The Barnes Foundation will present Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community, a major exhibition of historic and contemporary Southwest Native art, including Pueblo and Navajo pottery, textiles, and jewelry. Exploring living artistic traditions that promote individual and community well-being through their making and use, this exhibition is the Barness first dedicated to Native American art and will be on view in the Roberts Gallery from Sunday, Feb. 20, through Sunday, May 15. Co-curated by Lucy Fowler Williams, associate curator-in-charge and Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper of American Collections at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, and Tony Chavarria (Santa Clara Pueblo), curator of ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community features approximately 100 works, including objects that Dr. Albert C. Barnes collected in New Mexico in 1930 and 1931, as well as works by contemporary Native American artists that highlight the connections between historic pieces and modern practices. Barnes initially traveled to the Southwest for the health of his wife, Laura. On their first trip in 1929, the couple was hosted in Taos, N.M., by American art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and her Pueblo husband, Tony Lujan, who introduced them to artists and activists who defended Native rights to land and religious practices. Archival correspondence reveals Barness relationship with leading figures who influenced his collecting, including artist Andrew Dasburg and archaeologists Kenneth Chapman and Jesse Nusbaum (then director of the Museum of New Mexico), along with prominent traders across the region. In a letter to the French painter Henri Matisse, Barnes wrote about the harmony, religious seriousness, and communal nature of a Pueblo winter deer dance that he attended. The exhibition is organized into five main sections, evoking the four cardinal directions surrounding a central dance plaza, including Pueblo pottery, Navajo weaving, silver jewelry making, and Barness experiences in the Southwest. A final section examines the importance of the Pueblo dance as an enduring practice essential to communal health and well-being. The Barnes Foundation is located at 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. To learn more, visit www.barnesfoundation.org.