Heard Museum

The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the most significant institutions in the United States dedicated to the art, culture, and history of American Indian peoples, with particular emphasis on Native nations of the American Southwest. Founded in 1929 by Dwight B. Heard and his wife Maie Bartlett Heard in a Spanish Colonial Revival building on Monte Vista Road in central Phoenix, the museum has grown from a private collection in a single residential annex to a complex of galleries holding more than 40,000 objects. The permanent collection is organized thematically rather than chronologically, with the centerpiece being the Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection, assembled by the Fred Harvey Company in the early 20th century and donated to the Heard in 1977, which includes some of the finest examples of Hopi katsina figures (tithu), Navajo weavings, and Pueblo pottery acquired during the peak of the Southwest tourist trade. The Heard's most visited permanent gallery, Home: Native People in the Southwest, traces the lifeways, ceremonial traditions, and art forms of more than a dozen Southwest tribal nations from prehistory to the present, employing both immersive reconstructed environments and artifact display cases. A separate gallery, We Are! Arizona's First Peoples, documents the federal government's American Indian boarding school policy from the 1880s through the 1970s using personal accounts, photographs, and objects from the Phoenix Indian School, which operated on land adjacent to the museum's neighborhood. The Heard hosts the annual World Championship Hoop Dance Contest each February, attracting competitors from across North America and drawing some of the museum's largest annual attendance. The museum's commitment to Native voice is expressed through its policy of employing Native curators, guest artists-in-residence, and advisory panels composed of tribal cultural officers in shaping exhibition content and acquisitions.