The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 13, 2025

Dark grey clay sculpture of a figure facing us and holding a child on her right hip. On one side, their shoulders conjoin, on the other, clay loops replace arms. A beaded thread hangs across the figures' chests, tied to the loops on either side. A post rises from each figure's head, connected by arches between them.

Heights III

2022

Rose B. Simpson

(Santa Clara Pueblo, b. 1983)
America
Clay, steel, twine, grout, and beads from bone, wood, lava, trade glass, pyrite, and stone
Overall: 190.5 x 58.4 x 58.4 cm (75 x 23 x 23 in.)
Severance and Greta Millikin Trust 2023.49
© Rose B. Simpson, courtesy of Jessica Silverman, San Francisco and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Location: 224A Contemporary Corridor

Did You Know?

Rose B. Simpson’s mother, Roxanne Swentzell, is also an artist.

Description

Heights III is a self-portrait of the artist holding her daughter. The object shows traces of Simpson’s intricate hand molding throughout the surface. The arms of both figures are missing, replaced instead with handles, symbolizing their likeness to double-handled, ceramic vessels. Simpson is from a long lineage of women from her northern New Mexico tribe working with clay, dating backs hundreds of years. Of the material, the artist says: “Clay was the earth that grew our food, was the house we lived in, was the pottery we ate out of and prayed with. So my relationship to clay is ancestral and I think it has a deep genetic memory. It’s like a family member for us.”
  • 2022
    Collection of the artist
    2023
    (Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    2023–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Simpson, Rose Bean, Porter Swentzell, Yve Chavez, Minesh Bacrania, Addison Doty, Rose Bean Simpson, and Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Lit : The Work of Rose B. Simpson. Edited by Tobi Taylor, Jonathan Batkin, Ashley Baranyk, and Denise Neil. Santa Fe, NM: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2019.
    "New on View.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 63, no. 3 (2023): back cover. Reproduced and Mentioned: Back cover archive.org
  • {{cite web|title=Heights III|url=false|author=Rose B. Simpson|year=2022|access-date=13 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2023.49