The Denver Art Museum’s Indigenous Arts of North America Collection is one of the things that sets it apart from other major cultural institutions. The museum’s holdings are among the best in the world — and for solid reasons.

As the museum likes to point out, it was ahead of the game. For many years, it was the only serious museum acquiring objects originated by members of Indian tribes, and its location — in the West, on and near lands where Native people have thrived for centuries — gave it access to a wealth of wares, and at affordable prices.

It helped, too, that many local collectors over the last century had a passion for this specific category of art, and their support and donations enhanced the assemblage to a point where the inventory now exceeds 18,000 pieces.

That foresight pays off particularly well in the current era, when it has become trendy for museums to play up work by Indigenous artists. Through both acquisitions and exhibitions, other big institutions are scrambling to make up for all that time lost when they undervalued Native American culture. DAM already has the goods.

In some ways, this collection is different than other collections at the museum, mainly because it contains a relatively wide variety of objects that reflect how Indian tribes express their creativity. For example, DAM’s European holdings rely mostly on paintings. Its Asian collections are heavy on ceramics.

But the Indigenous collection has those things and more: wall textiles, baskets, jewelry, musical instruments, sculpture, fashion, blankets, photography, ceremonial trappings. It has practical objects like shoes, but also intellectual offerings, like abstract paintings. DAM has always been more open-minded about what constitutes “art” worth collecting when it comes to Native objects.

The new arrangement of the museum’s holdings — unveiled last month as the semi-permanent exhibition “Sustained!: The Persistent Genius of Indigenous Art” — aims to help visitors make sense of this broad range of work. It tries to put everything in context, dividing up objects along the lines of how they were meant to be used when they were made.

With the help of a committee of community advisers, that came down to three categories: beauty, connections and spirituality, and so “Sustained!” is organized into this trio of sections.

That strategy is not fully effective, mostly because all of the objects in each of the sections seem to defy the strict categorization imposed upon them. That is to say, everything is, at least in some way, beautiful, and all of the works clearly have a role in community life. The overlap is so great that it is hard to tell when one section stops and the next starts, and so the organization itself, and trying to navigate the rolling signage, can be distracting.

But the pieces are well chosen and otherwise exceptionally displayed, and they do sum up what makes this collection special.

It’s difficult to pull out the highlights because so many pieces compete for that description. Viewer favorites are likely to include Roxanne Swentzell’s oversized sculpture “Mud Woman Rolls On,” which greets visitors at the show’s entrance and sets big expectations for what is to come.

There are high-fashion objects, such as Santa Fe-based fashion designer Orlando Dugi’s tulle halter dress adorned with beads, crystals and metal thread. The dress was made in 2021; DAM purchased it just last year.

There are eye-widening pieces that require extreme crafting skills, such as a beaded skirt made to wrap around a ceremonial drum made in the 1940s by artist Ochethi Sakowin; a canvas horse mask, adorned with bells and eagle feathers, made by an unknown Blackfeet artist around 1890; an elaborate turquoise “squash blossom” necklace, by a Diné artist from around the same period.

Notably, there are works that have a very contemporary feel, made by living artists with broad reputations, including pieces by Virgil Ortiz, Eric-Paul Riege and Jeffrey Gibson, who represented the United States at the most recent Venice Biennale. Nothing in the show feels particularly edgy, though some of it has a political edge, taking on topics like displacement and cultural invisibility.

Like much of DAM’s recent reorganization of its collections, this show mixes traditional and contemporary objects together. Things made in this decade vie for attention with objects made 100 years ago. That can be head-spinning, as visitors spend a lot of time putting things in the context of time — a necessary practice since it is impossible to understand an object, and how it came to be, unless you know the cultural, historical and technological conditions in which it was created. The mashup adds work.

But it does accomplish two objectives. First, it shows how cultures go full circle, and connects the things that were valued in the past to the things valued today; you can see evolution, but also continuity.

Second, it serves DAM, giving evidence of its commitment for so long to making a place for this work in its archives. The museum continues on this mission today. Recently, it has been on the search for Indigenous objects made outside of this continent, and throughout Latin America. That part of the museum’s holdings gets more interesting every year now.

And because this must be said, buying and holding objects made by Indigenous artists, especially older pieces, can be a delicate proposition. Questions about how things were acquired — or what among them ought to be repatriated — swirl endlessly around such collections. Like every museum, DAM has had to answer hard questions asked by the community; those will, no doubt, continue. The responsibility to always do the right thing in this regard rests squarely on its shoulders.

What DAM does do correctly — and this exhibition shows it off — is act as a good steward of the objects that are in its possession. The pieces in “Sustained” are well-conserved and thoughtfully presented, and that practice is another thing that sets this museum apart.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.