American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION Each August, tens of thousands of people make their annual pilgrimage to Santa Fe’s Indian Market (fig. 1), a two-day event held on the city’s historic downtown plaza and surrounding streets. The eighty-six-year-old market attracts buyers and artists for unarguably the most important Indian art event of the calendar year. Artists spend months preparing, often producing or saving their best pieces to enter in the judging and to sell. Buyers plan their year around the market, making hotel reservations a year or more in advance, while others have second homes that are used sparingly except during the Santa Fe summer. The market transforms New Mexico’s state capitol. The plaza area is closed to all traffic, and the streets are lined with 635 artist booths, food stands, information tables, tee shirt and book sales tents, and portable outhouses. The Native art world—artists, curators, and collectors—also descends on Santa Fe not as entrants but to be there for the multitude of meetings, conferences, and gallery and museum openings. Just outside the traffic barriers and banners that denote the official space of the Indian Market are hundreds of vendors selling their own Indian art in organized shows or simply by placing their wares on a blanket or low wall. Other vendors sell every type of ethnic clothing and bauble as part of Santa Fe and Native chic. In recent years, a new participant has entered the Indian Market: the booth sitter. These booth sitters are the art buyers who form the lines at some booths twenty-four or more hours before the artist arrives on Saturday morning to ensure that they will be first in line or among the first to buy an artist’s work.