Indigenous Arts of North America
The Denver Art Museum was one of the first art museums in the nation to collect Indigenous arts from North America. As early as 1925, the DAM recognized and valued the fine aesthetic qualities of Native arts, when many other institutions only valued them as anthropological material. While we collected the early artwork of Indigenous people, we also focused on the work of contemporary Native artists at every moment in time. The collection illustrates the multi-faceted nature of Native experiences and represents the Indigenous arts of North America as a vibrant continuum that is advanced by individual artists and craftspeople. From ancient Puebloan and Mississippian ceramics to nineteenth-century beaded garments and carved masks to cutting-edge contemporary paintings, sculpture, photography and variable media art, the collection offers a rich diversity of art forms, histories, and artistic styles coming from Indigenous North American artists and communities.