Museum of New Mexico Foundation (Museum of Indian Arts and Culture)

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture will implement a conservation treatment project to conserve subsets of its historic collection of baskets, silverwork, and pottery. The museum will engage with an external conservator and assistant conservator, and consult with six Native American artists and cultural leaders, expert in the artistic traditions represented in the collections. While the stabilization of the objects will allow them to be safely handled, studied, exhibited, loaned, and photographed, the museum will also achieve a larger project goal of arriving collaboratively at scientifically and culturally appropriate treatment protocols that improve physical and visual access. Through consultations, multiple perspectives and sources of information will be integrated into conservation treatment decisions and documented. The conservation treatment of these Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo collections will ultimately increase access for study, exhibits, and publication, while fulfilling one of the museum's highest conservation priorities.