CHARLES AND VALERIE DIKER
129
FIG. 16 (right): Shoulder
bag (missing strap).
Anishinaabe, possibly
Mississauga Ojibwa,
Ontario, Michigan, or
Wisconsin. C. 1800.
Native-tanned leather, porcupine
quills, dye, glass beads, silk ribbon,
metal cones, deer hair.
30.5 × 22.9 cm.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, the Charles and Valerie
Diker Collection of Native American
Art, promised gift of Charles and
Valerie Diker, inv. L.2018.35.6.
Dikers were celebrated as recipients of the American
Federation of the Arts 2017 Cultural Leadership
awards.
Over the past two decades, every time the
Dikers’ Native American collection has been
shown, new works are present, and this most
recent installation is no exception. Seen here,
the most striking acquisition since Indigenous
Beauty is the magnificent Diné First Phase chief’s
blanket (fig. 12), one of the finest of all known
classic textiles.
Will the Dikers continue collecting? With
new-found space in their apartment, they recently
acquired a painting by a surrealist master and,
last August in Santa Fe, a magnificent Acoma
pottery jar from the 1870s. The couple’s collecting
trajectory that was set long ago is ongoing.