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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.

MIAC Connects Diné Textiles to Land and Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pathfinder Marcus Amerman at The Wheelwright

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alma Thomas Splashes Denver with Color

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For a pop of color in the winter season, see Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art at the Denver Museum of Art through January 12 and at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York February 8 through May 25, 2025.

Denver has welcomed this mid-century modern painter with open arms, with visitors lounging in several living-room settings surrounded by abstractions from the Sixties and Seventies by a Washington, D.C. painter who born in the late 19th century but who lived to see a man land on the Moon.

1960 Red Abstraction by Alma Thomas. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Alma Thomas grew up in Georgia, and earned the first fine arts degree ever granted by Howard University in 1924.  After receiving a masters in education from Columbia, Alma spent the next 30 years teaching in Washington, D.C. public schools. 

Ida Jervis’s 1968 photo Alma Thomas working in her studio. Courtesy: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

But she stayed close with her professors at Howard, who founded the Barnett Aden Gallery, one of first racially integrated and Black-owned art galleries in the United States.  Alma served as the gallery’s VP, which displayed a who’s who of contemporary African-American artists, like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Henry O. Tanner. 

By the early 1950s, Alma’s work was regularly shown in exhibitions at the gallery. When Alma finally retired from teaching in 1960 at age 69, she was finally able to paint full time. The Smithsonian’s exhibition features Alma’s work from this highly productive period.

Take a look at our favorites in our Flickr album.

The exhibition is centered around three subjects that inspired her – nature, the cosmos, and music. Her vivid color paintings welcome you to the exhibition but around the corner you see what really inspired her – a wall-sized photo of Alma’s beloved flower garden. 

Mid-century modern lounge in the Denver exhibition with paintings by Alma Thomas inspired by her garden

She loved the changing seasons, the patterns of gardens, and patterns observed by light flickering through the crepe myrtles in her garden or through the trees on her walks through DC’s endless greenways and parks.

1976 oil Fall Begins, suggesting rustling leaves. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Detail of 1972 acrylic, Arboretum Presents White Dogwood. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The exhibition also features an immersive environment where visitors can use colors and shapes from Alma’s paintings to splash supersized across the gallery walls.

Room in Denver where visitors use filters to create lightscapes on the gallery walls.
1976 acrylic, Grassy Melodic Chart. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

By the 1970s, Alma’s love of music and rhythm were reflected in her abstractions, although the titles of her canvases tell us that she saw expressive melodies in nature too.

Captivated by the promise of technology, Alma also reveled in the mysteries and rhythms of the planets, space, and those frontiers of exploration. She really felt that the Moon, planets, and stars represented the peace and harmony that were sometimes lacking on Earth.

Always searching for beauty in the world, continuing to paint, and contemplating a brighter future, Alma achieved unprecedented art-world recognition in 1972 at age 80 –a one-woman show at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Not bad for a gal who grew up in “horse and buggy days” in Georgia! Thank you to the Smithsonian for collecting Alma’s work and producing this joyful, colorful show.

1970 acrylic The Eclipse, based on the March 7, 1970 total solar eclipse. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.
1973 acrylic Celestial Fantasy. Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Click here to read more in Denver’s exhibition guide and watch this short glimpse of the galleries below:

Listen to curator Rory Padeken discuss Alma Thomas’s life and work with artist Jordan Casteel, choreographer and dancer Cleo Parker Robinson, and floral artist Breigh Jones-Coplin.

O’Keeffe Above and Beyond the Grid

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Six years before she became transfixed with the drama of the colorful New Mexico desert, Georgia O’Keeffe began translating another magnificent, magical view from her skyscraper home in Manhattan. You can see all her transformational aerial cityscapes in Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks” on view at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art through February 16, 2025.

Created by the Art Institute of Chicago, the show assembles Georgia’s breakthrough city paintings and puts them squarely into the context of her better-known nature close-ups and other modernist takes – just the way she wanted it.

