Category Archives: Nature

Altered Landscapes and Children of the Earth Experience in Reno

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For years, the Nevada Museum of Art has been collecting photographs by artists whose work puts the environment, our culture’s addiction to nuclear and fossil fuel, construction booms, and degradation of desert landscapes front and center. Altered Lands and the Anthropocene, on view in Reno through September 20, is a beautiful installation across the second floor that causes visitors to stop, look, and contemplate what it took to record such tour de force images.

It’s all part of the museum’s massive Into the Time Horizon exhibition.  Take a walk through the galleries in our Flickr album.

Sensual, cocoon-like participatory space at the core of Ernesto Neto’s 2019 Children of the Earth – filled with futons, pots, crytals, instruments, and spice smells Courtesy: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

The masterful photo exhibition is next door to a solo installation that serves as a great respite – the immersive, colorful, magical playground-style environment Ernesto Neto: Children of the Earth, also on view through September 20. More about this in a moment.

The first section of the photography galleries features traditional documentay photography about legacies of industrial-scale extraction of oil, gas, uranium, and minerals across the West – Edward Weston’s image of big equipment at work toward the end of the Great Depression, Robert Adam’s aerial view of the legacy of Colorado mining, and Zig Jackson’s headdress-adorned Native American perched at the edge of the largest mine on earth in Utah.

Toshio Shibata’s 1997 silver gelatin print Coolidge Dam, San Carlos, AZ – a controversial project built as part of the San Carlos Indian Irrigation Project on tribal burial grounds.
2004 (printed 2020) archival inkjet print by Zig Jackson (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara) Indian Man at Kennecott Copper Mines, Toole, Utah – a man in a war bonnet sits at the edge of the largest human excavation on earth.

These share the space with evidence of long-lasting consequences of uranium mining by Patrick Nagatani and a startling document of America’s disposal culture from Edward Burtynski. Each image is crammed with feeling that the ominous impacts will be around for a long time – moving calls to action.

In pursuit of nuclear fuel: Patrick Nagatani’s 1990 chromogenic print ’Bida Hi’/Opposite Views: Northeast-Navajo Tract Homes and Uranium Tailings, Southwest-Shiprock, New Mexico – from his Nuclear Enchatment series highlighting the community contaminated from the 1950s uranium mill at Shiprock.
Impact of relying upon fossil fuel:  Edward Burtynski’s 1999 chromogenic color print Oxford Tire Pile #9a and #9b, Westley, California, USA – a documentation of a massive industrial hazard, which later caught fire and contaminated nearby communities and water resources.

To mix it up, the curators have thrown in a touch of the surreal – an arresting image by Cara Romero collaged into the oil-field landscape near where she grew up, and Meg Webster’s sculpture from living Earth. Beautiful and inviting art from across the room, but more thought-provoking as you draw near.

2015 archival inkjet print Oil Boom by Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) from her “Water Memories” series – with collaborator artist-activist Canupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota) floating in brown liquid below an oil pump.
Meg Webster’s 1986/2005 peat moss, earth, and plastic installation Moss Bed, Queen – evoking relaxation in nature with materials collected nearby from the forest; on walls, work by Martine Gutierrez and Lee Friedlander. Courtesy: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nevada Museum of Art.

Some of the largest works also require visitors to take them in from a distance – such as Rohini Devashar’s gorgeous, huge printed silk.

Visitors contemplate Rohini Devashar’s 2023 Latent Field (Field One) – colliding molecules and celestial bodies printed on silk. Courtesy: the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.

But in most cases in this section, you have to get close to the fine print to truly understand what you’re seeing. Most appear abstract. An epic seemingly all-black work by David Maisel is actually a collage of aerial views of the bombing runs in the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The evocative, overlapping images in a gelatin silver print by Laura Bon, Tristan Duke, and Richard Nielsen was done inside a container-shipping-sized camera obscura at the tragic environmental site of Owens Lake. The huge one-of-a-kind photo was actually developed in the sad lakewater.

2013 gelatin silver print Bubblers, Owens Dry Lakebed (Lakebed Developed) – project by the Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio created by Laura Bon, Tristan Duke, and Richard Nielsen. Created on light-sensitive paper via camera obscura inside a shipping-container studio, developed in the lakebed.

A similarly epic achievement is displayed in the gallery devoted to documenting the aftermath of the Marshall Islands nuclear detonation experiment following World War II – Meghann Riepenhoff’s cyanotype tryptich made right there on a contaminated beach using plants that (like the people) are still in recovery.

Marshall Islands project: Meghann Riepenhoff’s 2023 Untitled (Adaptive Radiation: Radioactive Palm Triptych – a cyanotype made from laying native medicinal plants found across pre-treated paper; washed in the waters of Bikini Atoll, the site of extensive nuclear tests in the 1950s. Courtesy: the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery, NYC

The images are stunning but the content is disturbing (and meant to be), so visitors are actually eager to enter Ernesto Neto’s nearby recuperation chamber.  Adults and children can find respite, surrounded by natural dyed fabrics (you can even put on matching play-jackets!) that provide a mysterious, happy entry to a magical world.

Surround yourself with cushions, create healing sounds with a Tibetan singing bowl, lay down, smell the fragarent spices, look at playful Amazon-inspired hanging jungle things, think about the future, and be happy to be among the Children of the Earth.

Exploring the sensual, cocoon-like participatory space at the core of Ernesto Neto’s 2019 Children of the Earth – filled with futons, pots, crytals, instruments, and spice smells Courtesy: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, NYC

Thanks to the Nevada Museum of Art for providing an amazing, unforgettable experience!

Makowa: Modern Skywatching with the Ancients

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Look up at the night sky and find patterns in the stars. You can do that, even though you’re standing inside the exhibition Makowa: The Worlds Above Us at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture through January 31, 2027. The wall-sized photo murals of day and night skies provide the backdrop to sculptures, pottery, and textiles with stylized images of stars, planets, the Sun, Moon, meteors, and changes of season.

Beautifully crafted objects and immersive photos provide contemplative spaces to consider the different types of skyward observations that Indigenous communities have made across millennia, and how stories and rituals convey this knowledge across generations.

Exhibition welcome: 2009 Evening Star ceramic sculpture by Kathleen Wall (Jemez Pueblo) – a Koshare holds stars important to celestial calendar.

Kathleen Wall’s charming Koshare holding up the Evening Star welcomes everyone to the journey. Take a look through our Flickr album to see some of our other favorites.

