Category Archives: Art

Craft Mentorship in Spotlight at MAD

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Take a look at generations of 20th century craft mentorship in Craft Front & Center: Conversation Pieces, on view at MAD Museum through April 20, 2025. The exhibition shines a light on how innovators shaped subsequent generations of craft artists at schools and art colonies across the United States. The curators have pulled from the MAD collection to show us the work of student and teacher side by side in several disciplines – fiber arts, ceramics, and glass.

Many of the mentors either taught at or were influenced by the Bauhaus, the legendary early 20th century design incubator.

Who are the generational inspirations for Eve Biddle’s 2019-2023 tiny ceramic sculptures, New Relics?

Bauhaus students could take classes in weaving, ceramics, typography, and metalwork alongside traditional fine arts classes. They were expected to excel in their applied-arts training and mix in aesthetics learned in their fine arts classes.

Bauhaus innovator Margeurite Friedlander Wildenhain’s 1966 Square and Textured Vase

When the Nazis closed the progressive school in 1933, many German-Jewish refugee teachers and students fled, transplanting Bauhaus design and educational philosophies across the world.

MAD highlights several artists – including Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, Margeurite Friedlander Wildenhain, and Maija Grotell – who came to the United States and integrated Bauhaus practice into curriculums at Black Mountain College, the California College of Arts and Crafts, Cranbrook, and new craft workshops they began.

One of the best-known 20th century textile artists, Anni Albers is featured in the show by a fine-art “pictoral textile” made on a small handloom. At the Bauhaus, Albers she trained under master weaver Gunta Stölzl, and eventally took over as head of the textile workshop. Albers moved to Black Mountain College in North Carolina with her husband, painter Josef Albers, and was the first textile artist invited by MoMA to have a one-person exhibition.

Anni Albers’s 1959 textile Sheep May Safely Graze made on a small handloom using gauze weave technique

Anni also designed commercial textiles for Knoll for years. Her influence on the next generation of painters and textile artists was profound.

MAD features work by two fiber-arts innovators (and Albers admirers) who pushed boundaries by crafting commanding, large-scale sculptures. Sheila Hicks (who studied with Josef at Yale) and Claire Zeisel (who studied with the former Bauhaus faculty at Chicago’s IIT) are credited as the leaders of America’s textile arts movement. Tufts burst from the wall in Hicks’ piece, and Zeisel’s hovers in the center of the gallery like a shaman.

Sheila Hicks’s 1968 Dark Prayer Rug, inspired by Anni Albers and Mexican and Moroccan textile artists.
Claire Zeisler’s 1967 Red Wednesday with braid and cords twisting the sculpture’s armature

Trude Guermonprez, an unconventional materials artist known for innovations in three-dimensional weaving once worked at Berlin’s textile engineering academy; later, she consulted with industrial textile firms, as did Anni Albers.

Next to Guermonprez’s dynamic 3D hanging woven sculpture, MAD shows us a piece by Kay Sakimachi, a student who met Guermonprez in 1951 at the California College of Arts and Crafts summer craft workshop.

Guermonprez encouraged students to use latest technology, and here we see how Kay used a 1959 invention by DuPont – monofilament that’s better known today as fishing line. Kay’s woven it into an ethereal hanging sculpture.

Innovative fishing-line weaving 1968 Kunoyuki by Kay Sakimachi alongside 1962 Banner by her mentor, Trude Guermonprez.

In ceramics, MAD displays a series of vessels that transform into sculptures, starting with a modest, contained piece by Margeurite Friedlander Wildenhain, one of the first Bauhaus students and the first woman in Germany to be honored as a master potter. After emigrating to the United States in 1940, Wildenhain founded Pond Farm Workshops in Sonoma County, California ad instituted a rigorous Bauhaus instructional approach.

Frances Senska, her ceramics student, applied Wildenhain’s instructional principles to her own classes at Montana State, where student Peter Voulkos learned how to breathe new life into clay. Voulkos shashed, prodded, and poked clay, vigorously transforming the humble medium into wild, dramatic expressions.

Peter Voulkos’s 1992 stoneware Sibley, an example of his revolutionary approach to ceramic form.
Mary Ann Unger 1994 terra cotta Hoist – an approach to ceramic sculpture inspired by teacher Peter Voulkos

In turn, his UC-Berkeley student, Mary Ann Unger injected whimsey and improvisation into her sculptures, which allowed her daughter, Eve Biddle, to push it even further.  MAD shows Biddle’s ingenious installation of creative ceramic geodes, trilobites, and spines crawling around the gallery wall.

Ceramics mentors even play a role in the development of America’s Studio Glass movement, which begins with Harvey Littleton, whose dad was a physicist on the first reasarch team at Corning Glass Works (he later developed Pyrex). MAD displays Harvey’s gorgeous glass arcs.

