Remembering for the Future

During the early twentieth century, Pueblo artists gained national attention with their paintings of ceremonial dances, animals, and everyday community life. Focusing on five first-generation Pueblo artists-Alfredo Montoya, Crescencio Martinez, Awa Tsireh, Tonita Pena, and Velino Shije Herrera-Sascha T. Scott traces how these painters developed a modern form of Pueblo painting. Working within and against the pressures of settler colonialism, tourism, anthropological scrutiny, and emerging art markets, these artists created works that celebrated living cultural traditions while supporting their families and communities.

Drawing on oral histories, archival research, and engagement with descendants and Pueblo community members, Scott centers the voices, families, and communities of the painters themselves, illuminating the social worlds in which these artists lived and worked. Their paintings embodied Pueblo values grounded in kinship, place, relationality, and responsibility while also navigating the economic and political realities of America.

By foregrounding Indigenous perspectives, Remembering for the Future reframes the history of modern Pueblo painting. These artists did more than create art for outside audiences-they used painting to sustain cultural knowledge, assert visual sovereignty, and carry Pueblo worldviews into the future.