The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection is widely considered to be the most significant private holdings of historical Native American art, both in its temporal depth and regional diversity. It features paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, baskets, and textiles by both identified and unrecorded makers, representing the extensive artistic achievements of culturally distinct Indigenous peoples throughout North America and across time, from the second to the twentieth century. The collection also reveals a broad range of artistic traditions from more than fifty different groups in seven geographic regions: Woodlands, Plains, Plateau, California and Great Basin, Southwest, Northwest Coast, and the Arctic. Among the key strengths of the collection are sculptural objects from British Columbia and Alaska; California baskets; pottery from southwestern pueblos; Plains drawings and regalia; and rare accessories from the eastern Woodlands. In these terms, the Diker Collection is a transformative promised gift for The Met, strengthening and expanding the scope of our holdings and enriching the stories we are able to tell about a more broadly defined American art.

This first-ever inclusion of a collection of Native American art in The Met's American Wing, which has been primarily devoted to Euro-American art, marks a turning point for the Museum in the presentation and interpretation of North American cultural production. Well aware of the many debates and deeply held positions surrounding the collecting and display of Native American art by encyclopedic art museums, we are committed to thoughtfully and sensitively examining the foundational significance of Indigenous cultures to America's artistic heritage as well as to exploring the entangled histories of contact and colonization from both Native and non-Native perspectives.

Overall, the inaugural display in the American Wing of Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection—on view through October 6, 2019— fundamentally recognizes the aesthetic and cultural importance of Indigenous American art forms. It also enables us to consider our national histories in different, more complex ways.