A mix of historic and contemporary art underscores the story behind star gazing. Tracking their slow movement across the night skies, sky watchers have long seen stars as important guides. The Ancients used petroglyph images as reminders of how to use ancestor stars for guidance – to tell time, mark seasons, and take journeys through vast desert landscapes.

Star patterns: 1930s tray woven by unknown Tohono O’ohdam artist.
2020 Star Child painting by George Toya (Jemez Pueblo), showing a star surrounded by ancestors in the night sky. Courtesy: private collection

Recent artworks suggest a range of the activity in the day and night sky. Phases of the Moon inform agricultural cycles. Planetary alignments, meteor showers, and also plane traffic are all part of night-sky viewing today. Rosemary Lonewolf’s tiny pot summarizes this dynamism nicely.

Distant worlds and a crowded sky: 1992 miniature Spaced Out jar by Rosemary Lonewolf (Santa Clara Pueblo).
2000-2001 sand painting by Joe Ben Jr. (Diné) linking phases of the Moon to planting cycles.

The curators show how traditional symbols of clouds, sky, and sky dynamics are learned, used, and adapted over the centuries by exhibiting modern woven regalia alongside ancestral Puebloan pots from Chacoan culture. It shows that abstract Indigenous symbols do not exist in a single place and time – they are used and reused.

Acknowledging the lively, changing sky: 1984 shirt with sky symbols woven by Evelyn Quintana (Okay Owingeh) with Ancestral Pueblo ceramics below.

The exhibition also takes a deep dive into how ancient architecture and landscapes across the Four Corners are used to mark cardinal directions, annual cycles, and astronomical phenomenon. Chaco’s magnificent kivas are featured in dramatic photo murals that show how a combination of architecture, horizon markers, and sunrise to mark the seasons.

Equinox and solstice: Duke Johnson’s 2022 photo of the Great Kiva Casa Rinconada at Chaco Canyon showing where the Sun rises against the landscape at key times of the year.

Aerial photographs show how buildings reflect astronomical alignments. Most visitors stand intrigued before an archaeoastronimical explanation of Chaco Canyon’s famous Sun Dagger, which transformed Fajada Butte into an observatory to mark the solstice and equinox.

Google Earth photos of Chaco Canyon National Historic Park. showing how structures are aligned to the cardinal directions – Pueblo Bonito and the Great Kiva at Casa Rinconada.
Visitor watches the Sun Dagger Explorer, a virtual experience of the archaeoastronomy site on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon. Courtesy: Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at Ohio State University, The Solstice Project, and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

Best of all, visitors themselves can explore the video interactive of another Chaco site – Rock of the Sun – to experience what it’s like to interact with petroglyphs, shadows, and the skies to mark time within the year. Nearby, there’s a copy of a petroglyph (carving into stone) that archeoastronomers suggest could depict an exploding star that was visible for 3 weeks in the year 1054.

Interactive video screen that provides visitors with a virtual experience of Rock of the Sun, an archaeoastronomy site in Chaco Canyon National Historic Park.

Other sections of the exhibition focus on the animals that serve as sky messengers – bats, eagles, and other birds – and rituals that honor the four cardinal directions.

One of the key themes here is to respect the elements – not try to control them – which is emphasized brilliantly in the final fitting tribute to these scientist farmers. Phenomenon such as rain, wind, clounds, and thunder seemed unpredictable to the Ancients, so ceremonies and dances were performed to convey desire for favorable elements. Beautifully woven cotton garments, paintings, and ritual headgear are rich in layered meanings – seasonal calendars, rain, and lightning.

Farmer scientists: 1920-1940 cotton shirt featuring zigzag lighting patterns by unknown Okay Owingeh artist.

It’s a reminder of the intergenerational wisdom used to coax agricultural bounty from the seemingly barren stark desert.

For deeper insights, the curators recommend a visit to the Star Stories website by WeRNative and the Native Skywatchers website.

1938 painting Mythical Corn Ceremony by Ignacio Mosquino (Waka Yeni Dewa) (Zia Pueblo).
2005-2009 Hopi tablita Butterfly Maiden by unknown Hopi artist.

Viewing Deep Time with Australian Contemporary Indigenous Artists

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The massive exhibition is a blockbuster of abstraction – giant canvases, bold strokes, and enough dots and concentric circles to satisfy the most avid Kusama fan. But these visions don’t emanate from the 20th century’s Western modernist tradition. They’re the work of visionary artists from the Outback, whose abstractions use traditional icons as meditations on stories and landscapes that indigenous Australian people have relayed for thousands of generations.

The Stars We Do Not See is a journey like no other through the Denver Art Museum through July 26, 2026.

Detail of 2011 Gan’yu (Stars) by Gulumbu Yunupinju (Gumatj), referencing ancestral stories of the creation of stars and universe. Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria, Canada

The winding path reveals principles of cyclical time, how the spirits of the land influence specific Indigenous cultures, and how icons of sacred landscapes and water sources are translated onto horizonless painted canvases.

Enjoy some of our favorites – full-size works and close-ups of paint details – in our Flickr album.

1980 painting Spirit Dreaming Through Napperby Country by Tim Leura and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (Anmatyerre) – a recollection of ancestral homelands taken by cattle ranchers in the early 1900s. Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria

At every turn, there are gigantic room-size works (some realized as large-group colleborations) and arrays of towering carved and painted memorial poles. Abstract symbols denote spirit beings, water, river systems, nature or animal traces. Everything is drawn from the massive collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Canada.

Epic 1995 abstraction Anwerlarr Anganenty (Big Yam Dreaming) by Emily Kam Kngwarry (Anmatyerre), depicting a network of sacred underground roots. Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria

The curators start and end the show with arresting contemporary works by urban Indiginous artists – a neon installation, video, a painted skateboard, and representational works referencing forced relocation and unjust assimilation policies.

2020 neon “OA Warrior I (Blue) (Azul)” and “OA Warrior I (Pink) (Rosa)” by Reko Rennie (Kamilarol) – a mix of ancestral and urban culture. Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria
2022 History Repeats by Tony Albert (Girramay/Yidinji/Kuku Yalanji)– a work made of recycled vintage commercial knicknacks featuring appropriated Aboriginal iconography. Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria

But the majority of the show shows how traditional artists using earth pigments on eucalyptus bark prior to the 1970s gave way to community artist who used new synthetic pigments to paint first on posterboard and then on canvas.

