Originally published in The Voice of San Francisco in August 2025
The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF) will open a new presentation of Native American Art at the de Young Museum, celebrating the vibrancy and diversity of Indigenous Arts of the Americas. Spanning thousands of years and incorporating diverse types of media, the galleries will challenge existing stereotypes of what Native art is and can be.
The new and improved Arts of Indigenous America galleries feature highlights from the permanent collection alongside new acquisitions and commissioned work. The trajectory of work on display takes us through the history of Native art through the contemporary era with artists who bring a new twist to tradition.
Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON
The opening of contemporary, Native American exhibition Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON- scheduled for August 30 in the Wilsey court- will coincide with the opening of the newly renovated Native American art galleries. An homage to Pueblo Art, LEXICON represents the first solo exhibition at the de Young by a contemporary Native American artist. The exhibit, which includes two newly commissioned works, is a celebration of the artist’s community in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. The exhibition will present two customized classic cars – Maria, a 1985 Chevrolet El Camino, and a newly commissioned 1964 Buick Riviera that will be painted with pottery motifs, honoring both Pueblo pottery traditions and the lowrider culture of northern New Mexico.
Both vehicles will be surrounded by a site-specific mural that wraps around Wilsey Court, evoking the environment of the Southwest and transforming the space into a representation of a pottery vessel. The artist forges a connection between the ancestral and the contemporary by connecting lowrider art with Tewa pottery designs, and draws parallels between these art forms. Pueblo pottery and lowriders are both power objects that also function as vessels. Like Pueblo pottery, the cars are a part of the visual landscape of her home and expressions of the multifaceted and multicultural history of New Mexico.
Four Thematic Galleries Representing Native California
Gallery 1 will highlight specific regions within the state through rotating exhibitions. Rooted in Place: California Native Art, the inaugural exhibition, explores the interconnection between art, ceremony, and the land in the Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa, Wiyot, and Yurok communities of northwest California. Galleries 2, Of Courts and Cosmos: Ancestral Maya Art continues to preserve and maintain ceramics and carvings from the Fine Arts Museum’s substantial collection of Ancestral Mayan art, including a section of recently donated pottery. Gallery 3’s installation highlights the FAMSF’s noted collection of mural fragments from Teotihuacan, Mexico. Together, these pieces once decorated the interior walls of elite residences in the ancient metropolis. Details of the mural, its fragments and conservation collaboration between the FAMSF and the government of Mexico add an archaeological perspective to the objects and tell the story of their journey to their final destination. Gallery 4 is dedicated to Indigenous artists from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, challenging the divisions created by modern political boundaries. Home and Away: Native American Art is arranged thematically instead of geographically, drawing together the unifying connections between generations, homelands and communities.
In the spirit of this project, the Tribes represented in these galleries were invited to consult on the interpretation of the items from their communities. “We consult with communities of origin to determine how to care for the artworks and cultural items in the collection, and which are appropriate to share with the public,” said Hillary C. Olcott, Curator of Arts of the Americas at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “The curatorial team has chosen to frame these items through neither an art historical nor an anthropological lens, but rather a blend of the two. We have also opted for a multivocal interpretative framework instead of a single curatorial perspective. Our hope is that this will bring a liveliness to the galleries and will re-center people within the stories of this art.”