The judges for the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market not only choose the winners of each category, but they also have the possibility to do so much more: to make new careers, to further cement existing ones, to push an artist into the forefront of the market, to guide discussion within each classification and to set the high bar for future markets. It’s for all these reasons, and many others, that the judges are so carefully chosen from within their fields. This year will be another exceptional year as the judges come from many parts of the art world, all with the goal to award and honor the top works of art at this year’s market.
Award-winning work from Beverly Bear King Moran at the 2022 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market. Photo courtesy Heard Museum / Courtnay Hough.
Classification I
Jewelry and Lapidary Work
Larry Golsh (Pala Mission/Cherokee) Larry Golsh is an internationally recognized jeweler and sculptor. After growing up on the Pala Mission Reservation near San Diego, California, Larry Gulch studied architecture and art at Arizona State University. In 1969, he began to work with Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti project touring major art museums in the United States and Canada. Shortly after that, he met Hopi jeweler Charles Loloma, whom he credits as his inspiration for beginning his world-renowned jewelry designs. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and the subject of many articles. One in Forbes magazine titled “American Fabergé,” highlighted both his and Loloma’s work. Additionally, he has received two NEA grants and was featured in the PBS documentary film Larry Golsh-American Indian Artist.
Henrietta Lidchi Director, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dr. Lidchi has held a series of curatorial and leadership roles across national institutions, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, devising more than 20 permanent and temporary exhibitions and most recently, a member of international working groups as regards restitution. Her most recent exhibition, First Americans at the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden (2020-2023), was co-curated with Joe Horse Capture (A’aninin). She is a long-standing member of Native American Arts Studies Association (NAASA), serving on its board and as its vice president from 2016 to 2020. Her numerous publications include Surviving Desires: Making and Selling Native Jewelry in the American Southwest (British Museum; University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), Imaging the Arctic (British Museum Press/Washington Press, 1998) and Visual Currencies (National Museums Scotland Press, 2009).
Norman Sandfield Norman L. Sandfield is an internationally known collector and antique dealer in Chicago. His American Indian collections have been featured in several books and exhibitions in collaboration with the Heard Museum. The first, Old Traditions in New Pots: Silver Seed Pots from the Norman L. Sandfield Collection, written by Tricia Loscher (2007), featured the work of more than 70 artists. This was followed by an exhibition and an award-winning book with curator Diana F. Pardue, Native American Bolo Ties; Vintage and Contemporary Artistry (2011). In 2017, a third exhibition was accompanied by the book, AwaTsireh: Pueblo Painter and Metalsmith, also written with Diana F. Pardue. A current Heard exhibition, Elegant Vessels: A Century of Southwest Silver Boxes, features numerous pieces from his collections.
Classification II
Pottery
Joseph Aguilar (San Ildefonso Pueblo) Archaeologist, Bering Straits Native Corporation Deputy Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. He is a contributing author to the catalog that accompanies the exhibition Grounded in Clay, the Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (2022), organized by the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include: the Pueblo Revolt, borderlands studies, NAGPRA, post-colonialism and historic preservation.
Peter Held Curator of Ceramics, Arizona State University Art Museum, Ceramics Research Center (Retired). In the course of Peter Held’s impressive three-decade career as a museum director and contemporary art curator, he has organized more than 200 exhibitions and is the editor and essayist for 10 books. He has received three of the highest accolades possible within the field from the Friends of Contemporary Ceramics; the Smithsonian’s James Renwick Alliance and the National Council for Education on the Ceramic Arts. He is the principal owner of an art appraisal and consulting business based in Phoenix.
Cynthia Chavez Lamar (San Felipe Pueblo/Hopi/Tewa/Navajo) Director, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Cynthia Chavez Lamar holds a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from the Colorado College. She was a presidential nominee and appointee to the board of trustees at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was a governor’s appointee as commissioner to the New Mexico Arts Commission. She has also served as director for the Indian Arts research Center at the School for Advanced Research (2007-2014), and museum director of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (2006-2007).