O’Keeffe’s 1927 Radiator Building – Night, New York. Courtesy: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Listen to the Art Institute curators talk about Georgia’s approach to New York landscapes, her life in the city’s Roaring Twenties, and what inspired her walking Manhattan’s grid at a time of of such transformational urban change:

As a total modernist, Georgia couldn’t wait to move into the Shelton Hotel, a brand-new skyscraper, with her brand-new husband (Stieglitz) in 1924. As half of New York’s art-world “power couple” it’s most likely that Georgia was one of the first women to enjoy high-rise living in Manhattan.

O’Keeffe’s 1926 The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. Courtesy: Art Institute of Chicago

The Shelton (still there at Lexington and 49th Street) was an apartment-hotel built in Midtown around Grand Central. Although it was first envisioned as a men’s residence, the marketing team soon pivoted a more expanded market with newspaper ads that would attract women, couples, and artists!

Read more about the Shelton, Georgia’s life there, and see 1920s photographs on the Art Institute’s blog post.

Georgia and Alfred moved in, captivated by the views of the East River and rapidly changing Manhattan skyline, where new skyscrapers were popping up like daisies.  Alfred took photographs and Georgia recorded ths shifting light, atmosphere, and moods of the rapidly changing landscape.

O’Keeffe’s 1928 East River from the 30th Story of the Shelton Hotel.
Courtesy: New Britain Museum of American Art.

As the exhibition demonstrates, Georgia didn’t limit herself to urban landscapes at the time. She was still depicting the natural world, but was determined to channel the rising modern city.  At the time, Alfred and her fellow artists strongly discouraged her from displaying her urban work, arguing that painting cityscapes was “best left to the men.”  You can just imagine what our Georgia thought about that! Naturally, it was full steam ahead! 

Before Google Street view, Georgia walked the Midtown Grid, exploring (and remembering) her neighborhood streets as they transformed into skyscraper canyons. More high rises! The Empire State Building! Rockefeller Center!

O’Keeffe’s 1926 City Night. Courtesy: Minneapolis Institute of Art
O’Keeffe’s 1925 New York with Moon. Courtesy: Carmen Thyssen Collection

Who knows if Georgia ever experienced Manhattanhenge, but she certainly enjoyed the verticality and sky views between the buildings.  A nature-lover, modernist, and virtuoso painter! 

Despite Stieglitz’s misgivings about her city paintings, when she finally had her annual one-woman show at his gallery, her city painting was the first work that sold!

The curators have hung some of Georgia’s paintings just as she displayed them – side-by-side flower close-ups, other nature-inspired works, and City views – to provide the full experience of a modern woman’s mastery.

O’Keeffe’s 1924 From the Lake, No. 1.
Courtesy: Des Moines Art Center
O’Keeffe’s 1929 Black Cross, New Mexico.
Courtesy: Art Institute of Chicago

For more, here’s a longer discussion about Georgia rip-roaring 1920s life and work by one of the Chicago Art Institute curators for Georgia O’Keeffe Museum members.

Pueblo Pots Speak in “Grounded in Clay”

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Contemporary artists say they can hear their ancestors speak across generations. All they have to do is hold their community’s ancient pots – living beings that connect them to the Earth and the people from the past who made them.

You can hear these modern and ancient voices and see ceramic masterworks in Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, an exhibition on view the The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through January 12, 2025; continuing at the St. Louis Art Museum March 7 to September 14, 2025; and on display at the Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque from March 2026 to February 2027.

In video at Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Clarence Cruz (Okay Owingeh) reflects on a pots’s personal meaning

Clay is central to Pueblo culture, and this show is special, because it’s the first major exhibition of Pueblo pots curated entirely by the indigenous community – artists, leaders, teachers, and museum professionals.

1900 Tewa-Hopi Hno jar selected by Erin Monique Grant (Colorado River Indian Tribes); it reminded her of her Hopi family. Courtesy: Vilcek Collection.

