Domingo Basket Dance

Gene Kloss

In the late Fall the pueblos of New Mexico celebrate various festivals which include a number of ancient dances, both sacred and secular. Kloss here depicts her interpretation of a Basket Dance, done at the San Domingo (now Kewa) Pueblo in Northern New Mexico, one of the most important harvest ceremonies connected to the Corn Dances.

The Basket Dance, which varies in meaning from pueblo to pueblo, can be a fertility dance, observed mostly by women who spend several days in a kiva (a sacred ceremonial room) to fast, pray, and chant. When the women dance their movements are designed to bring cold, wet weather so that the crops will grow the following spring. Afterward, the women traditionally toss the baskets to the onlookers.

Kloss’ work made her quite famous in her own lifetime, with numerous one-artist shows at major museums and pieces placed in the permanent collection of such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum, Library of Congress, Carnegie Institute and San Francisco Art Museum. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Design, was exhibited in Paris alongside Blumenschein, Sloan and O’Keefe, was included in “Fine Prints of the Year” and “100 Best Prints of the Year” on more than one occasion, and had her pieces distributed in schools in New Mexico for the WPA.