Western New Mexico University Museum

The Western New Mexico University Museum in Silver City is home to the world's largest permanent display of Mimbres pottery — the extraordinary black-on-white vessels produced by the Mimbres people who inhabited the valleys of southwestern New Mexico between approximately 1000 and 1150 CE. Mimbres pottery is recognized as one of the great achievements of prehistoric American art, combining geometric abstraction with naturalistic animal and human figures in compositions of startling visual sophistication. The museum's collection, built over more than a century of careful acquisition, provides the most comprehensive opportunity in the world to study and appreciate this tradition, making Silver City an essential destination for anyone interested in the art of the ancient Southwest.