The title of the exhibition of American Indian art at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, “Indigenous Beauty,” reminds us that there were centuries-old traditions of art-making in the Americas long before Europeans arrived, traditions that continued even as the new settlers’ expansion threatened to engulf them.

Valerie and Charles Diker, an American couple, have spent a good deal of their lives developing a wide-ranging collection of Indian art from one corner of North America to the other.