Wheelwright Museum

The first room of the Wheelwright Museum is round, shaped like a Navajo hooghan. One of the smaller, more quaint and tucked-away museums on Museum Hill, it is also one of the oldest, located in a building on the National Register of Historic Places.

The museum was started in the 1930s by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, a wealthy Boston collector of Native American art, and Hastiin Klah, a venerated Diné (Navajo) artist. Celebrating its 88th year in 2025, the Wheelwright continues to be a trailblazer in Native American art.

In the 1970s, the Wheelwright was one of the first museums to repatriate ceremonial artworks to indigenous communities. At that time, it also began collecting contemporary Native American art, and now houses one of the major collections in the country, with more than 10,000 pieces in its archives, including figurative sculpture from Cochiti pueblo and works on paper.

The permanent jewelry display is a highlight of the museum. It exhibits over 700 pieces, covering 160 years, making it the largest collection of southwestern jewelry in the country. The silver spoons and concha belts are particularly intriguing, especially considering the history these decorative objects tell about the New Mexico pueblo and Navajo silversmiths, including female master metal workers. The Navajo and Zuni traded silver goods for livestock, textiles, and shell necklaces with other indigenous people. And when the railroads came, they also began making souvenir items for the Anglo visitors.

The museums’s smaller rooms host a series of temporary exhibitions that change on a yearly basis, often highlighting contemporary Native American artists such as the Diné painter Marwin Begaye. The museum prides itself on its ongoing relationships with artists and their families, often showcasing numerous generations of artists from the same lineage.

The Case Trading Post gift shop on the lower level of the building, started in 1975, is as amazing as the museum, with work from several hundred artists who have shown in the museum, as well as vintage items. This includes baskets and woven sculpture, pottery, jewelry, and books, among lots of other fun souvenirs. The museum also runs contemporary artists’ markets to support their work.