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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:

Judith Lowry Retrospective and Her Great Basin Legacy

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She grew up on US military bases all over the world, and was thankful that her parents exposed her to the best museums, art, and culture in every country they resided. As an adult member of the Pit River Tribe, she moved back to her ancestors’ land in California and Nevada’s Great Basin, and began telling stories of her family’s history and modern Indigenous experience.

The Art of Judith Lowry showcases 40 years of this artist’s work in Reno, Nevada at the Nevada Museum of Art through November 16, 2025 – large-scale painting, triptychs, and installations.

Lowry’s 1997 Red Ribbons depicts herself as a light-skinned Native American teen equipped for battle. Courtesy: The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe.

The museum assembled Lowry’s most celebrated work from major collections across the United States, but is also using the occasion to celebrate Lowry’s own (and her husband’s) gift to the museum with a companion installation of The Lowrey and Croul Collection of Native American Art.

Take a look at some at our favorites from both shows in our Flickr album.

The entry of the exhibition shows how Lowry explores her complex family history at the turn of the last century in frontier ranch lands along the California-Nevada border – images of her biracial great-grandparents and a beautifully mystical depiction of her grandmother. Her regal portrait shows her ancestor’s face tatoos coupled with perfect Victorian dress and small references to the tragedies that befell her family – a symbolic approach Lowry adapted from her deep appreciation of Renaissance works by Bellini, da Vinci, and other masters.

Lowry’s 1997 The Good Marriage – her Native American great-grandmother and German-Irish great-grandfather at their Greenville, California ranch. Courtesy: private collection.
Lowry’s 1999/2012 Edna at Honey Lake depicts her biracial grandmother holding one of her many children who did not survive to adulthood.

A case in the center of the gallery presents Lowry’s paintings for her children’s book about her father and uncle’s Indian boarding-school experience, break out, and unauthorized journey back home.

She also presents family photos and representations of her own growing-up with rich stories and excerpts from her family photo albums. The experience of reading personal history, seeing her ancestors’ faces, and looking at the painted details on her epic canvases is a deep, warm experience that allows you to feel like you’re welcomed into Lowry’s complex and loving family.

Lowry’s 1995 triptych Family: Love’s Unbreakable Heaven showing the moment she understood her family’s unique biracial identity while living at an American military base in Germany. Courtesy: The Rockwell Museum, Corning, New York.

Many of the paintings are satiric takes on the pressures facing contemporary Native Americans navigating life in modern American society – startling theatrical juxtapositions in Indian casinos, retail emporiums, and Renaissance altarpieces.

Lowry’s 1996 Shopping – a sales associate shows the Virgin of Guadalupe’s cloak to a pre-Columbian mother and daughter who are shopping for prom. Courtesy: Peabody Essex Museum

Some of the most arresting works allow us to enter a spiritual realm – magical depictions of legends, stories, and lessons that she heard from her dad growing up.  Lowry’s large-scale, dramatic canvases are immersive – letting us enter the world of the girl-power Star Maidens, who who dance across the sky holding baskets of stars and tossing comets.

Lowry’s 2003 Northern Coast panel from the series Weh-Pom and the Star Sisters celebrating female autonomy and strength. Courtesy: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian
Lowry’s 2003 Southern Coast panel from the story of the the Star Sisters holding their own in the sky and rejecting the advances of trickster Coyote Weh-Pom. Courtesy: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian.

Or letting us enjoy the epic, triumphant forces of natural world that led to the environment Lowry now inhabits in the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas.

Lowry’s 2001 The Race for Fire showing animal spirits charging to retrieve fire from the mountains after a devastating flood. Courtesy: Maidu Museum and Historic Site, Roseville, California.

But at the end of her retrospective, Lowry presents the ultimate immersive experience – an imagined native Northern California roundhouse where visitors can enter, think, and see mystical images of Lowry’s inspiring female ancestors, tribal story-carriers, and cultural symbols.  Visitors enter quietly and linger respectfully, taking in all the details of the painted walls and dome.  See our short video to see Lowry’s comforting interior.

Lowry’s 2005/2025 mixed-media installation K’um de–go–i-dom (Home Place), an imagined Native California roundhouse covered in snow; built for quiet reflection. Courtesy: private collection

After immersion in this spiritual space, visitors enter a bright contemporary gallery displaying some of the 125 contemporary Indigenous works that Lowry and her husband Brad Croul donated to the Nevada Museum – honoring the accomplishments of the notable artists working in the region in the 1990s. The gallery is filled with art by famed Northern California indigenous artists (inspirations and friends like Harry Fonseca and Jean LeMarr. The gift significantly expands the museum’s indigenous contemporary collection.

