Today, Native Americans, as well as African-Americans, Asian- Americans and Latinos, are developing new ways to market their own work, and entering the arts and crafts mainstream and the consciousness of collectors, museums and the general public. And organizations, councils and workshops established by and for these groups offer resources, training and exhibits to assist them in their careers.

Native Americans Seeing Some Gains

According to artist Joanne Swanson, an enrolled member of an Alaskan tribe, this is a good time to be marketing Native American works. “It’s a plus in this day and age to be a Native American artist, because there are collectors of just Native American art,” says Swanson.

Sales of Native American works are still confined mainly to Arizona, New Mexico and the Southwest. However, buyers increasingly find this work on e-Bay as well as on Native American and other Web sites and at craft shows throughout the United States. At the Web site of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, a separate agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, artists can view IACB museums, exhibitions, and a directory of arts and crafts businesses.

Venus Bright Star, daughter of an Aztec mother and a Muskogee father, was born in Evansville, Ind., and exhibits her work at shows like the Cantigny Sculpture and Fine Arts Festival in Wheaton, Ill., the TACA Crafts Fair in Nashville, Tenn., and the Wyandotte Street Art Fair in Wyandotte, Mich. While she finds buyers at these venues alongside non-Native American artists, Bright Star says she sells only authentic Native American crafts and fine jewelry at shows and at the Venus Brightstar Rising Gallery in Lyles, Texas. “I use the traditional methods of jewelry design perfected by my people centuries ago,” she says.

With the help of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, which stipulates fines and prison time for misrepresenting the heritage of a work’s creator, Native Americans are also getting better prices and new respect for their authentic, traditional works. In 2002, Native American artists were highlighted for the first time at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show. Chairperson Katherine Padulo says this decision “grew from a recognition of the increasing popularity of Native American art with collectors and the general public.”

Native Americans are also looking beyond the traditional arts and processes of their culture to explore new interpretations of what constitutes Native American work. “The tools may be modern and the material perhaps would be foreign to my grandfather,” says glass artist Larry Ahvakana of the Inupiat people in describing his work, “but the final statement would be the same.”

Jill Giller opened her Native American Collections gallery in Denver, Colo., in 1994 for the express purpose of showcasing contemporary art by Native Americans. “We particularly delight in introducing collectors to pottery made traditionally, but with a contemporary style,” says Giller. “We select [Native American] artists considered to be innovators in their field, often working directly with them to acquire specially designed pieces.”

This month the Institute for American Indian Arts presents its 5th annual IAIA Contemporary Native American Art Show in Santa Fe, N.M. The IAIA is one of only three higher education institutions chartered by Congress and is a member of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. Established in 1962 by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Arts Development was initially a high school. Renamed, IAIA became a two-year college offering associate degrees in 1975 and sees its mission as advancing a “legacy of artistic expression, built on traditional cultures but reflecting contemporary Native life.”

Also this month, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) presents the 82nd annual Santa Fe Indian Market. More than 100 tribes are represented in 600 booths at this show with work that must meet very specific criteria for both traditional and non-traditional Native American art forms.

An Awards Program distributes in excess of $60,000 to exhibitors in more than 300 award categories. According to the friends of Santa Fe Indian Market, an award ribbon “increases artists’ visibility and prestige, and sets new price points for their work in the marketplace.”
SWAIA also offers fellowships of $3,000 to selected artists for excellence in the arts.
Fellows also get a free booth in the show in the year of the award.

Native American work will get even more visibility when the National Museum of the American Indian opens on the Mall in Washington, D.C., next year. Co-founder Rick West, a Southern Cheyenne and member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, hopes “visitors will find not only a wealth of cultural knowledge and aesthetic wonders, but a welcoming spirit as well.”

West says the collections in this first national museum dedicated to the life, languages, literature, history, and arts of Native Americans will include virtually all tribes of the United States, most of those of Canada, and a significant number of cultures from Middle and South America as well as the Caribbean.

Progress for Black Artists

The opportunities for African-American artists are better than just a generation ago but still not ample. As recently as 1999, the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design) in New York City featured 25 African-American craft artists, including ceramicist Willis Bing Davis, quilt artist Raymond Dobard, mixed-media artist L’Merchie Frazier, ceramic artist Sana Musasama and jewelry artist Arthur Smith, in an exhibit pointedly entitled “Stop Asking/We Exist.”

What has benefited some of these black craftspeople is the growth in collecting by people within the African-American community who see their work as an undervalued cause to be supported.

“ We’re catering to a new industry,” says George R. N’Namdi, owner of art galleries in Chicago, Ill., and Detroit, Mich., which predominantly feature African-American artists. “[It’s] first-generation African-American art buyers, people who have money but who came from people who either didn’t have any money or didn’t think about spending any extra money on things like art.”

