IN THE SPIRIT Native Arts Festival Takes Over

Mark Saturday, August 8: the 21st annual IN THE SPIRIT Arts Market & Northwest Native Festival runs 10 AM to 5 PM across three museums in Tacoma's Museum District, and the whole thing is free.

The festival is hosted collaboratively by the Washington State History Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and Museum of Glass. Admission to all three is free for the day, which is a real deal on its own, before you count the festival programming.

What's happening:

The Arts Market brings Native artisan vendors you can shop from and talk with directly.

Live music and cultural dance run throughout the day. The Alaska Kuteeyaa Dancers have performed at IN THE SPIRIT every year since its founding in 2006, appearing in button blankets and masks. The outdoor amphitheater crowd gets dances and songs performed by Native tribe members in traditional regalia.

The Indigenous Fashion Show at Tacoma Art Museum showcases contemporary Indigenous design, garments that pull from ancestral motifs and reinterpret traditional materials. Recent years have been led by creative director Mary Kelsay of MEKA clothing.

The Contemporary Native Arts exhibition is a juried show. In recent years it's featured around 30 Native artists representing 27 Tribes from across the country, spanning painting, carving, weaving, quillwork, sculpture, photography, multimedia, and digital art.

There are also interactive demonstrations and hands-on art-making throughout the day.

IN THE SPIRIT is funded in part by the City of Tacoma, Tacoma Venues & Events, the Tacoma Arts Commission, Tacoma Creates, ArtsFund, and the Haub Family Endowment.

Saturday, August 8, 2026. 10 AM to 5 PM. Free. Tacoma Museum District.

Real estate note: Tacoma Art Museum sits on the homelands of the Puyallup Tribe, and the museum names that directly.

Festivals like IN THE SPIRIT, free, three institutions cooperating, thousands of people downtown for a day, are the kind of thing that makes the Museum District function as an actual district rather than three separate buildings. If you're looking at downtown Tacoma, these are the weekends to walk it.