Tewa Pueblo artist Maria Martinez earned international renown within her lifetime for her black-on-black pottery, a style she developed in the early 20th century, drawing inspiration from fragments of 17th-century black pottery that were discovered in 1908. Creating pottery in this signature style soon became a family pursuit, with Martinez collaborating with her husband, Julian, her sons, and her daughter-in-law, Santana Roybal Martinez, in the San Ildefonso Pueblo of the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico. A skilled painter who had learned the art from her father-in-law, Santana worked closely with Maria following Julian’s death. To view one of their joint creations up close, visit the Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s exhibition!

In this virtual ARTbreak, we will learn more about Maria Martinez and Santana Roybal Martinez with independent curator Christina Burke, whose work focuses on Native American artistic traditions and their contemporary expressions. Until 2022, Burke served as Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, OK. Burke has worked at institutions from the Smithsonian to the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on various collaborative projects with Indigenous people, from developing Native language curriculum materials to museum collections research and exhibition development.