Native American Artisans Portal Program

The Native American Artisans Portal Program is sponsored by the New Mexico History Museum and participants in the program sell their work under the portal of the Palace of the Governors on the Santa Fe Plaza. The portal and the Santa Fe Plaza have been places of commerce among numerous cultural groups for centuries.

Today’s portal program originated in 1936 when the New Mexico Association for Indian Affairs (NMAIA) and Maria Chabot organized a series of weekend markets to provide Native American Artisans with a venue to sell their works in the burgeoning tourist market of Santa Fe. The weekend markets under the portal evolved out of the first Indian Markets in 1922 sponsored by the Museum of New Mexico (MNM) and the School for American Research (SAR).

The weekend portal markets created in 1936, eventually evolved into two separate and distinct venues-the Santa Fe’s annual Indian Market and the Native American Artisans Portal Program. Today, the annual Indian Market is sponsored by the Southwest Association of Indian Arts (SWAIA) and the Native American Artisans Portal Program by the New Mexico History Museum. The Portal Program operates daily and vendors provide visitors with authentic, hand-crafted Native American goods to the public daily from 10 am to 5 pm.