1972 Snake and Water Dreaming by Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurray (Pintupi) from the first Indiginous art community in Papuna, Northern Territory to establish a contemporary art center; design from ritual body painting and cave art. Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria
Conceptual Maps: 2006 conceptual abstraction Kalaya Wati (Emu Man) by Alkawari Dawson (Pitjantjatjara). Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria

For more about the artists and how/why they create, take a look at the exhibition guide here.

Experience the majesty, scale, and experience of this exhibition through this walk-through produced by the Denver Museum of Art. Listen for the explanation of how the exhibit received its title, too!

Don’t worry if you missed this in Denver. The Stars We Do Not See will be on view at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon from September 5, 2026 through January 3, 2027, and at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts from February 27, 2027 through June 13, 2027.

First gallery with display of eucalyptus memorial poles carved by Northern Aboriginal artists and painted with ritual designs

Kay WalkingStick and the Hudson River School

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When New York Historical invited Kay WalkingStick to view its Hudson River School collection, she stood in awe of the evocative landscapes by Bierstadt, Durand, Kensett, and Cole – shimmering brooks, majestic mountains, and romantic skies. Their mastery of paint invites you to get lost in the inviting beauty. But Kay noticed that native people – who had inhabited these settings for millennia – were almost always missing. The supposed “wilderness” was likely still someone’s home.

Kay and the team at New York Historial correct this omission in the gorgeous, thought-provoking exhibition Kay WalkingStick/Hudson River School, now on view at the Heard Museum in Phoenix through May 25, 2026 – one of three stops for its US tour. (The exhibition debuted at NYH in New York in 2023.)

Louisa Davis Minot’s 1818 painting Niagara Falls with tiny Indigenous figures – a rare landscape by a female landscape painter in early America. Courtesy: New York Historical

The exhibit juxtaposes early 19th century Hudson River School landscapes with a retrospective of Kay’s own landscapes – large paintings of swirling ocean currents, dramatic Western mountains, and East Coast rivers with bands of Indigenous geometric patterns stenciled across them. It’s a signal that we are all still living on Indian land.

Take a look at our favorite works in our Flickr album.

Kay WalkingStick’s 2020 two-panel landscape New Hampshire Coast – overlaid with a stenciled Native American band. Courtesy: the artist and Hales New York and London.

By hanging 19th-century landscapes side-by-side with Kay’s paintings, the curators suggest we contemplate different questions: Did the popularity of the Hudson River School’s view of “unhabited wilderness” contribute to Americans’ drive West? Does anyone remember that the East Coast was also Native land?  Does anyone realize that Native Amerians still live there?

Asher Durand’s 1837-1878 painting View of the Ausable River – a view of supposed wilderness that was home to the Haudenosaunee.  Courtesy: private collector and New Britain Museum of American Art.

Bierstadt’s sketches of actual Shoshone tribal members is one of the few examples to depict specific Native Americans. And at the time, critics and buyers objected to his insertion of native people into his large-scale romantic landscapes.

Albert Bierstadt’s 1859 sketch Four Portraits of North American Indians, drawn during the Lander Expedition to record people he believed would soon vanish. Courtesy: New York Historical

The anchor painting of the exhibit is her epic Niagara, showing us the view from the Canadian side of the Falls. As she viewed the Niagara paintings in the NYS collection, WalkingStick wondered if she was up to the challenge of painting the Niagara falls herself. But when she saw a dramatic 1818 painting of Niagara by a relatively unknown female painter, Louisa Davis Minot, she decided to go for it! And what a triumph!

Kay WalkingStick’s 2022 two-panel Niagara with a Haudenosaunee pattern stenciled across remind viewers of its original inhabitants – the first painting by a Native American acquired by NYH. Courtesy: New York Historical

To drive home the connection between these landscapes with the original native inhabitants, WalkingStick looks for geometric patterns associated with specific groups of people. For Niagara, she used a Haudenosaunee pattern from a ceramic piece by David Smith, which is on view nearby in the gallery, along with patterned baskets from her own collection.  

Steve Smith’s wheelthrown 1973-1974 jar, incised with a Haudenosaunee pattern that Walkingstick stenciled across Niagara. Courtesy: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian.
1960s Cherokee woven basket. Courtesy: Kay WalkingStick and Hales New York and London.

For her paintings of the Wampanoag Coast, she used a patterned band associated with the Pequot/Narraganset tribes who originally inhabited Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Kay WalkingStick’s 2018 two-panel oil painting Wampanoag Coast, Variation II – a view of the New England coast overlaid with a Pequot/Narraganset patterned band. Courtesy: private collection

Listen to Kay talk about her painting and see images of its original installation at New York Historical:

Other highlights of the exhibition are WalkingStick’s Our Land works, each emblazoned with a design from a Plains Indian woman’s parfleche bag – creations that WalkingStick contends are the first geometric abstract paintings done in America.

Kay WalkingStick’s 2007 two-canvas painting Our Land featuring a Parfleche design and a view of the Bitterroot Mountains, original land of the Nez Perce. Courtesy: private collection

For a more in-depth discussion between Kay and the exhibition curator, Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, about Kay’s approach to painting and the beauty she admires in Hudson River School paintings, click here.

Kay WalkingStick/Hudson River School will be on display at the Allentown Art Museum June 20-October 11, 2026 and at the James Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida November 7, 2026 – March 21, 2027.

Everything Modern at Fechin House in Taos

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The 1915 founding of the Taos Society of Artists captulted Taos into one of the most recognized art colonies in the United States due to its traveling exhibitions of romantic, colorful paintings depicting the people, places, and traditions of unique to Northern New Mexico.

But another group of artists and cultural influencers arrived a few years later to inject the art scene there with a new, more contemporary style – one reflecting the approach associated with European modernism and the trends showcased in the 1913 Armory Show.

1943 watercolor by Howard Schleeter, who experimented with many contemporary styles

This less traditional group of innovators – and the next generation of their followers – are celebrated by the Taos Art Museum in its exhibition Taos Reimagined: Modernist Experiments in the High Desert, on view in the beautiful, new Janis and Roy Coffee Gallery at Fechin House through May 10, 2026. Most of the works in the show are selected from the museum’s own collection.

After moving to Taos in 1917, philanthropist and fan-of-the-avant-garde Mabel Dodge soon recruited East Coast modern mavericks to join her. One of her first friends to take the trip West was painter Marsden Hartley, whose early symbolic abstractions electrified European critics and clients of Stieglitz’s gallery in New York.  One of his modernist landscapes is featured in this show.