Denise Wallace talks about her award-winning jewelry at the 2020 market.
lassifications III and XI
Two-Dimensional Art and Open Standards
Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw) Painter/Printmaker Professor Emeritus of Two-Dimensional Art, Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Linda Lomahaftewa has participated in innumerable group and solo exhibits, including the 2021 retrospective exhibition of her work, The Moving Land: 60+ Years of Art by Linda Lomahaftewa, at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Her work can be found in numerous public collections, including the Heard Museum; the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian; the Millicent Rogers Museum; the U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Washington, D.C.; the Southern Plains Indian Museum; and the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Prior to retirement, she served more than 40 years as professor of two-dimensional studio arts, Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Thomas “Breeze” Marcus (Tohono O’odham) Painter, Mural painter. Thomas “Breeze” Marcus has been spray-painting large-scale murals throughout Phoenix for nearly three decades. He is a studio painter and has done work for museum collections and exhibits around the country. Marcus’ art is directly inspired by graffiti, public art, contemporary Native issues, and his Akimel/Tohono O’odham heritage. His exhibition When Rez Dogs Howl, now on view at the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix, explores the duality of juxtaposing contemporary O’odham with traditional narratives and ancestral ties to the Phoenix basin and throughout the Sonoran Desert.
Olga Viso Curator-at-Large, Phoenix Art Museum and Senior Advisor, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Olga Viso is a curator, writer and contemporary art historian. She was executive director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 2008 to 2017 and director/curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., from 1995 to 2007. She is a scholar of contemporary and Latin American art, with a focus on the contemporary art of Cuba. She has organized major survey exhibitions on artists Ana Mendieta, Jim Hodges and Juan Francisco Elso. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, ArtNews, Museum and Arts Asia Pacific.
Classifications IV and V
Pueblo Carvings and Sculpture
John C. Hill Owner, John C. Hill Antique Indian Art Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona. For 45 years, John C. Hill has been a dealer in fine antique Hopi and Zuni Kachinas, Navajo weavings, early jewelry, baskets, paintings and pottery from the Southwest. His Antique Indian Art Gallery has been open for 28 years in Old Town Scottsdale. As a member for 40 years, John is always happy to support the Heard Museum.
William Howard President of the Board of Trustees, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Together with his wife, Kathy, Bill has been an eager collector of American Indian art and artifacts for more than 35 years. From their homes in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, they have admired and acquired both traditional and contemporary Native American art and artifacts. They particularly enjoy knowing the artists and stories behind each object. Both have been active at the Heard and Wheelwright Museums for many years.
Doug Hyde (Nez Perce/Assiniboine/Chippewa) Award-winning sculpture artist of national and international acclaim. He is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) where he trained with sculptor Allan Houser. He has been named both Master of the Southwest by Phoenix Home & Garden magazine and a “Fellow” of the National Sculpture Society. Two of his sculptures are at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. His bronze Tribute to Code Talkers is a Phoenix landmark. There are several of his works in the Heard Museum collection, including Intertribal Greeting, which depicts five women in their distinctive tribal dress.
Classification VI
Weavings and Textiles
Tahnee Ahtoneharjo-Growingthunder (Kiowa) Director, Gáuihòñàun Museum, Carnegie, Oklahoma Beadwork artist. Tahnee is a museologist, who graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts and Harvard Extension School. She is the former curator of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. And she also served as curator and tribal liaison for the Oklahoma History Center, where she maintained tribal relations, textiles and the American Indian collections. Tahnee serves many roles in the arts as a policy advisor, curator and artist. Her contribution to the arts serves institutions and philanthropy in the United States, Canada and Europe. Her preferred research collections include 21st-century textiles, costume design and material culture.