It’s also a nice punctuation that the spectacular case of beaded glasswork by Lorena Gorbet also features a treasured piece of Judith’s family history – a beautiful grasshopper-stitch basket made by Judith’s great-aunt Annie Gorbet when she was only fourteen years old. 

1914 red maple and willow Grasshopper Stitch Basket by 14-year-old Annie Gorbet [Yamani Maidu (Mountain Maidu)] (Judith’s great aunt) and undated beaded glass water jug and bottles by Annie’s granddaughter, Lorena Gorbet
Car Crash Necklace by Brian Tripp (Karuk); created from auto reflector fragments, river rock, duct tape, fabric, and string.

Lowry’s work and generous collection provide a loving immersion into family, friends, and spiritual traditions of the Great Basin. It’s a rich tribute to a prolific contemporary artist – one who cares about her culture and committed to ensuring its legacy for her region.

Turning Points: Designs That Changed Everything

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It’s always fun when the MoMA design curators dig into the collection and present innovations that make you look – and think – twice. They’ve outdone themselves with the endlessly fascinating, super-popular, and throught-provoking exhibition, Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, on view through November 15, 2025.

Where (and why) did Crocs evolve?  Who improved the paper bag?  Who designed the first emojis? What’s the link between M&Ms and the US military? The exhibition celebrates designers and tells stories about eureka moments – a flash of genius in adapting industrial materials to solve everyday problems in unexpected ways. 

Early 1930s invention for the military by Forrest Mars – M&M’s candy-coated chocolates.

Each design innovation has its own little curtained cubby, giving the exhibit a luxe red World’s-Greatest-Showman vibe with surprises revealed around each bend. The show has it all – beloved technology innovations, fashion twists, furniture innovations, and ubiquitous everyday items that we take for granted.

1950 Bic Cristal Ballpoint pen designed by Marcel Bisch and the Décolletage Plastique Design Team for Société Bic, which eliminated clogs and leaks.
1962 View-Master Model G, a lightweight stereoscope viewer remodeled by Charles Harrison for Sawyer Manufacturing.

See some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

Right at the start, there’s an entire wall where you learn about Shegetaka Kurita, the Japanese innovator who designed emojis in 1998. 

Emojis, designed in 1998-1999 by Shigetaka Kurita for NTT DOCOMO in Japan; 176 designed for mobile phoes and pagers

The earliest innovation honored in the exhibition is the folding, flat-bottomed paper bag designed by Margaret E. Knight and Charles B. Stillwell in the 1870s.  MoMA honors Margaret as one of the first women in the United States to obtain a patent for her invention of the paper-bag manufacturing machine. By unfolding a paper container that “stood up” on its own, clerks were able to pack everything with two hands! Revolutionary shopping efficiency!!

1870s-1880s flat-bottomed paper bag designed by Margaret E. Knight and Charles B. Stillwell

From the early 20th century, we have two European turning points in design – the electric hooded hairdryer and the at-home expresso maker. The Thirties’ version of the Müholos hairdryer is the first invention you see, but its heavy-duty industrial design is a shocker.

The innovative Moka Express expresso pot – invented in Italy during the Great Depresssion – is in every Italian home today. But it was revolutionary in the 1930s because it finally allowed people to economize by brewing at home instead of spending more at the café.

Highly intimidating 1930s hairdryer from the Müholos company of Leipzig, Germany, founded in 1909; innovators in electric hair clippers, too
2008 version of Moka Express designed in 1933 during the Great Depression by Alfonso Bialetti to enable Italians to brew espresso at home.

Going back to 1979, the team honors  Sony Walkman, the portable music wearable that replaced ginormous boom boxes. Steve Jobs and his team gets a nod for their 1983 Mac desktop all-in-one  and everything that came with it – the Oakland font designed by Zuzana Licko for the earliest Mac word processing and Susan Kare’s graphic OS icons. Kare invented the trashcan and didn’t even own a computer!

Although the tech world seems to be bringing it back this season, it’s nice to see the design innovation that began it all – 1996 Motorola flip phone!

Sony’s 1979 “Walkman” audio cassette player (Model TPS L-2) – the first portable listening “bubble”; designed with two headphone jacks for sharing.
1996 Motorola cellular telephone (Model V3682) – the lightest, smallest mobile device (“flip phone”) – designed by Albert Nagele.