Marsden Hartley’s 1918 drawing New Mexico – a pastel by one of America’s early modernists inspired by New Mexico. Courtesy: The Owings Gallery

It’s thrilling to view the Hartley watercolor next to landscapes by modernist B.J.O. Nordfeldt and Emil Bisttram.

B.J.O. Nordfeld’s watercolor Campo Santo – landscape painted by an artist who was significantly influenced by Cezanne’s modern innovations.
Emil Bisttram’s 1958 watercolor Sun Over Pueblo.

Much of the work on display was painted mid-century – some works by older mondernists (like Nordfeldt or Dasburg) and others by artists arriving in the 1940s and 1950s (often called the Taos Modernists). Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman arrived in the 1940s co-founded the Taos Valley Art School in 1947, and effectively served as the center for postwar modernism in Taos for the next decade.

1964 painting Rift Series #23 by Beatrice Mandelman –a co-founder of the Taos Valley Art School with husband Louis Ribak
Louis Ribak’s Untitled (No. 9) – painting by one of the most influential teachers encouraging experimentation at the Taos Valley Art School. Courtesy: private collector; the Owings Gallery

It’s a beautiful, light-filled space that shows off these magnificent works to great advantage.  Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

Doel Reed’s 1974 oil This Morning at Eight.
Janis and Roy Coffee Gallery

Gus Baumann’s Legacy of Art and Fun in Santa Fe

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Gus Baumann, America’s greatest master of color woodblock prints, never considered himself a fine artist. Nevertheless, his prints, sculptures, paintings, commercial art, furniture, and marionette stages fill four galleries in his grand retrospective at the New Mexico Museum of Art – Gustave Baumann: The Artist’s Environment, on view through February 22, 2026.

Demand for Gus’s intricate block-printed sun-dappled Western landscapes from the 1920s through the 1950s still runs high. So, it’s a treat to learn how Gus achieved such a high degree of technical proficiency early in his career, lived Arts and Crafts philosophy, relished immersion in art colonies, and found his family in Santa Fe.

Gus Baumann’s 1903 oil Self-portrait (Silhouette) painted in his Chicago studio; reworked in Santa Fe after 1920 with a border inspired by Mimbres pottery.

See some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

Although Gus was born in Germany in 1881, his family emigrated to Chicago when he was around ten. His father was a craftsman and woodcarver, and it left an impression.  The first themed section of the exhibit – “Finding His Way”– gives a glimpse into his family background, early commercial art work, wood carving expertise, and furniture he designed later in the 1930s.

Gus Baumann’s 1919 color woodblock print Church Ranchos de Taos – one of the first modern artists to depict this iconic church; printed in 1948.
Gus Baumann’s 1921 color woodblock print Piñon Grand Canyon – one of four landscapes created after his first visit.

When he was 17 and his dad left the family, Gus had to find work to help his mom make ends meet.  He worked full time at a Chicago wood-engraving shop that cut illustrations for books, magazines, and newspapers. When he was 20, Gus opened his own wood-engraving studio.

To fine tune his skill, he attended Munich’s Royal Arts and Crafts School for a year to learn from the best German color wood-block print masters – a move that chose traditional skills over academy fine-arts training. When he returned to Chicago, he opened Baumann Graphic Art Service.

Gus Baumann’s 1913 Illustration for a Calendar: The Packard Car Motor Company, August 1914 – one of four he created for Packard.
Gus Baumann’s 1908 color woodcut From My Studio Window in downtown Chicago –the high-rise McCormack Building going up on South Michigan Avenue.

Although Gus found success, his love of craft and traditional printmaking methods drew him to an art colony in Nashville, Indiana that revered traditional crafts and a slower pace of life.  The second section of the exhibition – “A Rolling Stone” – highlights work he did in Munich, his acclaimed print series featuring Indiana craftsmen, coastal life in Provincetown, and the electricity he felt in New York.

Gus Baumann’s 1912 book All the Year Round – woodcut illustrations and poetry James Whitcomb Riley, featuring scenes of daily rural life for each month of the year.

But his life would change forever when he traveled West and landed in New Mexico in 1918. Due to his reputation as an award-winning printmaker, Santa Fe welcomed him with open arms. Gus was struck by the unique Hispanic and Pueblo ways of life, the beauty of the Southwest, and the growing art colony in Santa Fe. 

Gus Baumann’s 1925 oil painting Frijoles Canyon – a panorama of ancient tuff dwellings of Tuyoni Pueblo at Bandelier.

Before long, Gus was making and selling gorgeous prints, traveling to archeological sites, attending dances at the pueblos, soaking up the ambience of ancient Spanish churches, and putting brush to canvas, and partying with his new artist friends. And he met Jane, the love of his life, and started a family – creating a life full of fun, art, play, and community service.

Gus Baumann’s 1924 color woodblock print Sanctuario Chimayo – learning of the historic church’s imminent sale on a sketching trip, he lobbied successfully for its preservation.
Gus Baumann’s 1921 color woodblock print Strangers from Hopiland, featuring kachinas from his collection; printed in the 1930s.

Since Jane and Ann Baumann donated so much of Gus’s work to the New Mexico Museum of Art, the curators were able to display finished prints alongside drawings and wood blocks that give visitors insight to his process.  One long wall dissects his multi-color printing process for his famed Old Santa Fe – the initial drawing, the separately carved color blocks, single-color proofs, multi-color runs, and the finished six-color print.

Reproductions of Baumann’s blue, yellow, and orange woodblocks for his 1925 print Old Santa Fe.

Nearly a half-dozen example of Gus’s watercolor paintings and finished prints are displayed side by side. Visitors are delighted to stand, look, compare, and wonder how he conceptualized steps to carve blocks for each color and achieve images of such depth and vibrancy.

Gus Baumann’s 1930 watercolor Processional (Study), featuring girls walking to their First Holy Communion under a blooming tree and silver sky.
Gus Baumann’s 1930 color woodcut print Processional (printed 1951), based upon his watercolor.

The final gallery “An Artist by Accident” displays an array of intricate color woodcuts, experimental paintings, satirical works, paintings Spanish religious icons, whimisical wood carvings, and everyone’s favorites – Baumann’s marionettes.

It’s the first time Gus and Jane’s marionette casts have been displayed in decades, complete with hand-painted backdrops – scenes representing just a few of the couple’s scripted shows that they performed at home, in venues around Santa Fe, at world fairs, and on tour. 

Gus and Jane Baumann’s stage set for the Santa Fe Puppett Wranglers’ 1932 marionette production of the comic melodrama The Golden Dragon Mine –starring The Tourist Lady, Temperence the Miner, Hardpan, Burro, Old Man of the Mountain, the Green Dragon, Nambé Nell, Coco the Horse, Pecos Bill, and Lord Leffinghoop.

