Craft: An American History

by Glenn Adamson

Latino and Latina artists of the Southwest had not received anything like the attention that Native Americans did in the 1910s and ’20s, but they did have some champions. Foremost among them were the charismatic arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and the suffragist and author Mary Hunter Austin. Luhan was known for her sparkling salons, her avant-garde connections, and her decision to marry a Tewa man from the Pueblo—prompting headlines like WHY BOHEMIA’S QUEEN MARRIED AN INDIAN CHIEF.4 She was a collector of santos and Spanish Colonial antiques, among many other things, and is known to have encouraged Patrociño Barela in his carving. With her husband she built an adobe residence—named “Los Gallos” for the rooster-shaped ceramic totems mounted on its roof.5 The home became a pilgrimage site for writers and artists, among them D. H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Thornton Wilder, Ansel Adams, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Her very first guest there, though, was Mary Austin.