Work by student and teacher: Toshiko Takaezu’s 1995 stoneware Mist #2, part of her Moon series, with Maija Grotell’s 1953 glazed earthenware vase

On weekends, Harvey spent lots of time with his dad in the Corning lab, assuming he would follow in dad’s footsteps as a physicist at the University of Michigan. But after Harvey experienced UM art classes, he switched major. Eventually, he was specializing in ceramics under Maija Grotell at Cranbrook Academy of Art (who also taught ceramic superstar Toshiko Takaezu).

Littleton’s travels to observe the Italian glassmaking masters at Verano inspired him to apply his kiln and physics skills to experimental glassmaking. Back home, e pioneered low-temperature glass-blowing techniques that enabled glass artists to create work in studio setting and not a factory.

Littleton achievement was established the first university-based glass-blowing program at University of Wisconsin-Madison. A lucky undergraduate, Dale Chihuly, learned from the master, and the rest was history for American glass making.

Glass sculptures by teacher and student – 1983 Double Blue Arches by innovator Harvey Littleton and 1968 Wine Bottle by created by Dale Chihuly in Venice under a Fulbright Fellowship.

After receiving his MFA in ceramics at RISD, Chihuly traveled to Venice (like his mentor), and observed how the team worked together to create a finished work of glass art. In 1971, he founded Pilchuk Glass Works in Washington State, where he emphasized the collaborative, collective process.  Chihuly’s own sculptural wonders emerged, plus the next generation of indigenous glass artist gained experience in collaborative expression – Tony Jojolla and Preston Singletary.

There are many more stories told in this illuminating exhibition from the MAD collection. Take a look in our Flickr album.

Tony Jojolla’s 1996-1997 Large Glass Olla, a traditional Pueblo pot made of glass at Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuk School; at right, Chihuly’s 1978 Untitled Basket

Lillie Bliss and Her Modernist Breakthrough

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When you peek into the second-floor MoMA exhibition, you’ll see where Van Gogh’s The Starry Night has been holding court for the last few months.

Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern, on view through March 29, tells the story of how one woman’s passion for modern art over a century ago formed the basis of the MoMA collection and MoMA itself.

Van Gogh’s 1889 The Starry Night, one of MoMA’s most beloved works.

Bliss was an early American patron of Cézanne, Seurat, Picasso, and Redon at a time when New York society looked askance at modern art’s tilted tables, fractured still lifes, and stippled surfaces. She even contributed to getting the 1913 Armory Show off the ground as a sponsor, art lender, daily visitor, and new-work buyer.

Maybe the constraints of growing up female in the Victorian era gave her an appreciation for the lack of inhibition Picasso’s and Matisse’s colors, Gauguin’s wild Tahitian woodcuts, and Redon’s ethereal woodsy fantasy figures.

Picasso’s 1914 Green Still Life.

Endless modern-art discussions with art-world friends and mentors Arthur Davies and John Quinn gave her a sophisticated view of all the latest artists and trends. She joined a small group of modern-art lovers to lobby the Metropolitan Museum of Art to show the latest breakthroughs from Europe.

In 1921, the Met acquiesced and borrowed enough art to mount an exhibition of French impressionist and post-impressionist work. Bliss anonymously lent twelve pieces. People came to look, but the Met still resisted acquiring work that it considered too far-out.

When Bliss came into her inheritance in 1923, the pursestrings were unleashed. At age 49, she began to assemble the collection of her dreams via annual European buying trips and estate sales. Where could she show it? 

1904 portrait of Lillie P. Bliss

In 1928, she bought a lavish uptown triplex with a two-story gallery. She hung her favorite Cezanne over the grand piano and arranged a “who’s who” of avant-garde masters. Check out The Bather front and center, surrounded by Picassos, Seurats, and Gauguins.

1929-1931 photo of Lillie P. Bliss’s modernist collection hung in the music room of her Park Avenue apartment
Cézanne’s 1895-1898 Still Life with Apples hung at home in the place of honor, above the piano

The next year in a brainstorming session with Abby Rockefeller and Elizabeth Parkinson, the trio decided that New York needed a special place that was devoted exclusively to modern art. MoMA was born!

MoMA’s first exhibition – Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh – was mounted in rented space at 730 Fifth Avenue, and crowds came.  The exhibition was a huge popular success, even though it coincided with the historic 1929 market crash. 

Cézanne’s 1897 oil Pines and Rocks (Fontainebleau?)
Seurat’s 1884 crayon drawing A Woman Fishing.

Lillie’s health crashed, too. On the heels of MoMA’s test run, she was diagnosed with cancer, and started drawing up a will to ensure that her beloved collection would carry on when she could not. She gave a Monet and a few gems to the Met, but bequeathed 150 works to the new Museum of Modern Art – forming the core of the collection we know today.

Matisse’s 1918-1919 Interior with a Violin Case.