Whimsey, delight, innovation, social commentary, and fun are all there, with surprises unfolding around every corner.  And this is all just a fraction of Gus’s creative output from his coming-of-age in the horse-and-buggy era to the Atomic Age.

Gus Baumann’s 1940 marionette comedy stars of Teatro Duende – Long Nose (“Nosey”), the Duendi and Freckles the Duende – mischief-making Iberian elves.

No, he didn’t follow the traditional academic path, but he did leave his creative touch on America’s printmaking traditions, the foundation of many Santa Fe cultural and historical institutions, and the care and feeding of a state full of artists as head of New Mexico’s New Deal artist programs.

Gus Baumann’s 1932 carved family portrait – marionettes Gus, Jane, and Ann – with costumes by Jane.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Modern Living

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How do you turn a 200-year-old adobe home into a temple of mid-century modern design? See how Georgia O’Keeffe did it in Artful Living: O’Keeffe and Modern Design, an exhibition available on-line and at the GOK Museum’s Welcome Center near her home and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico through January 31, 2027.

When Georgia bought her second New Mexico home in 1945, it was a wreck. All the better, for her to envision the possibilities of her dream house. Why was she obsessed with this? It had a home garden and irrigation, a placita in the center of the house with a working well, the iconic black door in the red wall, and an incredible view of the stunning landscape (and Pedernal).

Todd Webb’s 1962 photo Georgia O’Keeffe and Chows in Abiquiú Garden with Georgia in a striped Marimekko dress.

By collaborating for the next four years with her friend and project manager Maria Chabot, the property was transformed into a showcase for everything modern – furniture, fabrics, lamps, tableware, and (eventually) architectural innovations like skylights, gigantic picture windows, and open-plan living.  To keep her creative sparks going, Georgia never stopped rearranging, adding, and switching things up.

The exhibition space is small, but provides a tight curated selection of Georgia’s things accompanied by great photos of her interiors over time.

Balthazar Korab’s 1965 photo Abiquiú House, Indian Room with Noguchi lamp and Eames chair.
1960s Akari Lantern, a gift from sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi with Krysta Jabczenski’s 2019 photo of her living room arranged as she left it in 1984.

The furniture is front and center, made by a who’s who of American 20th century designers.  After all, as one of the recognized greats of modern American painting, the designers were often her friends, too. Simple, clean, modern lines – that’s what Georgia liked. But she loved design innovations, too.

No wonder she was captivated by the innovative BFK (“Butterfly”) chair designed by a trio of Argentine architects in 1938. She ordered one from Knoll, used it on her patio, and sometimes took the cover off just to admire the frame. And she bought several LCW chairs by her friends, Charles and Ray Eames – the molded-plywood marvel that defined a design decade.

1940s LCW Plywood Lounge Side Chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller – the first chair in the Eames’ molded plywood series.
Don Worth’s 1958 photo Georgia O’Keeffe with Chair with 1938 metal and cotton Butterfly Chair for Knoll Associates.

But perhaps her most-used piece was the versatile BARWA Lounger – perfect for laying back and listening to classical music or looking at the stars during a summer camping trip to the badlands. The aluminum frame made it light enough to strap to the top of her car.

1940s BARWA Lounger designed by Edgar Bartolucci and John Waldheim of BARWA Associates; Georgia relaxed here while listening to classical music.

Of course, Georgia loved her rock and bone collections, but she also collected practical items for her home that epitomized mid-century design.  Why not select a Finnish design innovation that you could adjust to get the light just right on your work desk or still life? Or use a sleek, modern, see-through coffee maker to prepare your morning cup of Bustelo? Pure bliss.

Finnish design: 1960s metal Luxo Lamp designed by Jac Jacobsen.
Everyday modern design: 1950s Chemex coffee maker designed by Peter Schlumbohm for Chemex.

The curators also want us to remember that modern design principles also extended to Georgia’s dress preferences.

Three cool cotton dresses by Anika Ramala for Marimekko – 1963-1965 Varjo dress, 1961 Karutakkj dress, and 1963 Asumistakki dress.

When she wasn’t posing for the most famous photographers against the red rocks of New Mexico in her black hat and wrap dress, she preferred wearing loose-fitting Marimekko dresses.   A working studio artist could really move in them to prepare canvases, rehang paintings around the house, or carry around stuff in the pockets. Never mind that the dresses from the popular Finnish design house were marketed as the finishing sartorial touch for any modern Sixties interior.

Feel free to revisit our past blog post about the wildly successful traveling exhibition about Georgia’s fashions here.

See some of our favorite photos, furniture, and items in our Flickr album.

Two of her best friends and travel buddies were Alexander and Susan Girard. Georgia always welcomed the small textiles that Alexander Girard gifted her. Although she never adopted his revolutionary conversation-pit seating, she did get out the sewing notions and turn his iconic designs into small throw pillows placed lovingly (and colorfully) throughout her house. She also covered her kitchen work surfaces in Marimekko oil cloth to make it pop, too.

Visit this fantastic design exhibition on line here, and read more about each of Georgia’s mid-century modern choices.

For more, listen to Giustina Renzoni, the museum’s curator of historic properties, discuss how Georgia turned her modern sensibilities into a legendary high desert home:

And if you’re really interested in what Georgia had in her closet, the next time you’re in New Mexico, sign up for that new extra-special tour!

Video still of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home and her philosophy about home design

Contemporary Art Extravaganza Provides Time-Travel Portals

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The scale and scope of the contemporary art on display is tremendous, but how often do art-seekers also get an opportunity to travel across ancient streets and landscapes, to meet real and fictional historic characters, contemplate fables and real-life stories, and see art of the past and present side by side?

It can take days to experience and fully absorb all of the history and potential futues presented in the films, paintings, sculptures, and installations in Once Within a Time: 12th SITE Santa Fe International, on view across 15 art spaces across Santa Fe through January 12, 2026.

Exhibition banner in the courtyard of Palace of the Governors (1610) (New Mexico History Museum) – gateway to SITE installations by Daisy Quezada Ureña (Santa Fe) and Charisse Perlina Weston. (Harlem, New York)

Besides the expansive white galleries and screening rooms of SITE’s museum in Santa Fe’s always-popping Railyard District, visitors can choose to contemplate giant abstract murals in a church-like auditorium, an innovative historical-object installation in a 400-year-old seat of power, or enter an old foundry to see an evocative installation by a Silk Road artist across farm fields adjacent to the Old Spanish Trail.

