Socorro black-on-white storage jar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The abstract pictorial painting on this water vessel was developed by ancestral Puebloan potters in the Southwest in the late first millennium. The bold color scheme consists of a black iron-rich slip made from diluted organic materials and minerals on white clay. The imagery likely references water’s circulation beneath the earth and its precipitation from the sky, reflecting the society’s primary concerns around water management and their observation of the seasons.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art