museum,  travel

Heard Museum: American Indian Art

July 23, 2025 /

The two highlights of this summer have been my family trip to New York and my solo trip to Arizona to visit Jodie and her husband. I have know Jodie for years through her blog, we met once at the airport before my visit last year, and this was my second visit to her home. Jodie and her husband are great hosts, and we had a great time visiting, eating and exploring the area! My flight arrived in Phoenix around 9 am and we headed to the Heard Museum from the airport! We first took a set of blog pictures (coming on the blog soon!) before waiting for a museum tour.

While I have always been really interested in Native American history, culture and art, this museum is mostly a museum of current art vs older art, so a lot of it was not to my taste. However, there were several sections that I really enjoyed, the first being the beaded art. It is amazing the intricacy of the bead work and the patience it would take. I really loved how it depicted life activities.

As far as modern art, I loved the glass blown fence which is near the beginning of the museum. This was in my favorite part of the museum which shared different objects and artifacts as well as jewelry. I love seeing every day times and who can pass up a beautiful piece of jewelry!

The museum is dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art and it really does that.

Here are a few pictures of some of my favorite exhibits: we did listen to a presentation about the basket weaving and we learned that the black color is from the devil’s claw plant: we had to look it up since we had never heard of it!

The collection of Katsina Hopi dolls was quite impressive: the details and colors are amazing and 400 dolls were donated by Senator Barry Goldwater. The dolls are carved from cottonwood roots and painted with mineral paint.

The Zuni jewelry was another favorite exhibits of mine. Turquoise is one of my favorite stones and I even bought an illustrated guide book about turquoise later on that week to learn more about it.

We visited the basket exhibit and listened to the curator’s talk. Hundreds of baskets were donated to the museum by the Basha family. Eddie Basha who founded and owned a grocery store chain (Basha) collected them over the years.

We ended our visit by having lunch at the museum restaurant: it was delicious and well worth eating there! Yummy! That pink drink is prickle pear lemonade and my meal was some amazing tacos!

A bientôt!

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