SITE Santa Fe gallery theme: appears like real life and sensual free-thinkers. 2025 mixed-media sculpture “18-1-4-5-7-21-14-4” by Patricia Ayres; copper work by Santiago de Paoli; Katja Sieb’s 2025 “perpetual novice” painting; and 2020 grid painting “Atlas” by Penny Siopis (South Africa).
SITE Santa Fe gallery theme: in touch with light (spiritual) – Agnes Pelton’s paintings (1930s), Maja Ruznic’s mural (2025), and the 1895 healing rod of itinerant Southwestern mystic Francis Schlatter. Courtesy: Phoeix Art Museum; New Mexico Museum of Art; Oakland Museum of California; Maja Ruznic and Karma Gallery; and New Mexico History Museum.

In every space and art encounter, visitors may reflect upon whether history is repeating itself and whether inspiration can be drawn from futures that artists imagined nearly a century ago. Each space is designed for visitors to look, read, encounter, and reflect.

In the old foundry at Tesuque: 2024 video As We Fade by Saodat Ismailova (Uzbeckistan), showing visitors to one of Central Asia’s most sacred sites (Throne of Solomon) along the ancient Silk Road; projected across 24 suspended silk screens. Courtesy: the artist and Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca.

The theme for the show – Once Within a Time – is inspired by Godfrey Reggio’s most recent film – a suggestive and wordless mix of innocence, nostalgic images, visual poetry, and the future facing the next generation. The film screens continuously inside SITE, with visitors caught up in Godfrey’s dream-like images, which highlighted in this mesmerizing movie trailer:

Like Godfrey’s film, each space and gallery presents a theme, story, historic character, and provocative contemporary art that pulls back in time, creates an unforgettable experience, and asks the viewer to go inward to contemplate the future. 

Joanna Keane Lopez’s 2024 Batter my heart, three person’d God – adobe, a handmade bed, colcha embroidery showing a radiation cloud, and creosote bush, referencing her family’s experience of living downwind of the Trinity detonation.

SITE’s galleries, for example, present themes such as storytelling, technology and language, the power of spiritual energy, and New Mexico’s undeniable status as a natural Land of Enchantment.  

The exhibition presents traditional New Mexico superstars and inspirations –  Awa Tsireh and Helen Cordero (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Agnes Pelton, Rebecca Salsbury James, Florence Miller Pierce, Pop Chalee (Taos), Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo), and Eliot Porter – alongside artists who are breaking through on the international stage.

Cochiti pueblo ceramicist Helen Cordero’s storyteller figures are paired with Pablita Velardi’s storyteller illustrations (both are inspired by grandfathers and fathers) and Simone Leigh’s epic stone and raffia goddesses.

SITE Santa Fe gallery theme: storytelling. Simone Leigh’s 2025 untiled stoneware and raffia sculpture. At rear, 2025 oil The Solemn and Dignified Burial Befitting My Beloved for All Seasons by Dominique Knowles. Courtesy: Matthew Marks Gallery; the artist and Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles.
Gallery theme: storytelling. Helen Cordero’s 1970 painted clay Storyteller – the creator of the Cochiti Pueblo sculptural tradition, inspired by her grandfather’s stories; championed by patron Alexander Girard. Courtesy: School for Advanced Research.
SITE Santa Fe gallery theme: language Marilou Schultz’s 2024 weaving Integrated Circuit Chip & AI Diné Weaving – a reference to the controvercial 1970s Fairchild Semiconductor chip plant on Navajo Nation staffed primarily with Diné women. Courtesy: private foundation.

The story of the legendary WWII heroes, the Navajo Code Talkers, is featured in a gallery alongside Marilou Schultz’s weavings of chip technology using traditional Diné methods with Fred Hammersly’s ground-breaking IBM computer drawings at the University of New Mexico in 1968-1970. 

Fred was given an opportunity to create the first mainframe-generated art in the form of drawings programmed by traditional IBM punch-card technology and the Art1 program.  SIITE not only displays a selection of the 400 computer drawings that he generated over the course of 18 months, but some of the punch cards he used, which are now archived at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.

Sensual free-thinkers are represented by the story of Santa Fe gambling mogul Doña Tules (Maria Gertrudis Barceló) and her actual 1840s money chest, witty contemporary porcelain playing cards and magical paintings by Katja Seib (UK), and jaw-dropping drawings by Shanghai’s Zhang Yunyao.

SITE Santa Fe gallery theme: sensual free-thinkers. Two of three 2025 Connector drawings by Zhang Yunyao (Shanghai); pencil on stretched felt. Courtesy: the artist, Don Gallery.

Around the corner from Agnes Pelton’s transcendental paintings are Diego Medina’s landscapes reflecting the Piro-Mansa-Tiwa spiritual power inhabiting ancestral lands of Southern New Mexico and also installations about a different type of New Mexico light – the impact of the nuclear energy tests on people living downwind and the legacy of uranium mining across native lands.

SITE Santa Fe gallery theme:In touch with light (nuclear energy): Will Wilson’s 2025 series Hubris on the Land – aerial photography of abandoned 1940s uranium mines on Navajo Nation paired with his documentation of Land Art sites created by Holt, Smithson, Heiser, and Turrell in the 1960s-1970s. Courtesy: the artist

New Mexico’s natural world is paid tribute in stories and artwork by travelers and residents – watercolors of Pueblo spirits and wildlife by Awa Tsireh (Alfonso Roybal) in the 1930s, Vladimir Nabokov’s sketches of butterfly wing cells (1940s-1950s), and Eliot Porter’s spectacular photos of Tesuque jays in the 1960s.

But these examples are just snippets of Once Within a Time – the entire show deserves multiple visits, and time to visit the other locations in the city, such as the hidden basement natural wonderland epic at the Museum of Internatonal Folk Art created by Taiwan ‘s Zhang Xu Zhan. It’s not only an immersive environment, but a film, animal-spirit sculptures, and selections from the MoIFA’s paper funerary object collection.  Don’t miss the Day of the Dead altar, the 18th-century Pere Lachaise Cemetary tribute initially collected by Mr. Girard himself, and paper funerary fantasies made by the artist’s own family. Truly unforgettable.

Museum of International Folk Art: Zhang Xu Zhan’s 2020-2022 paper-animation video Compound Eyes of Tropical (Animal story series), with a Southeastern Asian deer-mouse outwitting a group of predatory crocodiles. Courtesy: the artist and Project Fulfill Art Space, Taiwan.

