Maria Chabot

Maria Chabot (1913–2001), was an advocate for Native American arts, a rancher, and a friend of Georgia O'Keeffe. She was the general contractor for her house in Abiquiú, New Mexico and took the photograph of O'Keeffe entitled Women Who Rode Away, in which the artist was on the back of a motorcycle. Their correspondence was published in the book Maria Chabot—Georgia O'Keeffe: Correspondence 1941-1949.

Chabot was born in September 1913 in San Antonio, Texas. Her father had settled there after his family fled Mexico by horse-drawn wagon in 1910, during the Mexican Revolution. Her paternal grandfather was the English ambassador to Mexico. She graduated from high school at 15 years of age. Chabot originally wanted to be a writer and took a job as a copywriter.

She studied archaeology and the Spanish language in Mexico City. Having made friends with people from New Mexico, she moved to Santa Fe in 1931, when she was 18 years-old. She studied art in France in her 20s. While there she worked in the vineyards of Provence picking grapes.

Chabot moved back to Santa Fe and worked for the Works Progress Administration where she helped writers and artists find work and to document Spanish Colonial and Native American arts and crafts. She photographed the collection of Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who was a noted collector of Navajo art, now in the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Chabot was made the executive secretary of the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs in 1936. She established weekly fairs and rented schools buses to transport Native Americans to the markets where they could sell their jewelry, pottery, or other wares. Initially, local businesses opposed the Native American markets, which were established by Chabot to promote their works. She visited pueblos and encouraged artists to sell their works, including Maria Martinez, a potter of the San Ildefonso Pueblo. She worked then at the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board where she established cooperative marketing organizations on reservations.

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