For the 100th birthday of the Indian Arts Research Center at School for Advanced Research (SAR), the exhibition debuted in 2023 at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and then traveled to New York to open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1907-1910 bowl by Nampeyo (Tewa/Hopi) selected by her great-great-grandson artist Dan Namingha. Courtesy: SAR

New York’s Vilcek Foundation co-sponsored the community-curation project, exhibition, and project website. The organizers consulted with sixty curators from 22 pueblo communities across the Southwest to select work from the IARC collection and write about the spirit of these works. Communications weren’t always easy, since Internet service (email) is still spotty on some tribal lands.  

But The Pueblo Collective’s inclusive approach to create the exhibition and catalog is now considered a template for major art institutions to work with tribal communities to convey their stories and culture to the public..

The IARC collection is legendary, spanning prehistoric to modern-day works. This video takes you inside IARC archive to meet a few of the Pueblo curators and the pots they selected:

Utilitarian vessels, ancient legacies, and intergenerational connections are themes explored in the 2023 installation at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. The exhibition design artfully integrated the words and thoughts of the curators in, around, and above the spectacular selections. Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

Two 19th-century Tesuque water jars: a jar chosen by artist Marita Hinds (Tesuque), who saw it on a 1980s class field trip; and one admired by potter Bernard Mora (Tesuque) for its personality and imperfections. Courtesy: SAR

In some cases, a curator chose an Ancestral Pueblo pot from the 1100s and reflected on how well it’s survived today. In other cases, a curator discovered their grandmother’s pot stored for decades within the IARC collection. What a joy to bring it out and let it breathe! Listen in….

This statement about Lonnie Vigil’s magnificent vessel by Nora Naranjo Morse says it all.  The MIAC gallery space recreated a Pueblo kitchen so we can experience the environment in which most Pueblo potters create their work.

1995 micaceous clay jar made by Lonnie Vigil (Nambe) selected by Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara) because it glitters like stars. Courtesy: SAR
Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s replica of Pueblo kitchen where most pottery is created

And here’s how the Met featured Lonnie’s showstopping work – made on his kitchen table – prominently in the American Wing entrance!

Micaceous clay jar by Lonnie Vigil (Nambe) in the show’s entrance at the Met’s American Wing. Photo by Richard Lee; courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum

The project website presents the curators’ biographies, their selections, and stories.

Listen to the Met’s 2023 panel with five curators behind this magnificent community-curated indigenous exhibition and find out why they believe understanding the vessels’ power is important:

Fernandez Curates Smithson at SITE Santa Fe

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It’s not often you get to see Robert Smithson’s large-scale works inside gallery walls. Strolling through SITE Santa Fe’s magnificent Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson exhibition, through October 28, provides an opportunity to see how a contemporary Brooklyn-based Cuban-American artist – inspired by landscape and societal histories of the Caribbean – positions her own work “in conversation” with Smithson’s 1960s-1970s geologic works, drawings, and photo installations.

SITE invited art-world superstar Teresita Fernández to curate this show with the Santa Fe-based Holt/Smithson Foundation. Prior to her deep dive into Smithson’s career, her primary knowledge centered around his 1970 epic Spiral Jetty – 6,650 tons of rock and earth jutting out from the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Smithson’s 1969-1970 Mirrors and Shelly Sand and two by Fernández: 2009 Drawn Waters (Borrowdale) and 2024 Sfumato (Epic) 2. Courtesy: Dallas Museum of Art; the artist and Lehmann Maupin.
Still from Robert Smithson’s 1970 film Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah. Courtesy: Holt/Smithson Foundation.

But Fernández found a lot more from Smithson’s too-short career that she could couple with her own work to create SITE’s spectacular installation. Both artists use landscapes, deep time, ancient history, and travel.

Smithson’s 1968 installation A Nonsite (Franklin, New Jersey) with 2020 Archipelago charcoal work by Teresita Fernández. Courtesy: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; private collection

In the first gallery, Fernández selected a Smithson “nonsite” work – a minimalist series of boxes, each packed with rocks from the decidedly unromantic site of Franklin, New Jersey. Smithson’s “nonsite” includes a framed aerial photo that appears to document the site, but it’s a “readjusted” depiction of it. Not what it seems.

