Celebrating the vibrancy and diversity of Indigenous American art, this new presentation features beloved collection highlights alongside major acquisitions and commissions by contemporary artists. In the most extensive reinstallation of this collection in 20 years, each of the four refreshed galleries explores a different aspect of the theme “Relationship to Place.” Developed with Native scholars and in consultation with communities of origin, the project centers Indigenous values and voices. Works spanning over a thousand years of history in all types of media challenge expectations about what Native art is and can be.

Gallery 1, located off Wilsey Court, highlights Native California and, through rotating exhibitions, specific regions within the state. The opening exhibition, Rooted in Place, explores the interconnections between art, ceremony, and the land in the Karuk, Yurok, Hupa, Tolowa, and Wiyot communities of northwestern California.

Gallery 2, Of Courts and Cosmos: Ancestral Maya Art, remains dedicated to presenting ceramics and carvings from our substantial collection of ancestral Maya art. Through focused groupings, the works on view explore the roles and responsibilities of the divine rulers in the ancestral Maya world, and how they interfaced with the celestial realm to ensure their community’s success and well-being.

Gallery 3 highlights our noted collection of mural fragments from Teotihuacan, Mexico. The installation examines the murals through a conservation lens, detailing the materials and techniques used to make the vibrant frescoes, as well as the history of the Teotihuacan Murals Project, a multiyear collaborative conservation and repatriation project with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH).

Gallery 4, Home and Away, is the second Native American art gallery and features artworks by Indigenous artists from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, challenging the divisions created by modern political boundaries. Arranged thematically rather than geographically, the gallery explores the connections between communities, homelands, systems of knowledge, and generations past, present, and future. The gallery presents contemporary and historic artworks in a wide variety of media — ceramics, textiles, paintings, beadwork, carvings, works on paper, and basketry — embodying the breadth of Native American art.