Basketry 
The basketry collection is a well-used
resource and represents all basketmaking cultures in the southwest throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For his comprehensive history of this oldest
southwestern craft, Andrew H. Whiteford drew extensively on the IARC collection. Although
this is by no means the largest collection of southwestern Indian basketry, numbering
about 890 objects, it is an excellent, representative study collection, offering a rare
opportunity to view this art form's stylistic development across cultures and time.
In the Jicarilla Apache collection four generations of basket makers from one family are
represented, and the contemporary San Juan Paiute collection is perhaps the largest
extant. The many uses of baskets for collecting and storing grains, carrying loads,
cooking and serving food, holding water, and for many other purposes are reflected in the
IARC collection. The School's basket collection provides the younger generations of
basketmakers who use it an opportunity to associate traditional values from older pieces
with their own new and imaginative baskets.
The collection is documented in Andrew Hunter Whiteford's Southwestern Indian Baskets (SAR Press
1988).
