Tradition in transition
Officials hear artist concerns over selection process, warn about SWAIA finances
The leaders of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts opened the doors Wednesday after the organization’s membership meeting to face questions by Native American artists, some masters in their fields, disappointed by a selection process that leaves them out of this year’s Santa Fe Indian Market.
However, SWAIA runs on such a thin margin could so dire, that Kirk become it concerns could said, irrelevant, warning end about the that market the Chairwoman selection the within situation process five Elizabeth is years artists — alike. for traditional and contemporary Robert Tenorio, a renowned potter whose work is in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, said he felt his art was downgraded when he was relegated to a waiting list for the market in August.
“How is it I’m on the waiting list when every year, I thought, Indian Market is so great for me,” Tenorio said. “What we do as traditional art is important because it’s what our ancestors have left behind for us.”
Tenorio said he understood that SWAIA had tried to reach him, possibly with word he was off the waiting list. But his attitude has changed, he said.
“I, as an artist, will accept that you have
a place for me, but my pots don’t feel like coming to Indian Market anymore,” Tenorio said, addressing a crowd of nearly 100 at La Terraza, a meeting room at La Fonda on the Plaza.
The end in 2017 of tenure, a practice that guaranteed spots for longtime artists at Indian Market, disrupted more than two decades’ worth of familiar patterns at the annual event, which brings approximately 120,000 visitors to Santa Fe. However, tenure meant that a large number of artists filled the same booths year after year without having to compete for the privilege, while others waited their turn for relatively few spaces.
Of the approximately 40 artists who voiced concerns for nearly 1½ hours after the SWAIA membership meeting, many spoke in respectful tones of their elders, like Tenorio and Virginia Ballenger, a Native American fashion designer from Gallup, and urged SWAIA to continue to honor them with a continued place at Indian Market.
Adrian Wall, a young sculptor from Jemez Pueblo, said he respected artists who preceded him, but he agreed tenure needed to go.
Ira Wilson, just 11 weeks as executive director of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, on Wednesday faced what he called lies about the organization spread by a few intent on
dividing Native American artists and SWAIA.
“I am pro-artist. I understand it’s difficult,” he said. “It’s a difficult process to get through right now, the abolishment of tenure. It doesn’t mean we don’t respect our elder artists.”
Amanda Crocker, public relations and marketing director for SWAIA, in an email Wednesday said 41 artists on the 1991 tenure list were not accepted this year for Indian Market. Social media posts pegged that number at more than 300.
Underneath the discussion about tenure, however, lay the troubling financial situation.
The organization raises slightly less than enough money to run the event each year, said SWAIA treasurer Lloyd Sayre.
“And I can tell you unequivocally that in every sense of the term, this is a nonprofit,” he said.
Last year, the organization
raised $1.18 million, 45 percent of that from artist fees and booth fees. The annual fundraising gala and associated events raised about 21 percent. Membership fees raised 9 percent of the total budget, about $111,000.
Total expenses for the year, about $1.3 million, outstripped revenues by about $120,000. The organization stayed afloat thanks mainly to cash flow, Sayre said. The bills arrived at about the time of year that SWAIA is flush. An unanticipated expense eventually will arise, and Sayre suggested the board act to create a reserve fund.
“We are on a really thin margin,” he said. “We’d like to be in a position … to build a reserve.”
The organization is constrained because it cannot expand beyond the 661 artist booths that constitute Indian Market. The city of Santa Fe sets limits that dictate the market’s size. Booth fees run from $450 for a small booth for the two-day event to $750 for a large one. Artists often share booths, one vacating after selling out for another artist to take his or her place.
If SWAIA set those fees to cover the market’s true costs, booths would cost as much as $1,966, Kirk said.
“Right now, we’re just trying to get numbers out there so people understand what we’re up against,” she told SWAIA members.
The event generates about $120 million in revenue by visitors to Santa Fe, Wilson said.
Returning to the artists’ concerns about a fair and transparent process of selecting who fills those booths, Wilson said the selection of experts for the jurying process can be improved, but the end of tenure will not be revisited.
Other artists urged respect for elders who set the example for younger artists, but also for the next generation looking to make its mark.
“We have people doing traditional arts that have been done for eons, since the dawn of time,” said Nocona Burgess, a Comanche painter from Santa Fe. “But we also have new and contemporary people that are doing stuff with computers and digital imagery and things like that, and that’s also wonderful.”
What angers him, Burgess said, “is when people are putting disinformation out there and trying to build a divide and saying people are being kicked out of Indian Market.”
No one is kicked out, he said. “It’s a juried a show; the prestige about Indian Market is that it’s a juried show.”