Museum Purchase: Helen Thurston Ayer Fund.

Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc.

Native American artists Marcellus and Elizabeth Toya Medina and Kevin Pourier create works inspired by both old and new art forms. The painted designs on the water jar of classic Pueblo shape combine traditional masked Kachinas in static poses with naturalistic, muscled, male Pueblo dancers who seem to burst off the vessel’s surface. The inlaid buffalo-horn spoon, a traditional Plains implement, is given a contemporary twist in Pourier’s homage to M. C. Escher’s hypnotic prints.

Gift of Frederic B. Pratt

This spoon is carved in one piece. The handle has five animal heads, very deeply carved and standing out along the handle. All the animals have abalone shell eyes.

The stain is black.

The wool is blue, felt, and red. The thread is red and white. The button is mother-of-pearl. The button is abalone.