Functional Art Exhibits | Heard Museum
ADVANCING AMERICAN INDIAN ART

Functional Art Exhibits

Between The Lines

Between The Lines: Art from the No Horse ledger book

Between the Lines: Art From the No Horse Ledger Book presents a selection of 28 drawings from a Cheyenne/Arapaho ledger book created between the late 1870s and 1882. Painting has long been utilized as a tool by Indigenous peoples in passing down knowledge and sharing cultural stories. As settler Americans expanded into the Great Plains, ...

Detail of video for the Boarding School exhibition entrance showing school yearbook photos across many decades

NEH On the Road | Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories

This exhibition was adapted from the permanent exhibition Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories and is touring from September 2020 through April 2025. The exhibition will feature several freestanding units focused on thematic areas; a collection of objects, artifacts, photographs, and paper ephemera; audio/video features; interactive elements; semi-immersive environment settings; and wall-mounted banners ...

Entrance to the Small Wonders exhibition with images of jewelry of butterflies, quail, Inuit dancer and wasp on a black background

Small Wonders

The exhibition Small Wonders provides the opportunity to see a range of intricately made small-format works including jewelry (rings, brooches, earrings and buckles) and specialty items such as silver seed pots, fetishes or stone carvings, and silver items in miniature. Each is shaped in silver, gold or from a variety of gemstones, and all are ...

Detail of a silver ketoh (bow guard) decoration with an oval turquoise cabochon set in center and 4 round turquoise cabochons set at the 4 corners

Southwest Silverwork, 1850-1940

Exploring rarely seen works from the Heard Museum’s collection Southwest Silverwork, 1850-1940 documents nearly a century of the evolution of Native silverwork from its earliest years through the decades prior to World War II. A number of unique pieces of Navajo and Pueblo jewelry and other silver items from the museum are on view, tracing ...

Small child coloring on an iPad mounted to a wooden table

It’s Your Turn Yosemite

It’s Your Turn will immerse visitors in the landscape of the Yosemite Valley. Through a series of hands-on activities for children and families, you can try your hand at basket weaving, explore iPad drawing, and color postcards to send to your friends and family. Now, it’s your turn to be inspired by this amazing landscape! It’s Your Turn: Yosemite explores the iconic landscape, ...

Entry gallery to the museum showing highlights of the collection with a large Hopi ceramic jar on a dark brown pedestal and a colorful painting on the far wall with other artworks arranged behind.

Highlights from the Collection

Signature works from the permanent collection— Hopi katsina dolls, classic Pueblo pottery, Navajo textiles, jewelry and more—will commemorate the milestones, people, and events that have made the Heard Museum the American treasure and must-see destination it is today. This exhibition will receive regular updates to provide a continuing showcase of works from the permanent collection. ...

Beauty Speaks for Us

The Heard Museum’s new Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Grand Gallery opens to the public on February 10, 2017. The inaugural exhibition, Beauty Speaks for Us, will be a presentation of more than 200 rarely seen masterworks selected from private Phoenix collections and the Heard’s own collection of more than 40,000 works of art. This will be a ...

Gallery view of “Around the World: The Heard Museum Collection”

Around the World: The Heard Museum Collection

Tour the global span of the Heard Museum’s permanent collection. This exhibit focuses on more than 75 years of collecting and preserving Native art and cultures in the Southwest and beyond. Starting with examples of work collected by museum founders Dwight and Maie Heard, and including donations by artists and collectors such as Byron Harvey and Richard Faletti, the exhibit features objects and artwork from indigenous ...