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian fills the Klah Gallery (in the shape of a traditional hogan) with a meditation on healing by Cristina Flores Pescorán, a wild organic sculpture by Nora Naranjo Morse, and a mini-retrospective of paintings by the incomparable Emmi Whitehorse.

Wheelwright Klah Gallery theme: journeys. Nora Naranjo Morse’s sculpture Into the Forever; on walls, Cristina Flores Pescorán’s 2025 installation Treinta y ocho. Ofrendas para reescribir historia medica y renacer Huaca. Courtesy: the artists

The Tesuque location also features rooms with installations by Mexico’s Guillermo Galindo incorporating burned wood from the recent New Mexico fires (crossed with Picasso’s Guernica),  David Horvitz’s tribute to the men incarcerated in Santa Fe’s Japanese internment camp (and a hat from one them), and Thailand’s Korakrit Arunanondchai’s room-sized contemplation that incorporates the ashes from the burning of Zozobra.

Video of Korakrit Arunanondchai’s 2025 installation Unity for Nostalgia, with floor incorporating ashes from Santa Fe’s Zozobra’s burning and a prayer to the phoenix; layered soundtrack. Courtesy: the artist, Bangkok City Gallery, London’s Carlos/Ishikawa, CLEARNING NY-LA, Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Video of Max Hooper Schneider’s 2025 Written in Sand (Finquita Garden) installation; spheres mysteriously travel sand channels. Courtesy: the artist; Maureen Paley, London, Hove; Francois Ghebaley, Los Angeles, New York.

For more, take a walk through the main exhibit and five other sites in and around Santa in our Flickr album to see work by legendary New Mexican artists, and travel back and forth to see how contemporary art reflects epic histories and mystic systems of the Southwest.

View of historic St. Francis Auditorium (1917) with Maja Ruznic’s 2025 Kisa Pada, Trava Raste, Gora Zeleni installed atop Donald Beauregad’s painting The Conversion of St. Francis; to right, Beauregard’s The Renunciation of Santa Clara.

Sea Dragons of Nevada Brought to Life

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Most fossil fans are familiar with the spectacular Jurassic marine reptiles found by Mary Anning along England’s Dorset Coast in the early 1800s, but few are aware that their predecessors – gigantic Triassic ichthyosaurs (250-201 mya)– have been emerging from the central mountains of Nevada’s Great Basin for the last 125 years.

A beautiful exhibition – Deep Time: Sea Dragons in Nevada – shines a spotlight on these magnificent extinct creatures, brings them to life through life-size animations, and tells stories of scientific discoveries at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno through January 11, 2026.

Life-sized digital animation of swimming ichthyosaur by artist Ivan Cruz, paleontologist Martin Sander, and exhibition designer Nik Hafermaas.

The art museum reunites the state’s stunning Triassic marine reptiles from museum collections across North America, and couples this with an engaging walk through 200 years of paleo-art history starring these enigmatic Mesozoic “sea dragons.”

Triassic ichthyosaur (Cymbospondylus) (245 mya) discovered in Nevada’s Humboldt Range in 1905 by John Merriam and Annie Alexander. Courtesy: UC-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
Reproduction of Frederick Rolle ‘s illustration Geology and Paleontology: Landscape of Europe in the Jurassic Era from Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert’s 1887 Natural History.

The most dramatic spectacle is on the far wall – a life-sized animated recreation of these gigantic swimming creatures by artist Ivan Cruz in collaboration with paleontologist Martin Sander and exhibition designer Nik Hafermaas. From the inky blackness, thousands of points of light emerge, float across the long wall, and coalesce into 3-D sea creatures that appear to swim across the entire length of the room.

Digital animation of swimming ichthyosaurs by artist Ivan Cruz, paleontologist Martin Sander, and exhibition designer Nik Hafermaas.

Take a close-up look at the gorgeous Deep Time exhibition design and ichthyosaur animations by Hafermaas°creative here.

History, adventure, art, and expeditions intertwine. The gallery tells the story of ichythyosaur discoveries across three Nevada mountain ranges – the Humboldt, Shoshone, and Augusta. Each section presents spectacular ichthyosaur fossils and along with tales of intrepid paleontologists who have toiled away in Nevada’s most remote regions for over a century.

Paleontologist and philanthropist Annie Alexander’s Kodak field camera and boots; excavated 25 ichthyosaur fossils with UC-Berkeley 1905 Saurian expedition. Courtesy: UC-Berkeley Bancroft Library and Museum of Vertebrate Paleontolgy Archives.

Nevada’s “sea dragon” story begins in the Humboldt Range in 1867-1868 as the U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, led by Charles King, discovers and collects bits and pieces of ichthyosaur ribs and vertebrae in their survey of the Great Basin. These discoveries spawned national news stories. The fossils ended up in Harvard’s museum collection, so it’s nice to see them here.

Paleontologist Annie Alexander’s field notes and photographs in scrapbook of the UC-Berkeley 1905 Saurian expedition to Nevada’s Humboldt’s Range, where she discovered and excavated 25 ichthyosaur fossils. Courtesy: UC-Berkeley Museum of Paleontolgy.

1905 was a big year for Triassic discoveries in the Humboldt Range.  James Perrin Smith and his team from Stanford collected dozens of ammonites from the Humboldt slopes, and philanthropist Annie Alexander bankrolled (and participated in) John Merriam’s UC-Berkeley Saurian expedition.

Merriam’s team excavated 25 ichythyosaur skeletons, loaded them out by horse-pulled wagons, and then got them back to Berkeley via train.  Annie’s field notebook and photo scrapbook give us a look at the fossils, camp, and the team. In 1907, Annie founded and funded the UC-Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Her subsequent field trips led her to collecting more than Triassic fossils, but Annie’s the one to thank for kicking off spectacular preservation efforts for Nevada’s marine-reptile riches.

And as most fossil hunters know, discoveries are often made inside the collections storage room.  It’s nice to see one of Annie’s 1905 fossils redefined as a new ichythyosaur species in the 21st century by exhibition co-curator paleontologist Martin Sanders!

Found in the Humboldt Range: 245-million-year-old Triassic ichthyosaur skull discovered in 1905; Nicole Klein and Martin Sander have recently reclassified “slender snout” as a new species. Courtesy: UC-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology

The story moves to the Shoshone Mountains near the old silver mining town of Berlin.  In 1928, paleontologist Siemon Muller came across a massive amount of ichthyosaur remains encased in super-hard limestone near Berlin.  Although he told the paleontologists at UC-Berkeley about them, no one followed up until Charles Camp went out to take a look in 1953. He found huge, articulated skeletons that were younger in age than the fossils from Humboldt.

