most progressive works by Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous artists all over the world.

Marcus Amerman’s (Choctaw), "Untitled Fringed and Beaded Cuffs."

“The collection is diverse because IAIA’s training was diverse,” says MoCNA director Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation), who’s helmed the museum for nearly 17 years. “We only collect contemporary work, which sets us apart.” Some of the world’s best-known Native artists are represented in the collection, including painter T.C. Cannon (Caddo/Kiowa); beadwork artist Marcus Amerman (Choctaw); Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rose B. Simpson; and Luiseño painter Fritz Scholder. The museum’s art park showcases the sculptures of Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache).

“For IAIA, we define ‘contemporary art’ as beginning when we were founded in 1962,” Phillips says. “Some of our founders and early faculty, such as T.C. Cannon and Fritz Scholder, redefined Native art. They weren’t romanticizing Native Americans. That was the shift in the Native art world, and that’s why IAIA is so important.”

To present a diversity of modern Indigenous viewpoints, MoCNA draws from its collection for biannual exhibitions and hosts shows by national and international artists and artists in residence. Two Taiwanese artists in residence are scheduled for 2025.

A $3 million grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in 2021 and additional funding from the Ford Foundation allows the museum to expand its public programming and other offerings.

“We often hear that visitors had no idea that Native American artists are so contemporary,” Well-Off-Man says, pausing before a pair of Amerman’s mystical beaded cuffs. Made of wool, buckskin, and seed beads of many brilliant colors, the gloves depict a pair of hands holding a spiraling cosmos in each palm, blending tradition with contemporary vision.

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