The First Moderns

The 48th annual Whitehawk Antique Indian and Ethnographic Art Show in Santa Fe, New Mexico premiers one of the top art special exhibits in the country this year with the exclusive presentation of The First Moderns. The show brings together a one-of-a-kind collection of extraordinary Germantown weavings demonstrating that the Navajos created the first examples of modern art in the Americas. The weavings will be on display August 6-9, 2026 at the Santa Fe Convention Center.

Beginning in the 1860s, commercial yarns began flowing into the hands of Navajo weavers, bringing a previously unimaginable pallet of colors onto the canvas of the desert Southwest. These yarns, from factories in Germantown, Pennsylvania and others along the East Coast, were often handed out by white traders to the very best Navajo weavers. The result was a previously untouched use of design and color, a true milepost in the path of American art.

In roughly this same period, innovators like Van Gough, Gauguin and Cezanne began pushing the limits of traditional painting styles and are widely considered the ‘masters of modern art’—in Europe. Simultaneously, however, Navajo master weavers, who had no way of knowing what was going on the other side of the Atlantic, quietly set in motion groundbreaking experiments with new abstractions and color—in America.

Heritage: A Legacy of Tradition

The Whitehawk Antique Indian and Ethnographic Art Show presents an extraordinary selection of Australian Aboriginal Art, presented by the Holloway Collection. The art represents more than 60,000 years of the world’s longest continuous culture. Fresh from special exhibitions at both the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, Heritage: A Legacy of Tradition will be at the Santa Fe Convention Center August 6-9 at the 2026 Whitehawk Show.

Aboriginal art communicates complex spiritual and cultural narratives through iconography. These symbols convey Dreamtime stories—foundational beliefs that explain creation, laws, and rituals. Examples incorporate a variety of media, from ochre paintings on bark to eye-stopping works in neon, acrylics to canvases, as well as video and photography. The works underscore the deep connection between artists and their land, a notion that has survived for thousands of years among these Indigenous people. The art represents 40 years of collecting and many pieces have never been seen outside Australia.

Heritage: A Legacy of Tradition is truly a one-of-a-kind exhibition.