When Lillie died in 1931 at age 66, there was only one last thing.  She was never able to acquire a Van Gogh. But in her will, she did give the museum permission to sell or exchange most of the paintings she bequeathed.

A few years later, MoMA sold one of Lillie’s Degas to acquire Picasso’s epic Demoiselles d’Avignon.

And in 1941, Alfred Barr made her dream come true. He heard that a dealer possessed a very special Van Gogh, and traded three of Lillie’s paintings for The Starry Night.

See our favorite works in our Flickr album, and enjoy other stories about this visionary MoMA founder by listening to the audio guide for the exhibition here.

Gauguin’s 1894 woodcut print The Creation of the Universe from the 10-print series, Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent)

Pelton & Jonson’s Transcendental Desert Art

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Decending into the ground-floor gallery of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, visitors find themselves in a transcendental chamber, filled with abstraction, color, and spiritual emanations.

Pelton & Jonson: The Transcendent 1930s, on view in Albuquerque through March 15, features the work, letters, and personal photographs documenting the professional and personal friendship between two artists that wanted people to see realities beyond the visible world. Artists Raymond Jonson, former UNM professor, and Agnes Pelton, the visionary New York artist who relocated to the Western desert, felt they were kindred spirits, and the exhibition shows us why.

Agnes Pelton’s 1930 painting The Voice – suggesting enlightened dialogue within human consciousness.

As a young artist, Jonson was thunderstruck by the modern art he witnessed in the 1913 Armory Show when it came to Chicago (which included a painting by his future friend, Agnes Pelton from her “imaginative” period of work). Jonson read Kandinsky’s influential The Art of Spiritual Harmony when it was published in English in 1914, and increasingly pushed his work toward pure shape and design that could evoke a deeper response from the viewer.

By 1930, he and his wife moved to Santa Fe. He began teaching, curating shows, and continuing to pursue abstraction. When concepts were simply too much for a single canvas, he conceived a triptych.

Raymond Jonson’s 1930 tryptich – Time Cycle: Morning, Noon, and Night

Around 1931, new-age/Jungian composer, author, and painter Dane Rudhyar told Jonson about Pelton’s abstractions, and put them in touch.  For the next 30 years, Jonson and Pelton corresponded about art making, materials, abstraction, and spiritual connections.

By this time, Pelton had had 14 solo exhibitions and been in 20 group shows. Her interest in spiritual practices kept growing, and the lure of the new-age communities in southern California beckoned her. During a 1932 yoga-retreat trip to Cathedral City, she decided to stay put and paint in the peaceful desert for the rest of her life

Pelton’s 1930 White Fire – showing light radiating from the inner self – from Jonson’s 1933 exhibition
Pelton’s 1932 Mount of Flame – symbolizing the beauty in the abstract – from Jonson’s 1933 exhibition.

In 1933, Jonson invited Pelton to participate in a Santa Fe exhibition alongside himself and Cady Wells. This current exhibition at UNM commemorates this convergence by reuniting some of the original works by Pelton, Wells, and Jonson.  See some of the pieces in our Flickr album.

From the 1933 exhibition: Jonson’s 1933 charcoal drawing Ascending Circle

Jonson and his wife took a road trip to visit Pelton in 1935 – their one and only meeting. Although they were at a distance, the letters kept coming, and when Jonson and others in New Mexico organized the Transcendental Painting Group in 1938, she was invited to participate and serve as the grand dame/president.

In recent years, Agnes Pelton’s work has been resurgent due to the traveling exhibition organized in 2019 by the Phoenix Art Museum, which traveled to the Whitney in 2020. Read our review here.

To hear how this Albuquerque exhibition came together, listen in on Christian Waguespack’s interview with curator Mary Statzer:

UNM is lucky to have over 600 works by Raymond Jonson in its collection, and all the letters, sketches, publications, and journals he kept. For more on Raymond Jonson’s life and work, visit his portal on the UNM website.

Jonson touching up work at his solo exhibition in Tulsa in a 1937 photo by F. Von James.
1935-1940 photo of Pelton reading the TPG brochure in her Cathedral City studio with Mount of Flame behind her.

Parisian Orphists Cover Guggenheim with Color

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Ascending the ramp inside the Guggenheim Museum to enjoy Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930, European optimism and color abound. The exhibition, on view through March 9, 2025, showcases the exuberance and innovation of artists living in early 20th century Paris, who felt exhilarated by the profusion of modern forms of music, dance, and architecture and used abstraction and prismatic color to translated their enthusiasm.

Avant-garde power couple Robert and Sonia Delaunay broke from analytic cubism’s monochromatic approach and injected pulsing color into the art-scene conversation in Paris.

Robert Delaunay’s 1911-1912 Red Eiffel Tower – modern architecture and cubism with a twist of color.

Inspired by 19th century color theory (wheels demonstrating complimentary and dissonant colors), they painted swirling orbs pulsing with harmonies and contrasts to show optimism about the future.

