Santa Fe was cementing its reputation as an arts colony, with Anglo painters and writers arriving and building a cultural infrastructure that, for all its complications, created an environment where serious collecting could happen. The paradox was already visible: Native culture was simultaneously marginalized and celebrated by the same city.
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made all Native Americans born in the United States citizens for the first time — granting, among other things, the legal right to travel freely, enter contracts, and sell work across state lines. The act was paternalistic in its framing but consequential in its reach. For artists, it opened doors that had quietly been closed.
The Roaring Twenties were in full swing. New wealth, new mobility, and growing national curiosity about the American Southwest made New Mexico an increasingly compelling destination. The infrastructure of arts collecting — galleries, patrons, serious buyers — was slowly finding its footing in Santa Fe.
New Mexico had only been a state for a decade. The railroads had already changed everything — bringing Anglo settlers, tourists, and collectors who saw in Native art something "exotic" and "untouched." That perception was the friction Indian Market would spend the next century working against and working with.
Just 24 days after the first Indian Market, on September 28, the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial held its first event.
Also in 1922, the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs was founded by a group of women organizing to fight the Bursum Bill, which threatened to strip Pueblo communities of their land. The market and the movement were born in the same year.
The Santa Fe Indian Market has gathered artists, collectors, and community on the Plaza every August since 1922. What began as the Southwest Indian Fair and Industrial Arts and Crafts Exhibition — organized by the Museum of New Mexico to preserve and promote Native artistry — grew into the world’s largest and most prestigious juried Native American art market. This archive documents the institutional history of that journey: every year, every organizing body, every venue, and the broader world that shaped each market in its time.