Next to the “nonsite,” Fernández hangs Archipelago, a charcoal wall sculpture., which appears to be a legit map, but it’s not. It’s an imagined map of separate Caribbean islands and continents linked together, making us reflect upon their shared socio-political colonial histories.

Viñales (Plateau) is a wall-sized “stacked landscape” depicting Cuba’s Viñales Valley, home of ancient karst caves once inhabited by Taino people and later where escaped plantation slaves sought refuge. At a distance, it evokes the valley’s ecological, social, and political legacies; up close, you see that the image is made up of thousands of tiny ceramic tiles. Something to get lost in.

2019 ceramic mosaic by Teresita Fernández Viñales (Plateau). Courtesy: the artist and Lehmann Maupin.

Both artists use reflection in their works. Manigual (Mirror) by Fernández– a tropical forest created from charcoal and sand – is affixed to a reflective surface, so you can “see yourself” in the charred thicket when you get right up to it. Smithson designed his earth-and-mirror Red Sandstone Corner Piece so that every gallery goer’s image is part of the visual experience – from close up, far back, and far away. You’re linked to the red sandstone.

Detail of 2023 Manigual (Mirror) by Teresita Fernández. Courtesy: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

On the other hand, Smithson famous photographic series, Yucatán Mirror Displacements, documents his meticulously arranged mirrors set into Mexico’s coastal landscapes. Just reflections of landscape and sky in all the settings he documented his set of mirrors; no people.

Detail of Smithson’s 1969 Yucatán Mirror Displacements (1-9). Courtesy: Guggenheim Museum.

Nature’s continual ebb and flow, the Earth’s surface, ecosystems, and the cosmos ­are all subjects explored by both artists.What’s beneath the Earth’s surface, forces of nature, and human impact on it all pop up covertly in every room.  See more in our Flickr album.

Detail of 2017 charcoal work by Fernández Charred Landscape (America). Courtesy: the artist, Lehmann Maupin.
Detail of Smithson’s 1971 ink drawing A Profile of the Atlantic Bottom. Courtesy: private collection.

And learn more about the “conversations” that works by these artists are having in the curator lectures in SITE Santa Fe’s videos with Fernández herself and her co-curator from the Holt/Smithson Foundation.

Detail of Robert Smithson’s 1961-1963 paint and photo collage Algae, algae. Courtesy: Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery.
Detail of 2019 graphite-covered shell installation Chorus by Teresita Fernández. Courtesy: the artist and Lehmann Maupin.

National Gallery Celebrates 50 Contemporary Native Artists

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If you want to take a trip across American land with 50 living Native artists, there’s still time to catch the ground-breaking exhibition, The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, at Connecticut’s New Britain Museum of American Art through September 15, 2024.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. asked Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) to survey the United States and create an exhibition reflecting the diversity of the living Native American artists.

2014 wool weaving World Traveler by Melissa Cody (Navajo). Courtesy: Stark Museum of Art.

Smith, whose own artistic achievement was honored most recently in a three-museum retrospective in 2023-2024, became the first artist invited to curate a show at the National Gallery.

Entrance banner features Orchestrating a Blooming Desert by Steven Yazzie (Diné/Laguna Pueblo).

Smith has always done whatever possible to increase the visibilty of Native artists in the contemporary art world. For this exhibition, she chose 50 intergenerational artists from diverse regions, cultures, and artistic practices. Look at our Flickr album of the National Gallery installation to see some of our favorites.

All of the works reflect the artists’ deep connection to the land, especially Orchestrating a Blooming Desert by Steven Yazzie (Diné/Laguna Pueblo), a painting that reflects one man’s joyful encounter with a lush landscape.

Some works depict a tribe’s link to the natural world through origin stories. Visitors are mesmerized by Preston Singletary’s exquisite sculpture of Tlingit creation-myth legend, Raven stealing the Sun. It’s glorious to admire this dramatic icon fully realized in a distinctly nontraditional medium – blown and sand-carved glass.