And speaking of technology at your fingertips, it’s always nice to see MoMA display full-size 1926 Frankfurt kitchen that influenced every modern kitchen that came after it. After WWI, Germany undertook a big modernization project to alleviate the housing crisis.  Grete Lihetzk, who designed this kitchen was the only woman on the design team, but she made quite a mark!  She studied efficiencies in factory designs and incorporated them into the kitchen – revolving stools, built-in storage, stain-resistant cutting surfaces, and drop-down ironing boards.

1926-1927 Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Grete Lihetzky – a revolutionary, efficient approach with features still used in kitchen design today.

Listen to MoMA’s audio guide to hear the backstories of the Rainbow Flag, early Mac OS design, graphic design improvements to familiar signs, and how artificial acrylic nails became a trend.

Here’s a short history of shapewear:

And learn about the Monobloc Chair (designer unknown). It’s everywhere!

Eternal Signs from the Australian Outback

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It’s not often you find yourself surrounded by vibrant contemporary art that directly connects you to dreams and stories that have been told and retold for tens of thousands of years. Meet some exceptional visual storytellers from nearly twenty Australian regions in Eternal Signs: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kaplan and Levi Collection, on view at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno through November 2, 2025.

This exhibition showcases well-known and emerging artists in different geographic areas of Australia’s north coast and interior desert. See our favorites in our Flickr album and consult the map to locate the communities where the featured artists work.

2011 acrylic painting Wanampi Jukurrpa by Tiger Palpatja (Pitjantjatjara) from Kaltjiti, APY Lands about the water serpent and how sacred rock forms were created.

For thousands of millenia, the indigenous groups in Australia have created rock art, painted spiritual images on eucalyptus bark, and documented their “dreams” – a mix of creation stories, confirmation of people’s integration with the land and animals, and everyday life.  These visual affirmations present a simultaneous representation of past, present, and future, hence the term “eternal signs.”

2001 Saltwater Crocodile by Craig Koometa (Wik-Alkan) from Aurukun, in far north of Queensland; at rear, paintings by artists from Utopia at the edge of the Tanami Desert.

Stories, images, culture, dreams, and language differ greatly among Australia’s 120 indigenous groups. (We’ve indicated each artist’s geographic region and particular language after their name.)

From Arnhem Land in the north, Paddy Fordham Wainburranga (Rembarrnga) from Wugularr, Northern Territory is one of the best-known artists shown. Growing up in the bush, Paddy was eleven when he first encountered anyone outside his traditional community. In the 1970s, he moved to Maningrida, a government-sponsored settlement, and began painting at the Arts & Culture Center. Paddy’s work often depicts ancestral spirits that he first encountered in rock art.

1991 Balangalngalan by Paddy Fordham Wainburranga (Rembarrnga) – a shape-shiting ancestor who guides and heals.
1994 painted wood Manjhkikilyo (Malevolent Mimih Spirit) by Paddy Fordham Wainburranga (Rembarrnga) from Wugularr, Northern Territory – a bad ancestral spirit from ancient cave art.

John Bulunbulun (Ganalbingu), another Maningrida Arts & Culture Center artist, also starts with traditional dreams and forms – for example, he uses a traditional hollow-log coffin as a basis from which to sculpt a three-dimensional dream about the long-necked turtle creator. Take a look.

More recent work by Yirrkala artists in East Arnham reflect ecological concerns and the clans’ interest in protecting ancestral lands. A dramatic sculpture by Guynbi Ganambarr (Naymil) reflects the rich, majestic, and spiritual coastal life of the Grove Peninsula. A masterful wall piece by Djambawa Marawili (Madarrpa) is one in a series that he’s used to affirm his people’s land and sea rights – even used as legal evidence in court cases challenging indigenous rights to land and sea, demonstrating the deep, spiritual meaning behind their claims.

Cormorant catches a freshwater fish: 2011 carved eucalyptus bark Wurran Ga Baypinga by Guynbi Ganambarr (Naymil) from Yirrkala, East Arnhem
2014 Source of Fire by Djambawa Marawili (Madarrpa) from Yirrkala in East Arnhem; ochres and sawdust on bark showing strong ancestral truth-tellers.

Here are two works by the award-winning Petyarre sisters from the area of Utopia on the border of the Tanami Desert in central Australia – an area that began to achieve acclaim as an art center in the late 1990s with dot paintings referencing the landscape and women’s expertise in bush medicine.

