Tom Lea & H.P. Mera at the Laboratory of Anthropology Documenting Pueblo Designs in the 1930s

This Free First Sunday program is offered in collaboration with the Tom Lea Institute (El Paso, TX) during its annual Tom Lea Month.

Lea spent almost three years in Santa Fe, and the surrounding area, in the early 1930s. One of his posts as a New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist was at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s Laboratory of Anthropology, where he painted several hundred designs from half of the current extant Pueblos’ pottery collected through the Indian Arts Fund. H.P. Mera complemented the illustrations with short descriptions of the 10 Pueblos, with a significant focus on Zuni’s “Rainbird Design” and its influence in nearby Pueblos.

Speakers include Kathy Flynn of the New Deal Preservation Association and Dody Fugate, retired assistant curator at MIAC.