To touch the past

by J. J. Brody

The Native American people we refer to as Mimbres flourished in southern New Mexico some one thousand years ago. They are remembered today for the images they painted inside shallow bowls and eventually buried with their dead. Their arrestingly beautiful paintings, showing a sophisticated sense of design and remarkable level of confidence, depict abstract patterns; animals, birds, insects, and people; common activities such as hunting and fishing; and magical events. These bowls have been avidly collected in the twentieth century and have inspired contemporary artists, both Native American and others. The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota holds one of the two largest collections of Mimbres pottery in the world. The finest of its eight hundred objects - almost all of them from the Galaz Site - are published in To Touch the Past: The Painted Pottery of the Mimbres People in conjunction with a major exhibition (few of them have ever been exhibited or published