Detail of 1992 acrylic Mountain Devil Awelye by Gloria Tamerre Petyarre (Anmatyerre) from Utopia in the central Tanami Desert.
1996 acrylic My Place Atnangkere by Kathleen Petyarre (Anmatyerre) from Utopia in the central Tanami Desert; aerial view of creation story journey across the desert homeland.

We have to give a big shout-out to Robert Kaplan and Margaret Levi for donating over 70 of these amazing artworks to the Nevada Museum of Art. Their passion shows!

In case you aren’t able to enjoy this insightful, beautiful show at the Nevada Art Museum, art lovers will be able enjoy The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art from the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne as it tours across the North America. Right now, The Stars We Do Not See is scheduled for the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. through March 1, 2026.

2008 ochres on linen Sing Out Spring – Yiyili Country by David Cox (Goonlyandi/Walmajarri) from Warmun, Western Australia.

The Stars We Do Not See will travel to the Denver Art Museum (April 19 – July 26, 2026), Portland Art Museum (September 2026 – January 2027), Peabody Essex Museum in Salem (February – June 2027), and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (July 2027 – January 2028).

Two 2004 acrylic paintings Ngura (Country) by Tali Tali Pompey (Pitjantjatjara) from Kaltjiti, APY Lands.

Abstracting Nature in Albuquerque

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How do abstract artists visually channel their response to awesome landscapes? You’ll get a glimpse of how ten artists approach natue and atmospheric phenomenon in Abstracing Nature, an engaging contemporary exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum, on view thorugh October 12.

Works by grand-master abstractionists Richard Diebenkorn and Agnes Martin greet you right at the entrance. 

Diebenkorn isn’t normally associated with New Mexico, but decades before embarking upon his epic Ocean Park series, he spent two years (1950-1952) at the University of New Mexico (1950-1952) working toward his MFA before returning to the West Coast.

Richard Diebenkorn’s 1952 Untitled (Albuquerque), featuring deep earth tones and undulating forms.

The Diebenkorn on display is a recent museum acquisition from those years. Complete abstract expressionist approach to the colors and undulating geologic forms he saw surrounding the post-war boom town.

Martin – the abstractionist grand-dame of New Mexico – made no attempt to hide the fact that her grids and minimal approach were expressions of the tranquililty and serenity she saw and felt from her retreats in Cuba and Galisteo, New Mexico.  She was channeling her emotional, meditative response in her surroundings – not following the reductivist, minimalist trend fo the East and West Coast gallery scene.

By getting up close to the two Martin paintings, you can appreciate her hand-drawn approach. Several stainless-steel sculptures by Agnes Martin’s great friend and student Karen Yank are nearby. The gleaming, hard-edged pieces do not resemble her mentor’s approach, except for the light, gestural touches across the surface.

Agnes Martin’s 1980 acrylic Untitled #6. Courtesy: New Mexico Museum of Art.
Karen Yank’s 2023 steel View with Silhouette VII and other sculptures visible through the portal. Courtesy: the artist.

The large pastels by Emmi Whitehorse look to the landscape and sacred colors of the Navajo Nation inspiration – a poetic approach most evident in Yei Retires to Mt. Taylor. Dramatic blue gestures suggest the spiritual turquoise color associated with the Navajo’s soutnern sacred mountain Tsoodzil.

Emmi Whitehorse 1985 pastel abstraction on canvas Yei Retires to Mt. Taylor.

Abstractions used by textile artist Joan Weissman come from a place of process in which she starts with recognizable nature studies but allows her iterations to become more abstract.  Approaching her seemingly abstract Ginko, only gradually do visitors see that the hand-knotted rug (created at large scale by Pakistani artisans) is an extreme close-up of a leaf. 

Joan Weissman’s 2006 Ginko, a wool and silk hand-knotted rug, highlighting the intricacies of the leaf. Courtesy: the artist

2023 Hearing the Sun by Marietta Patricia Leis. Courtesy: the artist

Mariette Patricia Leis translates her experience of nature more formally. In one case, six seemingly minimalist wall-mounted panels are painted to reflect how we perceive the color of sunlight in different atmospheres and at different times of the day.

Another is a series of abstract panels suggesting horizons across volcanic surfaces during Iceland’s 24 hours of darkness.

Enjoy walking through the full exhibition in our Flickr album.

