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History
of the Portal Program
Anchoring
the downtown plaza, the Palace of the Governors has been at the
center of activity in Santa Fe since its construction in 1610. Its
physical presence alone is one of the city's most cherished treasures:
its commanding facade covers the entire length of the north side
of the plaza, and the Native American craftspeople who sell their
work beneath the Palace portal, or front porch, are part of a centuries-old
local tradition that virtually no resident or visitor has missed.
Since
its founding, the Museum of New Mexico has worked to protect and
promote traditional Southwest Native American arts and crafts. Museum
policy has traditionally reserved, and, in 1979, won the legal right
to reserve, the portal of the Palace of the Governors for the use
of Native Americans to display and sell wares they, or members of
their households, have made. All vendors, with a few exceptions,
are members of New Mexico pueblos or tribes. The exceptions are
spouses of New Mexico Native Americans who are enrolled members
of Native American groups outside New Mexico and graduates of the
Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. There
are over 1000 authorized participants in the Native American Vendors
Program. All program participants must demonstrate their technical
mastery of craft skills as part of the application process. The
program is monitored, and work inspected, on a daily basis by a
ten member Committee of vendors elected by their peers at the annual
meeting held each April. There is a complex set of rules and regulations
governing the conduct of the program and the quality of the items
sold under the portal. These rules are continually evolving. New
rules, rule changes, revisions and refinements are proposed jointly
by vendors and the museum administration and voted on at the annual
meeting by program participants. Rule changes are reviewed by the
state attorney general's office and presented to the Museum of New
Mexico Board of Regents for final approval. These rules, incidentally,
are more stringent than any craft show, consistently enforced, and
frequently requested as guidelines by other organizations. The
portal market has been of incalculable economic benefit to New Mexico
Native Americans for generations, providing a reputable and reliable
outlet for their arts and crafts. Unlike most powwows and arts and
crafts shows, selling space is available free to the vendors 360
days a year. Administrative and maintainence costs are minimal and
are paid by the Palace of the Governors. The question "What is traditional?," in reference to Native American pottery, sandpainting, silverwork, lapidary, and weaving has as many answers as respondents. It is, as J.J. Brody wrote in Indian Painters and White Patrons, "a semantic booby trap." However, it is indisputable that the majority of vendors live on the reservations and are deeply conservative people with many traditional obligations---both civic and ceremonial---at home; these can be extraordinarily demanding, and frequently unpredictable, in terms of time. The portal as a workplace provides vendors with the scheduling flexibility to fulfill these obligations without jeopardizing their livelihoods.  In
addition, the Native American Vendors Program is an ongoing experiment
in multicultural cooperation. Members of all nineteen New Mexico
pueblos, the Navajo, Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache tribes, and
Anglo and Hispanic museum staff work closely together daily. From
the pueblos, reservations, villages, towns and cities of New Mexico,
they come together to form a tentative and fragile community which,
despite past enmities and contemporary tensions, endures. This program has evolved organically over eight decades. It provides visitors to, and residents of, New Mexico with the opportunity to meet contemporary Native American craftspeople. It is precisely the kind of joint venture that most cultural institutions, at best, can attempt to create artificially. - top - |