Modern buildings like the Eiffel Tower, electrification of city streets, and the syncopation in dance-hall music created a pre-war energy in Paris that motivated these “orphists.” Everything seemed to be happening simultaneously. Harmonious and dissonant colors and whirling shapes on large canvases seemed a good way to represent it, as shown in the Guggenheim’s fun musical promo:

The style was named “orphism” by none other than Apollinaire himself.  Robert Delaunay’s works in the exhibition include some of his early experimentation with abstract oval “windows,” his abstract riffs on the cosmos, and canvases still showing a hint of the real world.  All convey the simultaneous push-pull of Paris, modern life, and larger scientific forces.  

Robert Delaunay’s 1913 Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon. Courtesy: MoMA
Robert Delaunay’s 1913 The Cardiff Team, with Eiffel’s tower, aerial achievements, and sports dynamics. Courtesy: Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands.

Many of Sonia’s orphist paintings are featured, including a gigantic horizontal color work inspired by the dynamic movement of tango dancers at a popular Parisian club. No doubt the massive 2024 Bard Graduate Center Gallery show about her forays into fashion and other creative fields (Sonia Delaunay: Living Art) influenced the Guggenheim curators to include her painted toy box and her celebrated super-tall accordion-book painting representing her collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars.

Sonia Delaunay’s 1913 oil Bal Bullier inspired by dynamism of tango dancers at the popular Parisian club. Courtesy: Centre Pompidou

Innovations by the Delaunays are placed alongside other artists’ works that reflect the artistic breakthroughs of the early Twentieth Century – Kandinsky’s abstraction, the Blue Rider group’s symbolic use of color, and the synergies that artists felt between abstraction and music. In 1912, Leopold Survage intended to create the first fully abstract film, but the project was halted by World War I. Fortunately, we can envision his plan from his series of dynamic color drawings.

Colored Rhythms series of twelve 1912 ink drawings created by Léopold Survage for the first abstract film. Courtesy: La Cinémathèque Française

The music that inspired the Orphism is referenced throughout the exhibition – the improvisation and free structure of jazz, the dissonance of cutting-edge experimental music, and the staccato of the latest Parisian dance-hall craze – Argentine tango. The curators have even provided musical tracks to underscore this influence.

The Italian futurists Balla and Severini are also featured. Speed, modernity, and simultaneous city sensations were their bread and butter, too, even though they argued in the press and art journals that Futurism and Orphism were totally different.

Italian futurist Giacomo Balla’s 1914 Mercury Passing before the Sun, an allusion to recent cosmic events. Milan’s Museo del Novocento.
Gino Severini’s 1915 Dancer–Propeller–Sea. Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum

In pre-war Paris, American modernist painters Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and Morgan Russell picked up on Orphism, although the latter two rebranded their work Synchronism when they wrote their manifesto.

Marsden Hartley’s 1914 Abstraction Courtesy: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright’s 1917 oil Synchromy. Courtesy: MoMA

Even after the War, the Delaunays continued to represent orphism even if they occasionally incorporated real-world elements. Early orphism adopter Albert Gleizes also continued in this style throughout his career, and inspired students like Mairnie Jelett to explore color theory and its potential.

Albert Gleizes’s 1942 Painting for Contemplation, Dominant Rose and Green.
Irish artist Mairnie Jellett’s 1938 Painting. Courtesy: National Museum, NI, Ulster.

Take a look at our favorite works in our Flickr album here, and enjoy a syncpated strut through the colorful side of Modernism in this catalog preview:

Walking Into the Broken Boxes Podcast

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Did you ever want to walk into a podcast? The grand installation of Broken Boxes: A Decade of Art, Action, and Dialogue lets you experience large-scale work by some of the socially conscious artists that have been featured on Ginger Dunnill’s interview series. Enter, listen, and get inside the heads of 23 artists at the Albuquerque Museum through March 2, 2025.

The exhibition honors ten years of Broken Boxes conversations, which you can hear at various “listening spots” inside the exhibition. Ginger began her project as a way to encourage community among artists who were creating disruptive work that prompts viewers to imagine a different world.

Kate DeCiccio’s Blooming Abolition depicts formerly incarcerated community members who develop gardens. Created by local artists, Planting Justice, Hiroyo Kaneko, and Malaya Tuyay.

The show spills way beyond this main gallery into a theater showing artist videos, another space featuring a soundscape by Raven Chacon, and a courtyard reflecting artist-educator Kate DeCiccio’s vision for sustainable community gardens that give purpose and fulfillment to formerly incarcerated neighbors. 

Inside the main space, visitors wind through and around different installations, such as Marie Watt’s hanging jingle sculptures and her spectacular collaboration with Cannupa Hanska Luger. The jingle “clouds” take a traditional element of powwow and turn it into fine art that invites participation in the soundscape.