Detail of 2018 Vacuities by Marietta Patricia Leis inspired by Iceland’s winter night sky. Courtesy: the artist.

Here’s a close look at Judy Tuwaletstiwa’s 2001 Divination. She transformed sand by creating an arrangement of glass objects – cubes, spheres, and organic shapes – all displayed across a soft sand base.

Like the rest of the work in this exhibition, it allows us to think about the natural world, our perception of it, and the many ways that the experience can be transformed into art.

Hanging Out with Georgia’s Stuff

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Fans have had a special opportunity to get up close to that iconic black dress and gaucho hat, OK Calder pin, denim apron, and Marimekko dress in Georgia O’Keeffe: Making a Life, on view in Santa Fe through October 19 2025 at the O’Keeffe Museum.

After you’ve walked through a somewhat chronological presentation of Ms. O’Keeffe’s paintings in the museum, the final two galleries allow you to take a close-up look at tools, cookbooks, and other stuff that she used to make things – sculpture, recipes, pastels, and clay pots.

Photomural of Todd Webb’s 1962 photograph Georgia Making Stew, Ghost Ranch.

Due to the overwhelming popular response to Living Modern, the traveling exhibition that featured O’Keeffe’s wardrobe and chronicled how she portrayed herself for the greatest photographers of the 20th century, the museum curators decided to give visitors a little taste of the woman behind the art.

See some of our favorite things in our Flickr album here, and listen to the museum’s audio guide here.

It’s the first time that the O’Keeffee Museum has itself presented her clothing. To emphasize the “making” part of her life in New Mexico, they’ve included a case showing how Santa Fe artist Carol Sarkasian moonlighted as Georgia’s seamstress. There’s a case with sewing notions and cut pattern pieces for another version of Georgia’s always in-style black wrap dress. She totally believed in multiples!

Georgia’s iconic 1960-1970 wrap dress sewn by Carol Sarkasian with 1950 belt by Hector Aguilar; Tony Vacarro’s 1960 Portrait of O’Keeffe with one of her dogs.
 
Sewing notions, cut fabric, and tissue-paper pattern – Carol Sarkasian’s preparation to make a wrap dress for Ms. O’Keeffe.

She also believed in wearing her clothes for a long time, and so they showed they had years of life.

The most popular feature of her Abiquiu home tour is the kitchen and pantry, and learn about Georgia’s farm-to-table approach with her garden, recipies, and day-to-day lifestyle.  Here, you get a glimpse of the modern and traditional appliances used for her daily coffee ritual (yes, she loved Bustelo!) and get to peruse a sampling of her cookbooks and hand-written recipies. 

Shelves with Georgia’s pantry items

One of her unrealized dreams was to write a cookbook, and it shows. She was all about healthy eating and living, and in her later years she relied upon her trusted Abiquiu team to assist with gardening, cooking, and putting out a spread for the constant stream of visitors.  (No recluse, she!)

From the pantry: Georgia’s cookbooks with her hand-written breakfast, rice, and drink recipe cards.

The final room shows the process and tools she used to create her paintings, pastels, and sculptures. 

There’s a dramatic photomural of Georgia standing in front of her largest sculpture – temporarily housed nearby at the New Mexico Museum of Art until the new GOK museum is built.  Beneath, you see several prototypes – a wax spiral made in 1916 and bronze maquettes from the Forties.

Cast when she was in her nineties, the case demonstrates that she kept making versions of this her whole life and finding inspiration from stuff found on her New Mexico wanderings.

Bruce Webber’s photo of Georgia and her 1979-1980 spiral sculpture; the case below with its inspiration – a ram’s horn and earlier maquettes.

There are things from her travels to Japan, an unfinished work on an easel, and a case showing the pot she made when her assistant, Juan Hamilton, convinced her to keep making shapes, even when her macular degeneration made it impossible for her to paint.

The round, smooth shape echoes the rocks that she liked to collect, so it’s fitting that the museum paired her tools and pot with a beautiful oil painting done of one of her favorites.

1963-1971 Black Rock with White Background; below, Georgia’s 1980 stoneware pot and tools– a pottery wheel bat and Sears rolling pin.
Georgia’s denim studio apron and an unfinished work – a pencil sketch on primed canvas.

For more on Georgia and her life, listen to Pita Lopez, who worked as a companion and secretary for Miss O’Keeffee from 1974 to 1986 and later oversaw maintenance and preservation of her Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch homes.