In the Shoshone Mountains: 1954 photo of Charles Camp excavating fossils at the site that will become Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park; Camp’s book Earth Song. Courtesy: University of California Museum of Paleontology; Nevada Museum of Art.
From the Shoshone Mountains: Digital print of front flipper of 228-million-year-old Triassic ichthyosaur (Shonisaurus) discovered in the 1950s by Charles Camp. Courtesy: Nevada State Museum; scan by Alyson Wilkins, Tyler Birthisel, and Randy Irmis. 

Over the next ten years, Camp and his team found and sand-blasted out remains of 40 Triassic ichythyosaurs, which he later named Shonisaurus. In one quarry, the skeletons were so complete and numerous that Camp decided just to uncover their them and leave them exposed in place. People heard about these unique finds from news reports, and came out to marvel for themselves.

By 1957, the site was named a Nevada state park – a place where visitors could large concentrations of the world’s largest ichthyosaurs. Over time, Camp opened ten separate quarries in the area. The fossils Camp removed are now held in the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas.

For the last ten years, palentologists Randy Irmis and Neal Patrick Kelly have been working in the same area. The exhibition includes their recent ichthyosaur discoveries, including baby Shonisaurus bones, teeth, and a snount containing tooth sockets – evidence that the animal was likely a formidable predator.

Watch their video here for a history of ichthyosaur collecting in Nevada, a digital model of Camp’s main quarry, and new fossils

From the Shoshone Mountains: Tooth sockets in snout fragment of a 228-million-year-old Triassic ichthyosaur (Shonisaurus) discovered in 2015 by Randy Irmis, Neal Patrick Kelly, Paula Noble, and Paige dePolo. Courtesy: Natural History Museum of Utah, US Forest Service, and Nevada State Parks. 

The Augusta Mountains has been the site of field work by Martin Sanders and team for nearly 30 years – – old and new ichthyosaur species, which are on display.

Fossilized sea floor with 242-million-year-old Triassic ichythyosaur (Phalarodon) and ammonites; found in 1996 by Martin Sander and Glenn Storrs in Nevada’s Augusta Mountains. Courtesy: Cincinnati Museum/BLM
From the Augusta Mountains: Skull of 243-million-year-old Triassic ichthyosaur (Cymbospondylus) discovered in the 2011 by Martin Sander (excavated 2014). Courtesy: Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County; BLM.

The exhibition includes a whimsical corridor leading to images from 19th-century paleo art and to vintage toys from a dinosaur and prehistoric-animal collector. The final room is a kaleidoscope of nostalgia – images from Europe’s earliest prehistoric ecosystem recreations to dinosaur collectibles from Chicago’s 1934 Century of Progress Fair.

It’s a fun way to observe how scientific thinking has changed about prehistoric marine lifestyles and body plans. Remember when science thought Brontosaurus spent its life submerged in lagoons? Or ichthyosaurs used their flippers to paddle around on land?

Take a look at our favorite fossils and toys in our Flickr album.

Reproduction of 1862 wall-chart illustration by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Enaliosauria (extinct marine reptiles) produced for the UK’s Department of Science and Art, featuring land-dwelling Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus.

To see how art and science were brought together to create this immersive time-travel experience, watch this short documentary from PBS Reno, take a trip to Nevada’s Augusta Mountains with paleontologist Martin Sander and see how artists and designers brought his Triassic creatures to life:

Jewelry Reflects Cosmic Splendor at AMNH

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There’s plenty of dazzling eye candy tucked away in a corner of the Gems and Mineral Hall inside the American Museum of Natural History. Look at sparkly diamonds, rubies, emeralds, turquoise, and every other polished gem you can think of as you contemplate the mysteries of stars, planets, and distant galaxies in Cosmic Splendor: Jewelry from the Collections of Van Cleef & Arpels, on view through January 4, 2026.

The gallery is an ethereal cosmic universe – it feels like you’re floating in deep space where infinite points of light illuminate and reflect thousands of facets of about 60 astronomy-based jewelry creations by the 129-year-old luxury house. It’s a small space, but the illusion suggests the limitless night sky.

Inspired by images of the the spiral Porpoise Galaxy: 2021 Opal Nebula Clip; black opal surrounded by gold, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, tourmaline, and diamonds. From Van Cleef’s Under the Stars high jewelry collection. Courtesy: private collection.

The curators have arranged the dazzlers into loose astronomical themes, like the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Galaxies, but closer inspection demonstrates how the the designers of these works were inspired by the views of the Milky Way, knowledge about black holes or meteors, or images from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The Moon: 1969 yellow gold Moon pendant to commemorate the first men to land there; ruby marks the spot. Courtesy: Van Cleef & Arpels.
2021 Whirlpool Galaxy Clip, inspired by the Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra; blue tourmaline (center) with garnet outer ring. From Van Cleef’s Under the Stars high jewelry collection. Courtesy: private collection.

The masterworks in the AMNH exhibition are drawn primarily from Van Cleef’s Sous les étoiles (Under the Stars) collection, but a few pieces are showstoppers from previous collections inspired by Jules Verne’s sci-fi or NASA’s 1969 Moon landing.

Inspired by Jules Verne’s 1865 sci-fi space travel story – the 2010 gold, sapphire, garnet, and diamond Tampa Necklace. From Van Cleef’s Extraordinary Journeys high jewelry collection. Courtesy: private collection.

See some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

2021 gold, mauve and pink sapphire, ruby, and diamond Doubles Galaxies Saphir Mauve Clip; inspired by the Virgo constellation’s merging Butterfly galaxies. From Van Cleef’s Under the Stars high jewelry collection.
2010 Star Necklace; gold and diamonds flow around an Australian black opal. From Van Cleef’s Extraordinary Journeys high jewelry collection. Courtesy: private collection.

Listen as Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef’s CEO and Artistic Director describes the history and inspiration of the Sous les étoiles (Under the Stars) collection.

Here’s astrophysicist Isabelle Grenier explaining more about the scientific inspiration behind these these jeweled masterpieces.

Before January 4, take a video stroll through the exhibit courtesy of Van Cleef & Arpels here.

Out of This World: 2021 gold, sapphire, and diamond Stellar Explosion Transformable Necklace; designed to be reconfigured as separate necklaces and a clip. From Van Cleef’s Under the Stars high jewelry collection. Courtesy: private collection.