2023 dangling jingle sculptures Sky Dances Light: Revolution VII, VIII, and IX created by Marie Watt (Seneca Nation of Indians). Courtesy: private collection

Across the way is an enormous canine created by Luger and Watt. As he’s done with other large-scale participatory projects, Luger sent out a call worldwide requesting people to embroider messages on bandanas and send them in. Visitors are fascinated by the Each Other collaboration, circling around the wolf to discover messages about rescue, shelter, and sustainability.

Guadalupe Maravilla’s installation draws inspiration from his own story and struggle. He assembled the piece from items picked up when he retraced his migration route from El Salvador to the United States when he was a child. But he made it to emit therapeutic vibrational sounds, similar to the sound therapy that brought him relief as an adult when he underwent therapies to cure his own cancer.

2020-2021 Each Other community bandana-sculpture created by Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Ankara, Lakota) and Marie Watt (Seneca Nation of Indians). Courtesy: the artists
Guadalupe Maravilla’s 2021 Disease Thrower #17 – a therapeutic sound installation using materials found when he retraced his El Salvador-US migration route. Courtesy: the artist

Work by Ethiopian refugee Tsedaye Makonnen includes a performance video and installation that focuses attention on African refugees who risk dangerous ocean crossings to escape violence in their home countries. The blue fabric represents the ocean, and each mirror a life lost.

Tsedaye Makonnen’s Astral Sea Views video with Astral Sea Series mirrored fabrics – commemorating women migrants who perished attempting dangerous European ocean crossings. Courtesy: the artist. 

See some of our other favorite installations here in our Flickr album – a shrine by Mario Yvarra, Jr. dedicated to his Chicana-activist mother –Music My Mom Played While Cleaning House – and works by Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc) that are straight from her recent show at the Whitney.

2023 mixed-media sculptures by Natalie Ball – ribbon skirt: There’s Indian and than there’s Indian; (rear) Baby Board. Courtesy: the artist.
Music My Mom Played While Cleaning the House…, a parade float by California artist Mario Ybarra, Jr. that honors his mother, a Chicana civil rights activist.

Listen to the Broken Boxes podcast to hear Ginger and international artists talk about making art, building community, and meeting the challenge of the moment.

Flight Into Egypt at The Met

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Take an epic tour through ancient Egyption iconography through the eyes of African-American artists and thinkers in Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876 – Now, on view at the Metropolitan Museum through February 17. It’s quite a ride with African-American artists and writers through decades of deep history.

The wonders never cease, from Cleopatra’s “throne” welcoming you into the galleries to Simone Leigh’s giant queen Sharifa, Henry Taylor’s vision of Michelle Obama as (maybe?) Queen Hapshetsut, epistles of the Harlem Renaissance, Afro-futurist super-heroines, and a neon Nefertiti taking her bow.

1930 bronze and silver Bride of the Nile (Arous El Nil), Bust by Egyptian sculptor Mahmoud Moktar. In the Heritage Studies gallery. Courtesy: HAR Collection.

The Met, home to the largest Egyptian art collection in the Western Hemisphere (followed by Brooklyn!), decided to create a contemporary counterpoint to its heralded wing and showcase all the ways African-American artists have looked to ancient histories of the Nile, contemplated their relationships to Egypt, and integrated Egyptian spirituality into the current narrative.

Henry O. Tanner’s 1923 painting Flight into Egypt, based on sketches made during his travels in Egypt.
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting Kings of Egypt II. In the Kings and Queens gallery. Courtesy: Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Over 200 paintings, sculptures, videos, and installations are presented in this massive show, which also includes performances produced by Met Live Arts.  See some of our favorite works in our Flickr album.

1993 Grey Area (Brown Version) by Fred Wilson – busts of Nefertiti painted in varied skin shades, reflecting the unresolved opinions on the racial makeup of the ancient Egyptians. From the Kings and Queens gallery. Courtesy: Brooklyn Museum

Watch this video walk-through with the curator, who’s accompanied by two artist in the show – Fred Wilson, whose “Grey Area (Brown Version)” sculpture inspired the curator’s theme, and acclaimed abstractionist Julie Mehretu, who herself was born in Ethiopia and experienced the monuments of Egypt at a very young age:

There’s also a gallery devoted to contemporary work by Egyptian artists –a body of work that’s often overlooked in Western art museums. Here’s a closer look at how an Egyptian artist – who’s also a security guard at the Met – was invited by the curator to participate in this exhibition:

For learn more, here’s a link to the Met’s exhibition guide, and a curated playlist for the show. Take an exciting journey through these visual and musical revelations!

Renee Cox’s 1998 digital print (printed 2024) Rajé to the Rescue, featuring an Afrofuturist super-heroine. In the Space is the Place gallery. Courtesy: the artist.

Painters Tell Stories of Nature’s Resilience

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Feel like things are out of balance?  Seven narrative painters let animals take center stage get visitors thinking about the future for nature and the world in Vivarium, Exploring Intersections of Art, Storytelling, and the Resilience of the Living World at the Albuquerque Museum through February 9, 2025..