Sculptor Shonnard Invents a Two-Continent Creative Life

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The joyful retrospective Eugenie Shonnard: Breaking the Mold, on view at Santa Fe’s New Mexico Museum of Art through September 1, 2025, tells the story of a determined young artist in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn who seized opportunities to follow her dream, learn from the best, forge lifelong friendships, and transform inspirations of the nature and culture around her into fine art.

In 1927, Shonnard took up full-time residence as Santa Fe’s first academically trained sculptor. For years, the community considered her the “dean of sculpture”, but after she passed away in 1978 at the age of 91, gradually her legacy and accomplishments faded into obscurity.

1930 portrait of Eugenie Shonnard in her sculpture studio by Wilford S. Conrow.

This year, the Museum chose to showcase Shonnard’s range of accomplishments – sculpture, painting, furniture, and architectural design. The strategy has worked, since most visitors remark, “What a beautiful body of work! Why haven’t we heard about her before?

Looking at the strong, robust sculptures of Breton peasants and Native American celebrity Dr. Charles Eastman featured in the introductory gallery, you would never guess that Shonnard started life as a sickly child whose wealthy parents kept her close to home. She spent lots of time outdoors with pets, nature, and the serenity of the Hudson Valley.

Shonnard’s 1923 granite portrait of a Basque woman, La Grandmére.
Shonnard’s 1926 direct-carved mahogany portrait of Dr. Charles Eastman, Chief Ohiyesa Communing with the Great Spirit.

Always considered a talented watercolorist, her teenage life took quite a turn when her mother allowed her to enroll in the New York School of Applied Design for Women – a school that taught proficiency in the “lesser arts” like lacemaking, wallpaper design, and book illustration, and cover design so that young women could have “appropriate” careers.

Shonnard’s 1907 pencil and watercolor design in the pastel “Mucha style” – organic designs framing ethereal woman with flowing tresses.

The most sought-after course was a figure drawing class taught by a visiting European professor – the famous Art Nouveau superstar Alphonse Mucha. A master draughtsman and designer, he taught students how to convey human expression in quick, sure, animated line and to use expressive, organic designs from nature to give their work a modern something extra.

Mucha immediately recognized Shonnard’s skill in blending human empathy and line, and advised her to think beyond what was offered at her school. He suggested that she go to Paris, train with top European sculptors (he’d provide letters of introduction), and seriously purse a “fine arts” path.  

Although her doctors advised her against making the long transatlantic passage, she and her mother set off for Paris in 1911. She loved it! She followed up with Mucha’s suggestions (and contacts), began her fine-arts sculptural training, and met other young American female sculpture students (like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Malvina Hoffman) who were soaking up all of the influences that the Parisian modern art scene offered.

Although he had retired from teaching students, Rodin made an exception for Shonnard and told her he’d be happy to review her work periodically. She worked across a variety of sculptural media (stone, clay, wood) in the atelier of Antoine Bourdelle (an early adoptor of Art Deco who also taught Matisse), showed with the American Woman’s Art Association, and exhibited at the Paris Salon.

When World War I forced Shonnard’s return to New York, she enrolled at the Art Students League for classes with superstar American sculptor James Earle Fraser.

Two of Shonnard’s popular garden commissions – a crane and pelican.

Combining everything she learned from Rodin, Mucha, Bourdelle, and Fraser, she began to excel in stripping her depictions of her subjects down to the essentials that captured each person (or animal’s) inner spirit.

Inspired by Brittany: Shonnard’s 1926 oak Figure of a Woman. Courtesy: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas

Her career began to take off – commissions for sculptures, shows in New York, and acclaim for her portraits of people and gentle animals. Shonnard made the most of it, showing at New York galleries and the Booklyn Museum, working with her mentor Mucha, and criss-crossing America and Europe in the 1920s.

Like decades of artists before her, she was often drawn to Brittany to capture the spirituality, nature, and culture of the people in her art.

In 1925, she made a fortuitous stop in New Mexico at the invitation of museum director Edger Lee Hewitt, who introduced her to the thriving art community and innovative Native American artists. 

As with Brittany, much about the Southwest resonated with her – dramatic landscapes, spirituality of ancient New Mexican cultures, and the unique architecture and religious art of old churches.  She also drove out into the country to create plein air watercolors of the same Abiquiu landscapes that later inspired O’Keeffe.

Shonnard’s 1925 watercolor of Abiquiu’s unique landscape, Red and White Cliffs with Mesa.

