Announcing the Indian Arts & Crafts Association Commemorative Award
The Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market announces the first annual Indian Arts & Crafts Association (IACA) Commemorative Award. After 40+ years, the IACA has been dissolved, and the Board of Directors gifted the Heard Museum Guild the balance of cash funds to provide an annual award of $1,500 for at least 10 years. The Guild is grateful to the IACA for their many years of commitment to American Indian Art and honored that we were chosen to continue their mission through this award.
The IACA’s mission was to Promote, Preserve, and Protect Authentic American Indian Art. In pursuing its mission, the Indian Arts and Crafts Association (IACA) has had three main facets:
1) Defining, authenticating, and educating consumers and others about American Indian Art,
2) Native Identity (What criteria define who is an Indian and how is it determined?) and,
3) Cultural appropriation (fraudulent American Indian art).
The purpose of this award is to continue the work of the IACA and to honor those artists who seek to carry on its mission. The recipient should be the artist or artists who have created an artwork which best exemplifies any or all of these facets:
1) An artistic reference that acknowledges and educates viewers about cultural tradition, authenticity, or the history of American Indians, either through subject matter or execution,
2) What Native Identity means, currently and in the future, and
3) Cultural Appropriation, including the inappropriate use of Native imagery and symbols as well as the fraudulent imitation, production, and marketing of American Indian arts and crafts by non-Native people.