Helping to focus the attention of the African-American community are shows, such as the National Black Arts Festival held each July in Atlanta, Ga., where hundreds of African-American artists and craftspeople exhibit. Also in July, the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, Ill., holds its almost 30-year-old Arts & Crafts Festival featuring works that reflect upon and expand the vision of African-American culture, aesthetic, traditions and identity.

The increasing number of galleries featuring the work of black artists include those that exhibit in the National Black Fine Art Fair that takes place every February in New York City with 40 to 50 gallery-exhibitors from around the country showing a wide variety of work by African-Americans.
The National Conference of Artists participates in this event and other exhibits of work by African-American artists. Formed in 1959, this organization is dedicated to preserving, promoting and developing African-American culture and artists.

Many African-American artists also show their work at the galleries and museums of black colleges, of which there are over 100 in the United States. And a growing number of museums specifically exhibit the work of contemporary and historical black artists. The Association of African-American Museums, an affiliate of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of Museums, has information on these collections and exhibits.

Asian-American Artists Growing in Numbers

As with African-American collectors of African-American artists, “the buying field among Asian-Americans is in its infancy,” says Robert Lee, director of the New York City-based Asian American Arts Centre, an organization founded in 1974 to highlight the work of this group of artists. Lee says successful [minority] artists and crafts-people need to “make it within the [mainstream] arts community.”

To Lee, the future looks brighter than the present, because of sheer numbers. “More Asians are in schools studying the arts than in the past, and their presence can’t be ignored,” Lee says. “There will be a wave of Asian-American artists in the future.”

Many of these artists and craftspeople will be featured at the same galleries and shows as their non-Asian peers, but some may look to the exhibition opportunities presented by organizations and societies devoted to Asian arts like those listed with this article.

Lee’s Asian American Arts Centre holds juried exhibits which feature emerging and mid-career Asian-American artists as well as two general exhibitions a year organized by the Centre and guest curators. The Honolulu Academy of the Arts, Hawaii’s only general museum, has exhibits throughout the year featuring Hawaiian and Asian-American craft artists. On the National Register of Historic Places and accredited by the American Association of Museums, this museum’s Asian collection is considered to be “among the most important assemblages of its kind” in American museums.

Hispanic Artists Seek Respect

Many cultural and ethnic organizations hold events that may include an arts and crafts contingent but are not arts and crafts shows in themselves. Shows and festivals aimed at the enormous Hispanic population in the United States often fall into this category. “What’s wrong [for craft artists] with Latino festivals,” says Felipe Rangel, a mask-maker in New York City, “is the target group being catered to. People aren’t prepared for what we put into the pieces and the prices we charge. The people who sponsor these festivals use us artists as a decoration.”

Rangel adds that he and other craftspeople also find themselves competing with importers at these festivals who “buy truck loads of cheap things from [outside the United States] and always beat us on price.”

There are Latino organizations holding cultural events that do aim for a higher level of appreciation. The Association for Hispanic Arts and other organizations listed with this article can connect artists to events and resources that can advance their careers.

At The Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, N.M., visitors can see contemporary and historical craft works of the Southwest such as the pottery of 20th century ceramic artist Maria Martinez and textiles and jewelry from New Mexico. Among the contemporary artists featured in the museum’s recent exhibits is self-styled “glitter artist” Goldie Garcia whose works include bottlecap earrings and religious and secular shrines found in collections of Hollywood stars such as Al Pacino, Julia Roberts, Laura Dern and Billy Bob Thornton.

The Latin American Art Museum in Miami, Fla., showcases established and emerging contemporary artists, including ceramicists and fiber artists, of diverse Latin American, Caribbean and Spanish heritage.

Getting Into the Mainstream of American Crafts

Works by minority artists have a growing and appreciative audience, but they still lack representation equal to their numbers. “Some galleries have opened their doors to non-Caucasian artists, but only a little,” says Carmine Branagan, executive director of the American Crafts Council. “An affirmative action effort on the part of arts and crafts shows and fairs would be even more difficult to achieve because jurying for these events usually is blind.”

Branagan would like to see a wider and more aggressive mentoring program for young and minority artists on the part of organizations and also the arts and crafts schools. “It’s not a matter of intentionally keeping people out, I don’t think,” says Branagan, “but there is a need to find ways to bring people in.”

But, while earning a living from sales still requires minority artists to compete for openings at mainstream shows and galleries, shows that have an ethnic focus may provide a first step into the larger arts and crafts realm or create a network of patrons and backers.
Additionally, artists may expand their networks by widening their marketing and advertising efforts. For instance, there are journalists who may be receptive to writing about minority artisans. And, organizations focusing on certain cultural groups may be helpful in garnering financial and logistical assistance for artists involved in a larger project.

Daniel Grant is the author of “The Business of Being an Artist,” “The Fine Artist’s Career Guide” and “The Artist’s Guide: Making It in New York City.”