Her sculptures inspired by her New Mexico experience created a sensation in Paris in 1926 – beautiful, direct-carved portraits from the faraway Southwest on display next to her work from Brittany.

Shonnard’s untitled 1925 mahogany Indian bust, shown in her solo show in Paris.

By 1927, Shonnard moved permanently to Santa Fe and began her own full-time studio from which she produced commissions, designed Southwest-inspired furniture, and explored Spanish and Pueblo cultures more deeply.

The exhibition includes designs for private chapel commissions with John Gaw Meem, examples of her furniture, and keenstone panels – her lightweight material invention that liberated her from manipulating heavy granite and wood in her studio, so she could keep carving and sculpting with a lighter material well into her seventies.

People who knew Shonnard said that she exuded a positive spirit throughout her life, seeking harmony with nature, animals, and people. It’s fitting that this retrospective includes a large room populated with her beloved birds, woodland, and backyard animals, and concludes with works by local artists she admired and whose works she collected – Maria and Juan Martinez and Awa Tsireh.

Detail of Shonnard’s Madonna sculpture.
Shonnard’s 1950 portrait Maria, a tribute to the acclaimed San Ildefonso artist.

Get to know this Santa Fe legend by looking through all her beautiful work (and work by her mentors) in our Flickr album.

Celebrating Juan Pino, First Pueblo Printmaker

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It’s been just over 100 years ago that Juan Pino of Tesuque Pueblo popped into the Santa Fe studio of Charles Kassler, and experienced his enthusiasm about linoleum printmaking – a new-ish way to make multiple images without using an expensive press or chemicals.

Charles offered Juan some materials to take home so he could try it, and Juan got to work. See the results in Printing the Pueblo World: Juan Pino of Tay Tsu’geh Oweenge, on display at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture through August 17, 2025.

Take a look at our favorites in our Flickr album.

Exhibition banner on Museum Hill

Unlike his friend Kassler, who trained formally at Princeton and the Art Institute of Chicago, Juan received his artistic training in the Pueblo world, learning observation, craftsmanship, and patience from the ceramic and textile artists around him. By 1924, booming tourism in Northern New Mexico had created a big market for modern and traditional pueblo ceramics (think Maria Martinez and Margaret Tafoya) and for pueblo painters, like Julian Martinez and Awa Tsireh (Alfonso Roybal).

Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of people by the church in the Tesuque Pueblo plaza

Juan was an expert in wood carving, ceramics, textiles, and crafting dance regalia, but like most artists of his day, he juggled his artistic output with other income-generating pursuits – farming, gathering and selling home-heating wood, and posing as a model for Anglo artists flocking to the vibrant Santa Fe art colony.

Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of three corn dancers – depicting himself, Vecillio Herrera, and Candido Herrera.

For linocut printmaking, you just cut your design into linoleum – a relatively accessible material since it was manufactured for use in kitchen floors or wall coverings for new homes. Once the block was carved and inked, you could either apply manual pressure to make the multiple images or ask a fellow artist to borrow their press.

Carving images into linoleum came naturally, and Juan started depicting the world around him in Tesuque – not just romanticized images of Indian life. Juan carved and printed the daily comings and goings of his fellow villagers in the pueblo plaza and images of traditional dances.

For all the car traffic and hubub on the streets of Santa Fe during the 1920s, Tesuque pueblo life still had elements of traditional Tewa ways.  Archaeologists have found remnants of village buildings dating back to 1200 CE, so Tesuque is one of the longest inhabited communities in the United States.

Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of two men harvesting wheat

Taking in the twenty prints in the exhibition allows us to see day-to-day life as it was 100 years ago in the historic pueblo – making ceramics at home, harvesting, using oxen on the farm at a time just before horses replaced them as the work animal of choice.  We can even see detailed black-and-white depictions of the regalia men were wearing for the Corn Dance – including one print that likely includes a self-portrait!

After only a few months of making linoprints in 1925, Juan’s work was displayed at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Santa Fe and Pueblo artists celebrated his accomplishment as the first Pueblo artist to try his hand at printmaking. In Santa Fe’s commercial gallery market, however, tourists were more inclined to purchase prints and paintings that showed more romanticized visions of Indian life.

Juan kept creating, and seeing so much of his work 100 years later is truly a revelation – a set of quiet, enjoyable glimpses of everyday life at the foot of the Sangre de Christo Mountains.

Juan Pino’s 1925 linocut print of a voyaging man. Courtesy: Indian Arts Research Center, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe.

