Highlights
- William P. Healey gifted 185 works by 99 Indigenous artists representing 44 tribal nations to Phoenix Art Museum.
- The gift is the single largest donation of Native art in the museum's 65-plus-year history.
- An exhibition drawn from the collection, 'The Way We Came,' opens August 26, 2026, and runs through July 11, 2027.
- A companion publication with Scala Arts Publishers is scheduled for Spring 2028.
William P. Healey has transferred 185 works by Indigenous artists to Phoenix Art Museum, the institution announced June 2, the single largest gift of Native art in the museum's history and a collection assembled over decades in close consultation with Navajo artist Tony Abeyta.
The Healey gift brings works by 99 artists representing 44 tribal nations into PhxArt's Art of the Americas Collection, spanning paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture from the 20th century to the present. Among the featured artists: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai), Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), and Cara Romero (Chemehuevi). Twenty-two of the 99 artists are women. The collection also traces multigenerational artistic lineages, with parent-child pairs including Fred and Michael Kabotie, Allan Houser and Bob Haozous, and Narciso and Tony Abeyta.
Healey built the collection with cultural authenticity as a guiding principle, prioritizing purchases directly from artists and their estates and working closely with gallerist James Trotta-Bono. His philanthropic record in this space is established: in 2024 he donated 100 works by Indigenous artists to the St. Louis Art Museum, and he has served on the boards of the C.M. Russell Museum and the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma.
"At a moment when the American art canon is being reshaped and expanded, I believe it is paramount that Native American artists are recognized as essential to that story," Healey said in the museum's announcement.
Drawing from the gift, PhxArt will open The Way We Came: A Century of Indigenous Art (The William P. Healey Collection at Phoenix Art Museum) on August 26, 2026. The exhibition, which runs through July 11, 2027, features more than 100 of the gifted works and is curated by Dr. JoAnna Reyes, the museum's adjunct curator of Art of the Americas, alongside Abeyta. The show centers on the concept of "survivance", a term the announcement attributes to Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor combining survival and resistance, and examines storytelling, abstraction, landscape, and the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations.
Jeremy Mikolajczak, the museum's Sybil Harrington Director and CEO, called the gift "transformational" and said it addresses a gap in the museum's holdings by bringing in modern and contemporary Indigenous perspectives to sit alongside its existing Art of the Americas holdings, which span the 16th century to the present.
A publication tied to the gift is planned for Spring 2028 in partnership with Scala Arts Publishers Inc., with essays contributed by scholars including Dr. Leah Shenandoah, Dr. Ashley Holland, Dr. Anya Montiel, and Dr. Chelsea Herr.
PhxArt, located at 1625 N. Central Ave. in Phoenix, draws more than 300,000 visitors annually and holds a collection of more than 21,000 works. The Way We Came opens August 26.
Where to find them
- The Way We Came · open.spotify.com
- Scala Arts Publishers Inc · barnesandnoble.com · Instagram · Facebook · X · TikTok
Sources
Every factual claim in this article traces to one of the sources below. See how we work for the editorial process.
- phxart.org retrieved 03/06/2026 00:06
- The Way We Came (official site) retrieved 03/06/2026 00:06
- Scala Arts Publishers Inc (official site) retrieved 03/06/2026 00:06
Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 03/06/2026 00:06. Every claim traces to a source.