Big, bold paintings let nature tell the story and present juxtapositions that present questions about society, environmental dissonance, and what messages animals might want to send. See some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

2023 oil Astrid by Stephen J. Yazzie (Laguna Pueblo/Diné). Courtesy: private collection

Although the exhibition begins with a small selection of works from Santa Fe’s Tia Collection – Dan Namingha (Hopi-Tewa), Nanibah Chacon (Dine/Chicana), and others – the majority of the space features a selection of works by the seven featured painters. Clusters of paintings immerse viewers in each artist’s unique world, style, and narrative – mini-vivariums, or artificial worlds.

Nature explodes of Nathan Budoff’s giant canvases – tigers, meerkats, swimming octopii, schools of fish, prarie dogs – all floating and interacting in a pure, white space.  He creates realistic depictions in charcoal, oil, acrylic, and ink, but juxtaposes natural components that are startling. Visitors stand back, pause, take it all in at once, trying to make sense of how these magnificent creatures interact in unusual landscapes.  Mostly, the canvases do not include people, but Nathan enjoys letting the remarkable, minutely observed wildlife speak their own truths.

2017 charcoal, oil, acrylic, and ink Imminent Danger by Nathan Budoff – showing systems and social behaviors in the natural world. Courtesy: the artist.

Paintings by Patrick McGrath Muñiz are intellectual puzzles, mixing modern issues, depictions of modern technology, and classical Renaissance and

Baroque painting techniques.  Signs, symbols, and details on the horizon demand slow scrutiny to unravel the allegories and associations packed into the paintings.

2018 oil painting Terram Ignoramus by Patrick McGrath Muñiz – a warning about the perils of climate change; depicting a perilous Arctic journey in a boat named “We know not the earth.” Courtesy: the artist

Eloy Torres, a Chicano activist and muralist, uses religious, mythological, and surrealist pictorial conventions to construct worlds that lets the viewer their intuition to connect the dots.

2006 oil portrait of Cheech Martin It’s a Brown World After All by Eloy Torrez; the crown connects him to his ancestral past. Courtesy: Riverside Art Museum.
2010 oil on panel Meat by Eloy Torrez, a surreal allegory on precarious relationships between humans and thenatural world. Courtesy: the artist.

Stephen J. Yazzie (Laguna Pueblo/Diné) exhibits a series of works in which Coyote inhabits upscale suburban interiors, emphasizing the inside/outside, nature/culture dichotomies in contemporary life.

Julie Buffalohead (Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma), a member of her tribe’s Deer Clan, creates narratives featuring animals as protagonists, often metaphors for interactions between natural and spiritual realms. Large works allow players in her stories to prance, dance, and float across saturated color fields.

2018 oil and pastel Straight Legs by Julie Buffalohead (Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma) – a painting reflecting her membership in the Deer Clan. Courtesy: University of Wyoming Art Museum

Artist/educator Stan Netchez (Shoshone/Tataviam) presents a throught-provoking masterpiece, using Picasso’s Guernica imagery, US brands, and indigenous spiritual icons to display the chaos and destruction inflicted on indigenous peoples.

2019 acrylic, oil, and metal leaf “Guernica Flag” by Stan Netchez (Shoshone/Tataviam) – a critique of colonialism’s impact. Courtesy: Tia Collection

Listen in on a panel with four of these storytellers conducted by the Albuquerque Museum.

MIAC Connects Diné Textiles to Land and Community

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Building on the groundwork laid in the artist-curated exhibition Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (opening in St. Louis on March 7), Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture asked five Navajo textile artists, photographers, and scholars to delve into MIAC’s historic collections to tell the story of Diné weavng.

Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, on view through February 2, 2025, presents historic and contemporary weavings alongside epic photographs of Navajo Nation landscapes to show the connections textile artist have to ancestors, their mentors, the community, the land, and their materials.

Historic Diné weaving with photomural by co-curator Rapheal Begay. Courtesy: the artist.

Appropriately, the story told by over 30 historic textiles is presented in MIAC’s Masterpieces gallery.

The entrance presents a dazzling display – a pictorial blanket woven in the 1890s set against a photomural of co-curator Rapheal Begay’s family sheep corral. It’s a visual testament to the importance of wool, life, and the 27,000 square miles of Navajo Nation. 

The blanket’s creator (unknown today) was an astute observer of the life on the land and translated it all into warp and weft – cow punchers, cattle, boots, birds, and new-fangled railroad cars, that only arrived in Navajo Country around the 1880s. Click here to see the detail.

1885 pictorial blanket created with Germantown wool yarn introduced in the Southwest by the railroads; photomural Navel (Hunter’s Point, AZ) by co-curator Rapheal Begay. Photo courtesy of artist.

