Hopi Futurist Volume 41: The Art and Architecture of Dennis Numkena (The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West)

Next to a golf course, in a busy Phoenix neighborhood, a terracotta-colored condo complex of unusual organic shapes and shaded balconies surges into view, its forms recalling Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings across the Southwest.This striking structure is Anasazi Village Condominiums (1983), one of the major contributions that Hopi artist and architect Dennis Numkena (1941-2010) made to Indigenous American art.Numkena was the first registered Hopi architect and the first Native American architect to helm his own firm.In Hopi Futurist, the first book focused on Numkena, art historian Danya Epstein tells the story of this groundbreaking artist and his long-overlooked legacy. Born on Hopi, Numkena left the reservation at twelve to attend Phoenix Indian School.As a young man, he was inspired to study architecture after a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum.The first Indigenous architect hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Numkena sought to reconceptualize Indigenous and tr