The sale and exhibition of Mimbres pottery is highly controversial today on the art market and in museums. Indeed, it is well known that these objects were directly taken from burials by non-indigenous individuals who appropriated both the good and the bodies they found in the tombs. Most Mimbres bowls have a “kill hole” at their center, which is characteristic of vessels placed upturned on the face of the deceased. For that reason, the ownership and display of Mimbres ceramics by non-indigenous individuals and institutions is seen as deeply problematic, and tribal descendants ask for the return of those works to their original homes. That is made possible thanks to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) passed in 1990 in the United States, which “has provided for the repatriation and disposition of certain Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.”[1]

In that context, the work of Lucy M. Lewis and her followers offers a unique avenue to support indigenous artists as well as to put an end to the wrongful holding of Mimbres ceramics. Innovative Acoma and other Pueblo ceramics inspired by ancient Puebloan pottery of the style could be displayed where Mimbres objects once stood, as artworks in their own rights, but also as ways to engage the conversation about looting and the colonial roots of our cultural institutions.