Nothing was newer than the railroad, at the time this artist depicted it – a steam-fed invention from the East that would change western life forever, but that also brought a wide array of colorful yarn that could be mixed and matched with vegetal dyes to create new Native designs.

The intertwined history of Diné (“The People” in the Navajo language), textile art, and the land is told through quotes and recollections by the exhibition’s Native collaborators. While examining masterful geometric weaving techniques in 19th-century works, visitors are provided with an historic context – the types of art materials introduced to captives imprisoned at Bosque Redondo after the Long Walk, the images that could be interpreted as a longing for the homeland by the incarcerated, and coded spiritual affirmations.

1850-1860 hand-spun wool child’s (or saddle) blanket with Spider Woman crosses; created with natural cocineal, indigo, and chamisa dye
1880-1897 rug made with Germantown wool yarn, cotton string, and raveled yarn; materials used in weaving at Bosque Redondo era, post-Long Walk.

The participants in the exhibition make sure that viewers also experience how the landscape inspires the work of the past and contemporary Native textile artists. Diné fiber artist Tyrrell Tapaha includes her two-panel dress in which incorporates images of the Utah clouds and mountains that bring her spiritual peace. The masterful wall hanging by Lillie Joe uses the palette of the desert to create a mesmerizing geometric dazzler.

2020 two-panel dress by fiber artist Tyrrell Tapaha with images from Utah landscapes that inspired her; woven from churro, silk, mohair, and marino wool..
Close up of highly detailed 1980s Burntwater wall hanging by Lillie Joe, reflecting colors and patterns of the Navajo Nation landscape.

The curators feature both the photography of co-curator Rapheal Begay and Darby Raymond-Overstreet to allow gallery visitors to experience the awesome beauty of the homeland that inspires artists. Digital artist Raymond-Overstreet overlays geometric textile patterns across his luscious, beautiful landscapes.

2018 digital print Woven Landscape, Shiprock by Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné), overlaying digital landscapes with traditional weavings. Courtesy: the artist

Take a look at some of our favorite works in our Flickr album. And enjoy these historic and contemporary dazzlers.

Detail of 1895 wedge weave blanket made with commercial cotton string and Germantown wool – a dramatic 19th c. weaving innovation. Courtesy: International Museum of Folk Art.
2022 wedge weave by Kevin Aspaas; white and grey wool yarn with indigo dye. Courtesy: private collection.
Detail of dynamic Diné 1960 wool tapestry weave. Courtesy: International Museum of Folk Art

Relax in Denver’s Modern Mexican Chair Collection

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2023 A Family of 4 red oak side chairs by LANZA Atelier (Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo).

Everything you could want from a design exhibition is packed into Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today at the Denver Museum of Art through January 12, 2025 – history, context, videos, inspiration behind the designs, and…

Did we mention that you get to sit on the chairs?

The creative lighting and gallery layout invites visitors to take a journey that reflects Mexico’s ancient and colonial history – just like the work of the 22 designers featured here.

Everything on display is part of the Denver Museum’s permanent design collection,

The museum has created an environment that’s engaging and fun, so visitors seem to take time to read about the designers and the history of Mexican furniture while they sample the diverse range of furniture (“it’s more comfortable than it looks!”) as they wind their way through the clean, modern installation. View it all in our Flickr album.

Laura Noriega’s 2012 Your Skin chair made of walnut, handwoven cotton, and synthetic fabric, combining Japanese woodworking and Mexican textiles.

As you enter, you’re greeted by a tiny carved Guatemalan figurine from 300-100 CE, showing the type of simple thrones from which Olmec rulers or religious leaders might sit – a backless seat. Ancient civilizations are the inspiration for the innovative seats made by the first set of designers.

Some of these humble-looking stools by Camilia Apaez and HABITACIÓN 116 are made from stoneware, basalt and volcanic ash – harkening back to landscapes, environments, and simplicity that resonates with these forward-looking 21st century designers. 

Camila Apaez’s 2002 stoneware Room in the Cave seats – inspired by deep associations with Paleolithic and Neolithic architecture and ceramics.
Raúl Cabra’s 2009 Bamboo seats made from carizzo reeds; video shows public seating.

Visitors are invited to sit and experience the enjoyment of relaxing in each of the exhibition areas – and many couples and families do!  It’s nice to sit and watch the large-screen videos that take you on a trip around Mexico, showing you modern and traditional public seating areas along city streets and town squares.

Not all of the stools are minimalistic, proven by the creations of Aldo Alvarez Tostado, who turned from architecture to making smaller pieces that enabled him to work with traditional Mexican weavers and woodworkers to invent seats that are run and new.

Aldo Alvarez Tostado’s 2022 Little Horse stools, made of wool and synthetic horsehair.

