Adobe Gallery Blog

At the foot of Canyon Road sits the small but mighty Adobe Gallery. Specializing in Native American work from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the gallery’s collection is in constant flux, with new pieces being delivered daily. On a recent visit, a water bowl from Acoma Pueblo circa 1880 had just arrived.

Adobe Gallery is owned by Alexander E. Anthony, Jr., spry in all of his eighty-nine years of age. A former nuclear engineer in the U.S. Airforce, Anthony fell in love with the richness and breadth of New Mexican culture when he arrived here in 1957. He opened Adobe Gallery’s physical space in Albuquerque in 1978, eventually moving it to Canyon Road in 2001.

Anthony knows the collection inside and out and is quick to relay the origin story of each object in the gallery. In addition to rain bowls, the gallery features dough-mixing bowls, weavings, kachina dolls, jewelry, and paintings. The painting collection includes work by students who studied at the Santa Fe Indian School in the 1930s under Dorothy Dunn and other pivotal artists such as Tonita Vigil Peña, who was one of the first Native American women to be recognized as a painter.

Visiting Adobe Gallery feels like opening a treasure chest. The atmosphere is teeming with stories of artists, traditions, and provenance. The gallery celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary this summer, with the hopes of an Indian Market-adjacent opening and a party in the works.

Source: DAISY GEOFFREY, Southwest Contemporary (this link will take you to their website)