The show also has a beautiful touch that emphasizies Juan’s continuing artistic output: two large ceramic pieces from the Thirties and Forties created by his wife, Lorencita Pino. It’s likely Juan used his steady hand to apply strong, black lines – skills so evident in his masterful design for his slice-of-life print series.

Lorencita Pino ceramics likely painted by her husband, Juan Pino – a 1940 dough bowl with cloud and scroll designs and 1930 jar with bird and scroll design.
1925 linocut print of woman making pottery near fireplace…is it Lorencita?

Light, Space and Time in Albuquerque

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Drift into another dimension in Light, Space, and the Shape of Time at the Albuquerque Museum through July 20, 2025. The show, with significant works from the museum’s own collection, harkens back to the founders of California’s 1960s Light and Space movement, but also presents work by contemporary artists – many from New Mexico – who continue to explore the same phenomenon.

The curators have arranged the exhibition to show how artists use light, space, and time as subjects through which visitors can slow down, contemplate, and experience.

Detail of Soo Sunny Park’s 2013 Unwoven Light, an installation that seems to move as visitors walk through it. Courtesy: the artist

For more, see some of our favorites works in our Flickr album.

The first section showcases works where artists use light as the primary medium. Visitors can enjoy works by some of the most famous innovators from the Sixties and Seventies – Robert Irwin, who inspired a generation of West Coast art students to think differently; Dan Flavin, who merged minimalism with industrial light; and Helen Pashgian, who makes magic from luminous resins.

Irwin’s 2011 piece appears minimal, but his six fluorescent-light colors can be activated in four different variations, and he associated each with agricultural colors of Southern California. You can enjoy looking at Lucky You for its purity of form, or contemplate Irwin’s recollections of home.

Two fluorescent works by Space and Light superstars – Robert Irwin’s 2011 Lucky You and Dan Flavin’s 1987 untitled (in honor of Leo at the 30th anniversary of his gallery. Courtesy: Thoma Foundation

Behind the black curtain, you can enter a tranquility chamber. Helen Pashgian’s 2021 installation provides an unforgettable experience to visitors to slow down and wait. What are you seeing? The frosted, peach-colored epoxy sculpture at center stage appears dissolve in the light-filled space as lights slowly change. It’s like watching show changes to the sky during a dramatic sunset, but it’s light, white, ethereal, and pure.

Helen Pashgian’s 2021 untitled (peach lens) – the lens dissolve into space as the light changes to sunrise and sunset modes. Courtesy: Tia Collection

All-star word artist Jenny Holtzer’s Red Tilt takes an absolutely maximalist approach with multiple LED displays – a too-much, all-at-once, never-stopping tsunami of emotional words from her own story about survival and trauma.

Leo Villareal’s piece Scramble is the opposite. Albuquerque-bassed Villareal creates a mesmerizing, tranquil, never-repeating abstraction by programming LED lights. He’s done this on a larger scale in his epic commissions to light the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and all of London’s bridges over the Thames. Here, visitors get a more intimate experience – slowing down to watch Scramble’s gently changing colors and know what they’re seeing is unique to the moment.

Jenny Holtzer’s 2002 LED display, Red Tilt. Courtesy: Thoma Foundation
Leo Villareal’s 2011 Scramble, a programmed LED artwork that changes constantly. Courtesy: Thoma Foundation

Larry Bell’s 1984 installation is the centerpiece of exhibition’s exploration of how artists use light, illusion, and technology to explore (and play with) our perceptions of space. Direct from his retrospective in Phoenix, Bell’s barely-there The Cat is a delicate but monumental presence in the show.  Huge, planes of coated and non-coated glass require a circumnavigation. Moving around, you can see how works are reflected and how some opaque surfaces block views of others.

Larry Bell’s 1984 The Cat – rectangles of coated and uncoated float glass.

Two nearby works by Santa Fe-based August Muth offer visitors a more intimate experience. Muth uses a holographic etching technique in which he creates the illusion of a “floating” image.

August Muth’s 2024 holographic etching Shadow Within Light. Courtesy: Pie Projects Contemporary Art.
August Muth’s 2022 holographic etching Terra Solaris. Courtesy: Pie Projects Contemporary Art.

The exhibition concludes with a magnificent installation by Soo Sunny Park – an installation of lights and plexiglass pieces that appear to move as you move through. Take a peek in this video.

Detail of Soo Sunny Park’s 2013 Unwoven Light installation with tiles that appear to move as the visitor moves through it. Courtesy: the artist