Welcome to the Virtual Vault

The Virtual Vault – the result of a partnership between the Arizona State Museum (ASM) and the Center for Desert Archaeology – is a digital interactive of the Arizona State Museum’s (ASM) Pottery Vault. It enables the visitor to “virtually” access a representative sample of ASM’s collection of 20,000 whole Southwestern pottery vessels that spans nearly 2,000 years. Through digital renderings of pots, and archaeological sites, combined with contextual information and interviews with native potters, anthropologists and conservators, the museum can provide in-depth interpretation of this incomparable collection while maintaining proper environmental conditions and security. The Virtual Vault is being developed in conjunction with “The Pottery Project” a major new permanent exhibit at ASM, that includes the Pottery Vault, (a climate controlled storage and curation facility), a new state-of-the-art Conservation Laboratory and the Pottery Project Interpretive Gallery.

Browse by Cultural Heritage

The groups below represent a pottery making cultural continuum spanning nearly 2,000 years. Originally representing a utilitarian “storage revolution,” pottery has more recently come to be recognized as a fine art, with contemporary Native potters continually pushing artistic boundaries. Through technique, form and decoration, pottery has an altogether impressive capacity for cultural expression.