The Mimbres people are part of the long cultural history in the American Southwest. They lived in the desert valleys of southwestern New Mexico along small rivers flowing from the surrounding mountains and in parts of Arizona and northern Mexico. For a relatively short period-from A.D. 1000 to 1150-they made astonishingly beautiful pottery, including black-on-white bowls on which they drew the world around them as they conceived it. They drew each other hunting, gambling, dancing, and swimming. They drew animals, mythical creatures, abstractions of mountains, clouds, and plants as they saw, remembered, and imagined them. Each pot provides a glimpse into the logical structure of their world.

The subject matter of Mimbres paintings ranged from realistic images of real and fantastic animals to far more common, seemingly nonrepresentational, patterns, often referred to as geometric. Yet many of these seem to be abstract pictures of clouds, lightning, rain-the lifeblood of the farmers of the arid Southwest-and are similar to abstractions sometimes construed as prayers when painted on their pottery by modern Pueblo people.

The Mimbres people virtually vanished from the archeological recond around the time they stopped making Mimbres Classic Black-on-white pottery, A.D. 1150. About that time, the Mimbres people deserted their villages, taking all of the household goods they could carry to an unknown destination. Archaeologists have found no evidence of disease, famine, or warfare that might have prompted emigration on such a large scale. The pots and artifacts left behind allow us to share moments of an ancient world that might have otherwise been lost.

Today, these pots allow us the joy of experiencing the Mimbres people's exquisite sense of design, pattern, symbolism, and abstraction. Contemporary audiences can marvel at the technical skill of their clay work and at their deep understanding of the world that inspired them to create objects of incredible beauty from the simple natural resources around them.

The exhibition To Touch the Past: The Painted Pottery of the Mimbres People was curated by Dr. J. J. Brody, considered to be the leading expert on Mimbres pottery, with cocurators Diego Romero and Nathan Begaye, both contemporary Pueblo Indian potters whose work shows the influence of Mimbres imagery. A special part of the To Touch the Past Exhibition will include the work of Romero and Begaye. A comprehensive book, cowritten by Dr. Brody and Dr. Rina Swentzell, a Pueblo Indian artist and writer, accompanies the exhibition.