Andrew Hamilton Associate Curator for Art of the Americas, Art Institute of Chicago Lecturer, Art History, University of Chicago. Andrew Hamilton helps steward Indigenous art from the ancient, colonial and contemporary Americas at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also a lecturer in art history at the University of Chicago and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is a practicing artist and frequently illustrates his scholarship. Hamilton’s first book, Scale & the Incas (Princeton University Press, 2018), explores the role of scale in Inca art, architecture and belief systems. He has a keen interest in textiles and is currently completing his second book on an intricately woven royal Inca tunic conserved at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.
Carol Ann Mackay Collector and Heard Life Trustee. Carol Ann Mackay taught at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center for more than 30 years and served for 14 years on the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is a noted scholar of Navajo textiles and has amassed an important collection featured in two Heard Museum exhibitions: Brilliant: An Exhibition of Navajo “Eye Dazzler” Blankets and Rugs, and Picture This! Navajo Pictorial Textiles. More recently she was co-curator of two Heard exhibitions: Beauty Speaks for Us and Color Riot, which featured many weavings from her collection. Now she also has lent weavings to the Heard Museum’s permanent exhibition, Substance of Stars.
Classification VII
Diverse Arts
heather ahtone (Choctaw/Chickasaw) Director of Curatorial Affairs at First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Dr. heather ahtone is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and descended from the Choctaw Nation. Her work examines the intersection between Indigenous cultural knowledge and contemporary art. Working in the Native arts community since 1993, she has curated numerous exhibits, publishes regularly and continues to seek opportunities to broaden discourse on global contemporary Indigenous arts. Additionally, she serves the Native arts community as an instructor, cultural advisory board member and is currently president of the Native American Art Studies Association.
Twig Johnson Retired Senior Curator, Native American Art, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey. Twig Johnson served as Senior Curator at the Montclair Art Museum for more than 20 years. In addition to her curatorial duties, she also taught Native American art history and museum curation methods at Montclair State University and served on the New Jersey Council on the Humanities Horizon Speakers Bureau. Currently, she serves on the board of directors at Pueblo Grande Museum, where she also trains docents and other museum volunteers.
Nancy Rosoff Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator, Arts of the Americas, Brooklyn Museum. Nancy Rosoff joined the Brooklyn Museum in 2001, and is responsible for the ancient Americas and Native American art collections. Her most recent exhibitions, Welcome to Lenapehoking (2021-present) and Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas (2020-present), give voice to the erasure of Lenape-Delaware people from their ancestral homelands, and the increasing vulnerability of Indigenous communities due to climate change. Current projects include a Hopi exhibition in partnership with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, and the reinstallation of the American and Arts of the Americas galleries. Rosoff holds an M.A. in Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
Zefren-M with his award-winning weaving in 2019.
Classification VIII
Baskets, Idyllwild Arts and Indian Arts & Crafts Board
Janet Cantley Interpretive Planner and Museum Consultant. Janet Cantley is a curator with more than 35 years of experience in museums, working with collections and developing exhibitions. Much of her career, including 22 years at the Heard Museum, she focused on the interpretation of untold histories. She managed the renovation of the Heard Museum exhibition on American Indian Boarding Schools. The project includes a micro-website, publication and a traveling exhibition supported by NEH. In 2020, the exhibition received an award of excellence from the American Association for State and Local History. Currently, she is consulting as an interpretive planner for the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona, and a project at the Grand Canyon.
Terry DeWald Owner of DeWald American Indian Art, Tucson, Arizona. Terry DeWald specializes in historic Southwest and California basketry, as well as contemporary Tohono O’odham and Apache basketry.
John Lukavic, PhD. The Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts, Denver Art Museum (DAM), Denver, Colorado. Dr. Lukavic was the organizing curator for past exhibitions Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger (2021), Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer (2018), Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967-1980 (2015), and Revolt 1680/2180: Virgil Ortiz (2015). Lukavic was lead curator for DAM’s reinstallation of the Indigenous Arts of North America gallery (2021) which has received critical acclaim. He serves as vice president for the Native American Art Studies Association, as well as a board member for the Denver Indian Center, Inc.
Powered by Froala Editor
