Navajo Weavers
An Exhibition of Artwork from The Art Center's Permanent Collection
📅 Key Dates & Reception
- Exhibit Dates: October 3 – November 15, 2025
- Opening Reception: Friday, October 3, 2025 • 6:30–9:00 PM 🥂
- Location: The Art Center of Western Colorado
🎨 About the Exhibition
The Art Center is proud to hold over 50 Navajo weavings in its permanent collection. Much of the collection was donated by Dr. Arch Gould, for whom the Gould Gallery is named.
In 1989, Dr. Gould put forth a challenge: if the community could raise $100,000 to build a new gallery and secure pledges of an additional $100,000 for long-term maintenance of The Art Center, he would donate 30 museum-quality rugs to The Art Center Endowment Foundation worth $100,000. The Gould Challenge having been met, Dr. Gould donated 32 rugs of various styles, many by well-known master Navajo weavers including Margaret Yazzie, Betty Jumbo, Katie Wauneka, and Philomena Yazzie. Styles represented include Wide Ruins, Two Grey Hills, Ganado Red, Burntwater, Yei, Pictorial, and Klagetoh, among others.
🏛️ From the Permanent Collection
Over the course of his many years of collecting rugs, Dr. Gould bought and sold more than 700 pieces, working closely with many weavers and trading posts. His goal was to ensure that weavers were paid sufficiently as artists while encouraging them to advance their craft. In his work Weaving – Whither Bound: The Patron’s Role in the Future of Navajo Weaving, he asks:
“How do we share with the greatest weavers our encouragement, our appreciation, our substance and ways to implement their skills so as to improve their artistry and insure a healthy future for rug weaving?”
💝 Donors to the Collection
In addition to Dr. Gould’s gifts, the permanent collection also holds weavings donated by Robert Heathcote, Estella Williams, Louis Taylor, Owen and Margaret Kingman, Ruth Foote, Edwin L Kennedy, Winfred Hines, Pat and Tillie Bishop, Jan Holmes, Harold and Ruth Moss, and Ronald Beckman. We are fortunate to have so many generous donors who have allowed us to steward these works of art.