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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. Now, a conversation about the Metropolitan Museum of Art's first-ever community-curated Native American show, which reflects on the longstanding tradition of Pueblo pottery. The show is called, Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery. Through more than 100 historical modern, and contemporary pieces, this exhibition illuminates the complexities of Pueblo history, challenges stereotypes, and centers the lived experience of people.

There were small, intricately designed jars, figures depicting various peoples and creatures, and beautiful bowls with elaborate visuals and references to folklore. The creative process of Pueblo Indian pottery involves all of the elements, earth, water, air, fire. A review in Forbes said, "The curator's firsthand knowledge of pots and potters, family rituals, traditional materials, and daily use grounds viewers, and a powerful sense of people in place. Also, the threat of ancestral memory connects individual pots to the pride, pain, and legacy of Pueblo peoples."

The exhibition Grounded in Clay is simultaneously on view at the Vilcek Foundation through June 4th, and it's also showing at The Met now. Two of the curators joined me when the show first opened. Patricia Marroquin Norby is the first full-time curator of Native American art at The Met, and Michael Namingha is part of the Pueblo Pottery Collective and is a curator in the exhibition. I began by asking Patricia to contextualize who we're talking about when we talk about Pueblos and the Pueblo community.

Patricia Marroquin Norby: It's a really straightforward question but it's actually a very complex answer, so I'm going to answer in context with the exhibition. In Grounded in Clay, 21 Pueblo communities are represented. They include 19 Rio Grande Pueblos from New Mexico, the West Texas community of Ysleta del Sur, and the Hopi Tribe of Arizona.

To understand all of this and this wonderful rich history, you have to first embrace the idea that all of the communities are sovereign nations. That means they have their own governments, religions, languages, and a nation-to-nation relationship with the US Federal government. Their histories reach back well over a millennium, and they predate the US Mexican, and Spanish governments, so this is a very deep history.

Alison Stewart: I love that that was a simple question with a very, as you said, complex and layered answer. Michael, when you think about this exhibition and you think about partnering and the Pueblo Pottery Collective coming in as collaborators and as curators, what is some understanding or some nuance that you all were able to bring to this exhibition?

Michael Namingha: I think there's a book that accompanies this exhibition, and each curator was invited to the School of Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico to select a piece of pottery or from the Vilcek Foundation here in New York City. It was about how we as curators each connected with one of those pieces of pottery, and being Puebloan, a lot of us have representation by our family members in both of those collections.

From my essay personally, I chose a piece by my grandmother, her name was Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo. She passed away about three years ago. My essay was about my connection to her making pottery as a child with her and then I'm an artist trying to find design language that links us together intergenerationally. When you go through some of the essays, they're all very personal, and some of them are about our history but it's also these intergenerational relationships, and what moves us and how these pottery pieces speak to us as a people.

Alison Stewart: Michael, what is something from that experience with your grandmother that's still with you every day?

Michael Namingha: A very vivid memory with her was when I was a little boy, I would travel out to the Hopi Reservation. My parents lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I would spend some summers with her. To occupy my time while she was making her own pottery, she would give me a ball of clay to work with and every time she would hand me something, her hands always had that dried clay on it.

There was also that smell of wet earth in her studio space, so that's a very vivid memory for me in particular, just because scent triggers-- there's such a strong trigger in your memory. There's the word petrichor, which is the scent of wet earth after a rain. Every time I smell that, I think about my grandmother.

Alison Stewart: Patricia, when you were working on this exhibition, as to your point, this could have been the entire museum [laughs] you have to stay focused, you have to come back to your touchstone about what this is about, and what your goals are. What is this about? What were your goals for this exhibition?

Patricia Marroquin Norby: I'd like to go back. I want to touch on the exhibition concept, which is really important. It originated with the Vilcek Foundation leadership, who then approached the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about partnering on this project. Then in 2021, The Met was approached to be one of the host venues, and we embraced this opportunity.

As a curator and as an Indigenous woman, it's my job to foreground Indigenous voices at the Met. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to do this and to work collaboratively with both the Vilcek Foundation and SAR as well as over 60 community curators, so I jumped at the chance to do this project.

Alison Stewart: Michael, the works are not only beautiful, many of them were functional. Would you share some of the functions of some of the pieces we see?

Michael Namingha: Yes. They make seed jars. They make vessels for carrying water. They make vessels for placing on top of the stove or making pozole during feast days, and some for holding corn and grain. There's all different methods that people use jars, Hopi pottery, and Puebloan pottery.

Alison Stewart: Patricia, are there common design elements in the work?

Patricia Marroquin Norby: I would say that there are aesthetic designs that have been passed down intergenerationally, but also shared across communities that speak to one another that's definite. Also, the excitement of innovation, new ways to present the works is also encouraged in some communities and among some artists and families. That's also exciting about this work as well. Although we didn't touch on the concept of innovation within the labels or in the gallery spaces, it's very present materially and also in the iconography on each of the works.

Alison Stewart: Would you explain what you mean when you say iconography?

Patricia Marroquin Norby: The imagery on the pots, there are a number of pots that represent clouds and rain. There's, as I mentioned, lightning, there's water falling, there are insects, butterflies, birds, all of these things that are so important to the natural environment and natural surroundings of the communities and ties them to a particular place. The works themselves embody a very strong connection to place, which is tied to the histories of the communities.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, it's at The Met until June 4th. My guests are Patricia Marroquin Norby, as well as Michael Namingha. He is a member of the Pueblo Pottery Collective member and Patricia is a curator at The Met. This is a wonderful bean pot with lid, I think might [chuckles] be one of my favorites. I took a picture of it and I put it on the screen, this fellow. It makes you smile when you see it. For folks go to at All Of It WNYC to see a picture of this pot. It's a brown pot, and the handles look like foxes, I believe. Could you tell us a little bit about who made this pot and its purpose?

Patricia Marroquin Norby: That would be an example of innovation that I just touched on. I believe that the handles on the lid as well as the sides of the pot are either foxes or coyotes, and I just love the personality of that pot. It has facial features and it touches on what I just explained about each of the pots having their own energy, their own sense of being within the exhibition.

There's a lot of pots that the stories about them are very touching and they reflect back on intergenerational relationships and then some of the stories are very warm and funny. I encourage visitors to engage with the labels, because all of the labels and all of the exhibition text were written by the Pueblo community curators, the Pueblo Pottery Collective. It's their voices that are foregrounded throughout the exhibition.

Alison Stewart: Michael, before we wrap up, we talked about the pots having the pragmatic purpose. We talked about actually physically how we make them. Where does spirituality come into this conversation about Pueblo Pottery?

Michael Namingha: A lot of these works that are not on display are also used during ceremonies for ceremonial purposes. There is that spiritual aspect to them. Those are made for specific times of the year, for specific ceremonies, for rites of passage. There is also that spirit. Then the spirit of the person that's making the pottery piece themselves, a piece of them goes into each one of those works. I think when you handle the piece of pottery, you can feel that.

Alison Stewart: Michael Namingha is part of the Pueblo Pottery Collective, and Patricia Marroquin Norby is the first full-time curator of Native American Art at the Met. The exhibition is called Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery. Up next, editors Camilla Townsend and Nikki Kaye Michaels discussed the first-ever collection of Lenape folklore, which was gathered more than 100 years ago but not published until now. It's titled On the Turtle's Back: Stories the Lenape Told Their Grandchildren. That's coming up, this is all of it.

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