Indigenous Arts of the Americas

The BMA’s Indigenous Arts of the Americas collection affirms Indigenous creativity as enduring, adaptive, and alive. Nearly 2,500 works span North, Central, and South America, from ancient civilizations to artists working today.

With strengths in textiles, ceramics, baskets, and beadwork, the collection highlights deep material knowledge passed across generations. Artists respond to land, climate, trade, and cultural responsibility, transforming natural materials into works of visual power and meaning.

A central focus of the collection is contemporary Indigenous art, where artists assert sovereignty, continuity, and futurity on their own terms. Indigenous arts at the BMA invite visitors to encounter these works not as remnants of the past but as expressions of living cultures that shape the present.