Experiencing the large, spiritual earth-colored ceramic figure by Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo) harkens back to eras when people had a more integral connection to the earth. Simpson calls her figure Tonantzin, an Aztec name for earth mothers, corn mothers, and even the Virgin of Guadalupe.

2017 blown and sand-carved glass Raven Steals the Sun by Preston Singletary (Tlingit). Courtesy: private collector.
2021 ceramic, steel, leather, and brass Tonantzin by Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo). Courtesy: Tia Collection.

Smith has chosen to hang many smaller two-dimensional works across a long wall in a checkerboard to suggest that visitors reflect on the impact of 1887 Dawes Act upon Native lands – a law that cut Native territory into “checkerboard” lots to facilitate private ownership.

At the National Gallery, Jeffrey Gibson’s punching bag (all made of found materials) was hung nearby, reminding us of the delicate balance that has to be struck by simultaneously caring for and taking gifts from the earth.

Next to checkerboard wall, the 2020 beaded punching bag To Feel Myself Loved On the Earth by Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee Nation). Courtesy: Hirschhorn Museum.

Some artists mix impressions of modern life with tribal lands, such as satiric works by Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo) and stylized symbols in a monoprint by Joe Fedderson (Colville Confederated Tribes).

2017 lithograph Girl in the Anthropocene by Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo). Private collection

In addition to sculptures, paintings, and photos, Smith has also included pieces made for fashion runways, live performances, and social protests.

Fashion designer Jamie Okuma (La Jolla Band of Luiseno Indians) beaded her fringed fashion boots with a portrait of her family’s pet scrub jay.

Ten foot-long fiber seashell earrings designed for an interactive video and gallery performance by fiber and performance artist Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) are a reminder of the ancient trade networks that brought trade items from the ocean to the interior deserts.

2021 beaded and fringed Casedei boots by Jaime Okuma (La Jolla Band of Luiseno Indians). Courtesy: Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum
2020 mixed-fiber installation jaatloh4Ye’iitosoh [3-4] by Eric-Paul Riege (Diné). Courtesy: Tia Collection.

A wall of “mirror shields” were mounted by artist-activist Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota), showing just a small sample of the 1,000 protective and reflective shields made by people to help water protectors during thre 2016 pipeline intervention at Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation, Luger’s childhood home. Take a look at Luger’s instruction video here.

The shields served to protect the peaceful protesters from rubber bullets and water cannons, and reflected images of the security forces back to them. The crowd-sourced shields were also used in a social-action performance piece at Standing Rock.

2016 mirror shields and video for Mirror Shield Project – River (The Water Spirit) by Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota). Courtesy: the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery.

Textiles and vinyl drawings also pack a punch in this show. Take a look at the dazzler woven by Melissa Cody (Diné), who draws inspiration from video gaming and the matriarchs of Navajo Nation. Watch her interview from her recent exhibition at MoMA PS1.

Here, John Hitchcock explains how his room-sized drawing, Impact vs. Influence, incorporates his influences – nature, family, Native beadwork, and the next-door military base:

Take a look the National Gallery’s trailer and meet the 50 contemporary artists whose work and relationship to the land is celebrated in the show:

Out West in New Mexico

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The artist stories and works presented in Out West: Gay and Lesbian Artists in the Southwest 1900-1969, at the New Mexico Museum of Art through September 2, 2023, shed light on artists who lived a bit more “under the radar” in the early 20th century, compared to the post-1969 era when loud and proud artists unleashed their voices in response to the Stonewall Riots.

The exhibition focuses on how early modernists used “coded” symbols in their work, explores the legacies of two-gendered Native American artists, and introduces mid-century work by mid-century contemporary artists working.

Marsden Hartley’s 1919 still life El Santo, featuring Hispanic Catholic objects of northern New Mexico.
Russel Cheney’s 1929 New Mexico/Penitente showing a bulto, axe, and flowers associated with the Penitente brotherhood.

Take a look at our favorites in our Flickr album.

The show opens with works by Marsden Hartley and Russell Cheney – painted 10 years apart (1919 and 1929) that feature items associated with rituals by Northern New Mexico’s Penitentes – Catholic men’s associations that kept faith alive during the 19th century when clergy were scarce in their remote mountain towns.

Hartley and Cheney were captivated by the religious rituals of these mysterious, faithful “brotherhoods” that persevered for centuries, despite periodic bans by New Mexico’s Catholic Church – not unlike the early 20th century gay men’s associations whose underground culture gave rise to “coded” rituals and language.

Hence, these works feature images of the suffering Christ, yucca plants used for self-mortification rituals, adobe churches, and props associated with processional death carts – symbols of religious brotherhood that represent the importance of brotherhood among the early 20th century gay community.

The second portion of the show introduces us to the many painters, photographers, and sculptors who not only drew artistic inspiration from the Southwest, but found communities that welcomed gay and lesbian artists. Works by artists, such as Agnes C. Sims and Cady Wells, are paired with portraits by a Southwestern who’s who of modern portraiture and photography – Will Shuster, Laura Gilpin, Ansel Adams, and Anne Noggle.

Modernist Deer Dance cedar sculptures carved in 1945 by Agnes C. Sims, a tribute to native cultures
Laura Gilpin’s 1942 photographic portrait of artist Agnes C. Sims

There’s even a “portrait” stitched by maverick Cady Wells of his very best friend, modernist Rebecca James. Well known for his expressionist paintings and his large collection of Northern New Mexican religious art, Wells subversively went all in on petit-point – an art form traditionally associated with “women’s work” and beloved by Ms. James.

Detail of 1953 petit-point stitchery “portrait” of Rebecca S. James by her friend, Cady Wells – his work in a traditional “feminine” genre of craft.
John K. Hillers’ 1879-1880 albumen portrait of Lahmana We’wha of Zuni Pueblo. Courtesy: Palace of the Governors Photo Archive.

This section also includes the stories of important two-spirit Native American artists – individuals who are born “male” but who take on spiritual and other tribal roles traditionally associated with women. The first is We’wha, a respected 19th-century expert in and advocate for Zuni arts and traditions– a favorite of Smithsonian anthropologists who demonstrated weaving in D.C. and even presented a special work directly to President Grover Cleveland as a wedding gift.

Another is R.C. Gorman’s portrait of Hosteen Klah, a Navajo two-spirit, one of the the Wheelwright Museum’s co-founders. Gorman, one of the best recognized and flamboyant 20th century contemporary Native artists, excelled in colorful mid-century works. Gorman made history in Taos by opening the first Native-owned gallery in the United States.

Navajo artist R.C. Gorman’s 1960 painting Night of the Yei – a celebration of Navajo spiritual traditions.

The final portion of the show includes two works by female rule-breakers. The first is a rare Agnes Martin 1954 abstract-expressionist work typical of her experimentation prior to her acclaimed grid series. It’s much more aligned to the biomorphic symbolism of early Pollack and Rothko – reflecting what was happening earlier in her New York career during the heyday of the Cedar Street Tavern crowd.

Agnes Martin’s untitled 1954 painting. Courtesy: University of New Mexico Art Museum.

Second ia a never-before-seen 1997 installation by feminist-art innovator Harmony Hammond, who was also represented in this year’s Whitney Biennial. Hammond, who curated one of Santa Fe’s first LGBTQ exhibitions back in 1999, used to travel backroads of the Southwest, finding abandoned towns and homesteads and collecting left behinds. In this show, she presents What Have You Done With Our Desire, a mixed-media piece using ancient kitchen linoleum – an allusion to circumstances leading to repression of gay women’s sexuality.

Harmony Hammond’s never-before-seen 1997 mixed-media installation What Have You Done with Our Desire. Courtesy: the artist.

For more about these and other artists, listen to curator Christian Waguespak’s talk about LGBTQ artists in the Southwest at the Harwood Museum in Taos.

Why Do People Like Folk Art So Much?

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It wasn’t a scientific survey, but Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art asked each museum staff member to select a favorite piece from the collection, explain why, and then mounted an entire exhibition about the love of folk art – Staff Picks: Favorites from the Collection at MoIFA through August 18.

Everyone knows about the 10,000 objects displayed in the museum’s Girard wing, but MoIFS houses over 150,000 additional works from over 100 countries. Given the vast scope of the collection, how did everyone choose one special item to be featured in the show?

2010 Alligator with Ice Cream carved by Joe Ortega of Tesuque, New Mexico welcomes everyone to the exhibition.

Some of the security staff remembered works from past shows that they loved, and some working in the collections had favorites hidden in the archives. To make it a little easier, the exhibitions team divided the task up into different regions of the world (to give a sense of the global extent of the collection), and asked some colleagues to pick a specific region, including the folk-art rich environs of Northern New Mexico.

1960 Noah’s Ark by Chimayo, New Mexico carver Jose Mandragon – an inspiration to take an adventure.

So why did different staff members choose what they did? The exhibition (and our Flickr album) states the reason that each was selected.

Sometimes a painting, sculpture, or necklace reminded them of places they’ve visited or cultures they loved – like the painting that evoked the tropical vibe of rural Cuba by Joe Ortega, or the cart direct from a colorful folk festival in Sicily, or intricate, bejeweled work from artists of Nepal in the high Himalayas.

2014 painting San Lazaro by Cuban artist Luis Rodriguez Ricardo.

And who doesn’t love work that is pure whimsey and telegraphs sheer joy? Several staff members said they couldn’t resist works that just made them smile – the whimsical alligator sitting above the entry with his huge tri-color ice-cream cone, the recycled robot from California relaxing in his lounge chair with a drink in hand (summer fun!), and a super-happy circle of tiny Ecuadorian dolls, dolls, dolls!

Close-up of Ecuadorian artist Osvaldo Viteri’s 1980 doll sculpture Se Nos Cayo La Luna Para Amar La Tierra (The Moon Fell So We Could Love the Earth).
BoBo bu Ko, a 1994 recycled materials sculpture by Alameda, California artist James Bauer

Sometimes you just have to stand back and admire the sheer determination, precision, and willpower of a particular artist. How did Rhode Island artist Henry Patrick Neugent collect and take apart all those cigar boxes and create two intricate tramp art cabinets with secret compartments?

And what about the gigantic quilt made by New York textile artist Susie Brandt – she removed zillions of tiny tags from vintage shirt collars and jacket breast pockets and worked them into a log-cabin sort-of pattern. You could spend hours just reading and reflecting on the memories behind those tags – Jordan Marsh, B.P. Britches, and old Wrangler or L.L. Bean tags.

Top of early 20th century tramp art whimsey table from cigar boxes by Portsmouth, Rhode Island artist Henry Patrick Neugent
Detail of large quilt Sleep Product made of garment labels collected by New York artist Susie Brandt in 1986-1989.

One collections manager picked hers for the sheer technical genius.  Check out the 19th century Chinese undershirt designed to keep you cool under the heavier, decorated silk robes. It’s woven in a clever, open diamond pattern from bamboo and cotton!

Innovative “cooling” 19th century Chinese bamboo and cotton undershirt.

An anthropologist on the team paid tribute to craft excellence is carried on generation to generation in North Carolina’s historic ceramic-making communities. She selected two pots by a father and son – Matt Luck’s corncob-stopper jug and a show-stopping double-faced jug created by his dad, Sid Luck (a fifth generation Seagrove potter), to commemorate the experience of living through Hurricane Fran.

The museum’s director selected a Zimbabwe thumb piano sheerly for its beautiful sound!

Two generations of Seagrove NC potters – Matt Luck’s 2012 pot with corncob stopper and Sid Luck’s 1996 double-faced jug
1992 thumb piano (mbira of the ancestors) made by a Shona artist from Zimbabwe.

The show is a tribute to the teamwork it takes to welcome the world to a popular folk-art destination and a delight to behold. A selection of these works will be on display at New Mexico’s Roundhouse in the Governor’s Gallery through April 25, 2025.

Take a Google walk through MoIFA’s massive Girard Wing here.