The 37-cent Art of the American Indian commemorative stamps were issued in a pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) souvenir sheet of ten in ten designs on August 21, 2004, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Richard Sheaff of Scottsdale, Arizona, designed the stamps. Avery Dennison produced 87 million stamps in the gravure process.
This issue demonstrates the diverse ways in which American Indians, in their everyday lives, created utilitarian, social, spiritual, and commercial objects that were also extraordinary expressions of beauty. The pane features photographs of ten American Indian artifacts dating from around the eleventh century AD to circa 1969. John Stevens, a calligrapher in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, designed and created the lettering in the title. Descriptive text on the back provides an overview and information about each of the ten objects.
The First Day of Issue ceremony took place on August 21, 2004, at the Santa Fe Indian Market. This annual event sponsored by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) included 1,200 artists from a hundred tribes. The event attracted visitors from all over the world. The stamp's issuance was also in anticipatory celebration of the September 2004 opening of the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