The second section of the show features the history and modern interpretation of easy chairs – comfortable seating that invites visitors to stay and enjoy. There’s an upscale Spanish Colonial chair to demonstrate traditional European design roots, surrounded by Ricardo Casas’s classy designs and Mauricio Lara Eguiluz’s funny foam take on the Yucatan’s Chac-Mool Mayan deity (always reclining comfortably!)

But if truth be told, all the visitors are having the most fun flopping onto the super-comfortable recycled “stuffables” by Andrés Lhima!

An array of comfortable easy chairs – the 2013 Clara design by Ricardo Casas and the 2005 polyurethane foam Chac Seat by Mauricio Lara Eguiluz
Andrés Lhima’s fun, portable easy chairs – comfy 2011 plastic mesh Fidencio chairs filled with shredded foam and recyclables.

The final section pays tribute new takes on the Spanish side chair, comparing a 19th-century classic with high-style sets by Oscar Hagerman and La Metropolitana and outrageous reinventions by Estaban Calcendo Cortés. You can feel the Afro-Colombian rhythms in his woven palm chairs.

A highly decorative painted 1800s Mexican side chair.
2022 Palapa side chairs by Estaban Calcendo Cortés – inspired by Afro-Mexican and Colombian cultures

To learn more about the designers and their inspiration, scroll through the exhibition guide.

And this beautifully designed show would not be complete with an out-of-the-box participatory woven-wicker design section for kids of all ages!

2023 El Charco environment by Mestiz for visitors to contemplate design and the environment, including the wicker Cactus of a Thousand Eyes and Great Two-Headed Viper.

Pathfinder Marcus Amerman at The Wheelwright

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Shape-shifter, beadwork innovator, pop-culture provocateur, fashion designer, and performance artist – it’s hard to know where to start when summarizing four-decades of work by a Native-American contemporary art superstar. But his first retrospective, Pathfinder: 40 Years of Marcus Amerman, does showcases his wide range of work in spectacular fashion. See it at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe through January 11.

Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is best known for his intricate beaded “paintings,” which take center stage.

1994 Stormbringer beaded portrait of Lakota leader Chief Iron Hawk. Surrealist eyes by Man Ray watch from a brewing storm. Courtesy: Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

Once Amerman developed his bead technique, which provided a photo-realist spin to a traditional “native” craft, he really felt that he could take on any subject as a contemporary artist – movie stars, historic characters, and cartoon images. The impact is electric. 

2002 beaded painting Greetings from Indian Country, merging vintage tourism with pointed social commentary on exploitation. Private collection

Gazing across the main gallery, you see pop-culture images of “Indian” memes splashed across large canvases, cartoony self-portraits, fashion mannequins, glass sculptures, and photos by his wry collaborators. It’s a splendid mix of eye-dazzling color, technical mastery, and social commentary. Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr gallery.

Amerman garnered a lot of attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s for merging his beadwork into contemporary fashion. He cites his beaded leather motorcycle jacket with a beaded meme of bikini-clad Brooke Shields starting it all – a shock-worthy mix of leather toughness with one of the hottest young stars of the day.  He took on custom commissions and leapt at the opportunity to participate in fashion shows. He was overjoyed to see his buckskin fashions featured in Elle.

1982 Iron Horse Jacket with beaded Brooke Shields. Courtesy: Private collection
American eagles beaded on lapels of 1992 dinner jacket; commissioned by veteran Doug Hyde (Nez Perce, Assiniboine, Chippewa).

It’s obvious that Amerman rejects staying put into a single category. He loves collecting vintage “Indian” objects and collaging art-world and historic references in all of his work. Check out those hubcaps!

2023 acrylic painting Old Masters in the New World, showing 17th century Dutch colonizers next to a Santa Fe train. Courtesy: the artist
2023 Rattles found-object collage, mixing pop cultural and Native images. Courtesy: the artist

Amerman’s alter ego, Buffalo Man, features prominently in the show, particularly in his collaborations with acclaimed photographer Cara Romero, where icons of Native culture insert themselves into American pop culture.

Cara Romero’s 2013 photo El Graduaté – a collaboration with Amerman’s performance alter ego, Buffalo Man. Courtesy: Cara Romero
2002 Target Jacket with glass beads, worn by the artist in fashion shows as himself and as Buffalo Man. Courtesy: the artist

The gorgeous collaborations with glass artists from Amerman’s time at Pilchuk are a delight – some self-referential and others harkening back to his own culture’s ancestry.  He claims that everything he makes is genuinely as “self portrait.”

2010 blown and sand-carved Buffalo Man – a collaboration by Amerman and Preston Singletary (Tlingit). Courtesy: the artist
2006 Glass Shield, one of a series created during a residency at Pilchuk Glass School and inspired by historic Plains Indian shields. Courtesy: the artist

It’s a joyful tribute to an artist who gives back, inspires others, and keeps asking pertinent questions about the role of art and artists in our society.

Enjoy this close-up look at some of Amerman’s masterful beadwork and hear why Amerman continues to create: