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Contemporary Jewelry Tells a Story at IAIA

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To celebrate over six decades of the revolutionary educational institution, museum of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) decided to showcase the breadth and scope its spectacular contemporary jewelry collection made by students, faculty, and artists-in-residence. The Stories We Carry shows that wearable art can convey ancient tales, speak truth to power, and incorporate surprising materials in the hands of forward-thinking innovators.

The exhibition – which has occupied the upper floor of Santa Fe’s IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts for a four-year run – is on view through September 28, 2026.

Dramatic 1980 fringed, beaded gauntlet cuffs on buckskin by Marcus Amerman (Choctaw); featuring spirals of energy that emanates from the artist’s hands.

Take a walk through the exhibition in our Flickr album, and see what we’re talking about right here in closeups of the displays on the IAIA site.

The diverse range of jewelry created over the years at IAIA might surprise anyone with a stereotypical view of “Native jewelry,” but it’s exactly this mastery of ideas and materials that keeps visitors coming back for a closer look and to admire new favorites from the over 100 pieces on display.

1974 silver, jet, ivory necklace by unknown artist in IAIA Honors Collection.
1995 bracelet by Robert Gresse, Jr. (Crow); made with silver, turquoise, lapis, coral, sugilite, and buffalo horn.

The first gallery is a clean, white space that presents the full range of techniquqes, processes, and types of wearable art.  It’s no surprise that the curator has chosen to present the innovative, masterful belt by Denise Wallce to kick off the show. Denise has crafted ten distinctive silver/gold inlaid figures who are each gathering materials and making traditional art of the Pacific Northwest. Take a close-up look at the miniature craft makers going about their work.

Detail of 1992 silver Craftsperson’s Belt by Denise Wallace (Chugach Aleut), featuring figures making traditional crafts; figures inlaid with semiprecious stones and gold, interspersed with incised fossilized ivory.

Over a dozen cases are filled with spectacular works that emphasize the material process that decades of IAIA students, faculty, and museum donors have contributed to the broader collection – necklaces, cuffs, belts, bolos, and pins made through inlay, casting, enamel, beadwork, and other studio techniques.

Traditional handmade bead technique with modern sensibility: 2001 white melon shell necklace by Juan Cate (Kewa-Santo Domingo Pueblo)
Leather with cast silver: 2001 Inuit Mask Bowguard by Mark Holiday (Diné), 1969 bowguard by Ramos Pacheco (Kewa-Santo Domingo Pueblo) from the IAIA Honors Collection, and 1981 Gato Bow Guard by Mark Swazo Hinds (Pueblo of Tesuque).

Some of the remarkable pieces collected by IAIA from the early years of the its Honors program are unfortunately marked “unknown artist.” But it’s still exciting to see early student pieces by artists like Estelle Loretto or Marcus Amerman who are considered leaders in contemporary Southwest art. (Click here to see our coverage of Marcus’s 1995 retrospective at the Wheelwright.)

1974 silver enameled pin by Gilbert Kellywood (Ohkay Owingeh) from the IAIA Honors Collection.
1962-1983 nickel silver and Carico turquoise bracelet by unknown Hopi artist the IAIA Honors Collection.

The second gallery begins with a large photo of the “room where it happens” – the IAIA jewelry studio. Back in the early Sixties, IAIA’s jewelry studio was begun by legendrary Charles Loloma (Hopi), who merged modernist aesthetics with traditional jewelry practice and encouraged his students to follow their own aesthetic paths. The innovation hasn’t stopped.

2022 photo of IAIA jewelry studio and student work stations by Sallie Wesaw-Sloan (Eastern Shoshone)

The gallery is filled wth workd by IAIA graduates, visiting artists, and faculty – a mind-bending experience that sets traditional, futuristic, technological, and controversial work side by side. Jewelry and wearable art that holds both a shining vision of the future and reflects upon dark corners of Indigenous history. It’s all quite a tribute to the creativity campus that IAIA was at its inception and continues to be.

Two pieces of silver, coral, turquoise, and ironweed jewelry by 1962-1965 IAIA faculty member Charles Loloma (Hopi) – a 1973 pendant and a 1963-1965 hair comb.
2017 Decimation by Decimal by IAIA 2019 artist in residence Jodi Webster (Ho Chunk/Prairie Band Potawatami; necklace made with beaver pelt, sterling silver, bone beads, glass beads (with faux blood), and sinew – all precious materials not normally associated with jewelry.

The last gallery features a mix of storytelling – everything from metalwork on a Mohawk hard hat telling a story of East Coast construction-trade prowess to pow-pow princess crowns to politics and a barely-there magical quartz amulet by Pacific Northwest artist Isaac Tait (Nisga’a). Contemporary achievement, 20th century culture, and ancient myths are all put to work in the IAIA jewelry studio.

1999 Indian Police Headdress by Richard Glazer Danay (Mohawk) – an aluminum construction worker’s hard hat with silver from buffalo nickel coins with attached BIA police badge, created in tribute to the legendary Mohawk skywalkers who specialize in Manhattan skyscraper construction.

The exhibition represents over 100 years of Indigenous jewelry in all its forms from IAIA’s permanet collection. Take a walk through the exhibition with guest-curator Brian Fleetwood (Mvskoke), who explains his inspiration behind his selections and explains how wearable art has told stories from ancient times:

See all eight of IAIA’s short videos about these artists and this fascinating tribute to creativity and culture here, including the backstory on the crowns.

Mark of Native Indigenous royalty: 1978 silver, turquoise, and beaded Miss IAIA Pow-Pow Princess crown by Lutz Whitebird (Southern Cheyenne)

Indian Theater and Contemporary Art at SITE Santa Fe

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The ambitious project paid off. Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, on view at SITE Santa Fe and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts through September 7, is a masterful mix of history, contemporary art, performance, and revealing installations that challenge what you know and think you know.

Filling the entire museum, the exhibition uses painting, sculptures, and performance sculptures to chronicle how radical performances by Native Americans shifted conversations, illuminated forgotten populations and treaties, asked difficult questions, and thoroughly influenced the trajectory of the contemporary Native American art movement.

2019 lightbox portrait Headdress – Jeneen by Dana Claxton (Lakota); the sitter bedecked in beads and embroidered gifts. Courtesy: the artist and Forge Project Collection.

Take a walk through the show (and a few performances) in our Flickr album.

In the entry, a provocative neon sign by Demian DinéYazhi (Diné) beckons, but visitors are immediately pulled into the large space surrounded by a graphic history of the historic Alcatraz occupation (1969-1971, one-of-a-kind mask wall pieces by Lloyd Kiva New (leader of brand-new The Institute of American Indian Arts 1967-1978), IAIA’s 1969 manifesto on Indian Theater, and a 1972 video of a NYC production by the Native American Theater Ensemble (running on an ancient Sony Trinitron). It’s all surrounded by a wall textile designed by Linda Lomahaftawa (Hopi/Choctaw) when she was an IAIA student in the Sixties.  A provocative sculpture by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis) adds the contemporary drama.

Exhibition entry: 2021 mixed media Counterblaste by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis); tobacco-stuffed pantyhose rabbit-human figure; surrounded by 1969 Alcatraz occuption documentation and paintings by Lloyd Kiva New. Courtesy: Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art; Art Bridges.

This sets the stage for curator Candace Hopkins’ thesis – in the 1960s, Native American performance went hand-in-hand with greater activism, self-determination by tribes, and contemporary art in all its forms.  Listen to her explain:

Two performance spaces lie just beyond this gallery. First Nicholas Galanin’s gallery where his performance The White Carver happens weekly (surrounded by photos of previous performances since it was first staged in 2012). The White Carver tackles the subject of appropriation and Native cultural misunderstanding head on.

Behind the velvet rope: set for 2012-ongoing White Carver performance by Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax) in which a Caucasian woodcarver replicates an object made by a Galinin – a commentary about appropriation and commercialization of Indigenous culture by non-Native communities. Courtesy: Gochman Family Collection.

Next, you enter a room hung with giant earring sculptures from Eric-Paul Riege (Diné), who activated them in a ritualistic performance at SITE in August. Riege’s installation allows everyone a simultaneous experience of the contemporary and cultural deep time.  Kite’s floor installation, right nearby, does this, too. (Check out our previous post about Kite’s innovative IAIA show here.)

Museum goers watch Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) interact with his mixed-fiber scultptures 2020-2022 jaatloh4Ye’iitsoh (“earrings for the big god”) (August 15, 2026); oversized jewelry suggesting knowledge by listening, harmony of natural fibers, and totems of memory. Courtesy: Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck; Art Bridges.

Two-dimensional art on display also evokes a mix of ancient and “now.” Action painting mixed with cultural symbols. Bugle beads or painted blankets echoing color-field painting.

2014 acrylic and graphite Crow Dance by Rick Bartow (Wiyot). Courtesy: Denver Art Museum.
2022 acrylic and glass bugle bead Wopila/Lineage II by Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) – a reference to the long tradition of Lakota abstraction. Courtesy: Gochman Family Collection.

Mash-ups of pop culture, cartoony cheesecake, ancient craft, culture, and social commentary – all the work on display incorporate aspects of performance.

1990 sculpture War Dance Technology by performance artist James Luna (Payomkowicham, Ipai, and Mexican). Courtesy: Gochman Family Collection.
2014-2022 graphite and colored pencil drawing Killer Smile by Rachel Martin (Tlingit/Tsaagweidei, Killer Whale Clan of the Yellow Cedar House Eagle Moiety). Courtesy: the artist.

The back gallery takes us back into time to consider the irony of early ethnomusic recording in the Pacific Northwest during a period when potlatches were banned and ceremonies forbidden.  The exhibition has a beautiful installation of Native American LPs from the 1960s and 1970s beneath a stunning installation by Sonny Asu of copper recordings that cannot be played.

1960s-1970s LP recordings of Native American tribal songs by Indian Records; at rear, 2012 copper record installation “Ellipsis” by Sonny Asu (Ligwilda’xw Kwakwaka’wakw from the Wei Wai Kum Nation) – 138 records not intended for play. Courtesy: Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck.
1991 High Performance art magazine cover featuring James Luna during his AA Meeting/Art History performance.

In every room, videos display performances on stages (Jeffrey Gibson or Spiderwoman Theater) or in nature (asinnajaq (Inuk). One room is devoted to a set, props, and documentation of work by the influential performance artist James Luna, whose art did not shy away from the ever-present issue of alcoholism in Native communities.

The exhibition also includes an immersive, highly theatrical, multi-gallery installation by the New Red Order. Here’s the manifesto by NRO’s Adam and Zach Kahalil (Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit).

2023 performance documentation video of Don’t Make Me Over by Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee) featuring performer Ariel Twist (Nehiyaw). Courtesy: the artist.

NRO uses satiric videos, props, murals, documents and timelines,  merchandise, and graffiti style to illuminate collisions of history, pop culture, and consciousness surrounding urban Native communities today – a totally head-spinning (and brain-spinning) experience.

Video of the 2020-ongoing Progenerator installation by the New Red Order, a mixed-media installation by artists Adam and Zach Kahalil (Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit) that probes societal stereotypes alongside non-Natives’ fascination with Native culture. Courtesy: the artists.

And thanks to the recreation by Erica Lord, SITE Santa Fe visitors were able to experience Artifact Revisited. Erica recreated an acclaimed 1987 performance by James Luna – a still Native body on display within a museum, encased in glass. In Erica’s recreation, her “cabinet” was surrounded by museum signage purporting to explain “Indians” and provide context for the “exhibit.” In the age of NAGPRA, the experience was unforgettable. Watch the performance heare, and listen to Erica explains how she came to perform this historic piece and how it felt.

For more background on the connections between Native American theater, politics, and art, here’s a link to the recently published book about this never-before-told story.

Watching Clay Artist Jody Folwell Break the Rules

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Contemporary ceramicist Jody Folwell (Santa Clara Pueblo) always knew she was going to make art that was a bit different, even as she was learning traditional Pueblo pottery making at the kitchen table from her her mom, celebrated artist Rose Naranjo. Satirical, sculptural, social-political, and avant-garde ceramic statements line the gallery from start to finish in O’Powa O’Meng: The Art and Legacy of Jody Folwell, a celebratory retrospective exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art through September 13, 2026.

The Santa Fe stop is the final on the exhibition’s journey across the United States, which started at the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.

2018 Ancient pot by Jody Falwell (Santa Clara Pueblo), with painting inspired by Lascaux cave painting; rim evokes fire’s importance to humanity’s art making traditions. Courtesy: private collection.

Walk through the show to see our favorites in our Flickr album.

The exhibition does not unfold chronologically, even though it features some of Jody’s (and her family’s) most ground-breaking and controversial work. At one end is Half a Step, that she credits as one of her earliest nontraditional ceramic statements, featuring a lively bison thundering around the partially polished curved surface – a “half step” away from what was expected from Santa Clara pottery at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 1975. At the other end is her collaboration with the acclaimed sculptor Bob Hazous (Chiricahua Apache) that won Best in Show in 1984. Who had ever seen a green Pueblo pot with loaded commentary?

1975 Half a Step pot by Jody Falwell (Santa Clara Pueblo) – featuring sculpted animals and an unpolished band. Courtesy: Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.
Jody’s 1984 Hero Pot collaboration with Bob Hazous (Chiricahua Apache), awarded Best in Show at that year’s Santa Fe Indian Market for its unconventional color, shape, and subject. Courtesy: private collection.

Collaborations, social commentary, sculptural details, and different painting styles encourage gallery goers to move slowly, stop, look, and circumnavigate each work to let the beauty, humor, or story sink in. Jody’s recent multi-pot ceramic installation The Cycle of Pottery is Us causes viewers to stop, think, and reflect on not only the persistence of the traditional Tewa art form, but of the entire human cycle of birth and rebirth.

Detail of Jody’s 2024 The Cycle of Pottery is Us, a sequential reference to black-and-white Ancestral Pueblo ceramic traditions, the art form’s near-loss 50 years ago, and its resurgence. Courtesy: Tia Collection.

As cultural appropriation carries a loade charge in the art world, Jody’s feels that her fascination by sinuous designs of other cultures, the cheekiness of Pop culture, and admired styles of epochs in Western art history gives her license to honor them. She incorporates Plains Indian ledger book style, Maori iconography, comic books, and even the cave paintings of Lascaux.  A wide lens from her travel and studies delights visitors as she takes them on a world journey of history, art, and people.

2008 Northwest Coast Art 101 incised with a tribute to her love of fluidity of Pacific Coast design; at rear, 2006 Doh San Quah (I Stole It) painted in Plains Indian ledger style. Courtesy: private collections.

The feelilng behind the show chronicles how much the maternal ceramic making tradition means to her. 

2013 Star Wars pot by daughter Susan Folwell (Santa Clara Pueblo), with images of Hopi style and cosmologies. Courtesy: Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at University of Oklahoma, Norman.

The exhibition includes a large traditional bread making bowl by her mother as well as work by her daughters and grandchildren – accomplished artists in their own right.

Jody titled her show O’Powa O’Meng (“I came here, I got here, I’m still going”) to demonstrate her continued commitment both to innovation in her art form and to inspire the next generation of contemporary artists.

Several pieces involve a mix of tiles (some broken) and pots with incriptions or depictions woven across all of them, such as The Buffalo Hunt that she created for the Santa Fe installation and Buffalo Soldier, a meditation on Obama’s historic presidency and the enslaved workers who originally built the White House.

Hear more about pushing the boundaries from inside a Tewa home dedicated to art making from Jody and daughter Susan as they talk about exhibition’s final stop with curator Jill Ahlberg Yohe at Santa Fe’s New Mexico Museum of Art.

Makowa: Modern Skywatching with the Ancients

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucy Lippard and The Radical Whirlwind

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The Sixties and Seventies were a time of rebellion and change in the world at large and in the New York art world. As you enter Lucy R. Lippard: Notes from the Radical Whirlwind at the Vladem Contemporary in Santa Fe through August 9, 2026, the white gallery space appears quiet, but the art that confronts you is done by artists living, creating, and collaborating in a tumultuous, exciting time.

Post-war eclecticism, minimalism, conceptualism, feminism, environmentalism, and activism – these were the movements swirling in downtown Manhattan. Writer, curator, rabble-rouser, and activist Lucy R. Lippard seemed always to be near the center it all.

Minimal and conceptual art: Sol Lewitt’s 1979 Steel Grid 3 x 3 x 3; at rear, conceptualist Douglas Huebler’s 1971 typed 44/Variable Piece #7: 1971 (In Process) Global, and Eleanor Antin’s 1971-1973 postcard piece 100 Boots Marching.

The two-floor exhibition is just a fraction of the paintings, prints, sculptures, photographs, and art books that artists gifted to Lucy across four decades. To walk through it chronicles every important trend in American (and global) art and a “who’s who” of contemporary art in the latter half of the 20th century.

Take a look through it all in our Flickr album.

Gallery featuring minimal and conceptual artists; foreground, 1971 5 Steel Track Meander by Carl Andre.

At the center of the first gallery are pieces by minimal-conceptualists Carl Andre (a twisted piece of chanelling lying on the floor that could have jumped out of a dumpster) and Sol Lewitt (a pristine grid sculpture). Nearby are super-minimalists Larry Poons and Ad Rhinehart, where you can see the hidden black-on-black squares if you peer through the glass just right.

But as the exhibition points out, Lucy didn’t just have the typical artist-curator relationship with the people whose work is on the wall. Her mentor Ad Rhinehardt asked her to pen his monograph for his ground-breaking 1966 retrospective at the Jewish Museum where is black-on-black canvases begged the question, “Is painting at an end?”

Minimalists: 1960 silkscreen by Larry Poons and 1964 screenprint Untitled (Black Square) by Ad Reinhardt.

Lucy and Carl Andre worked side-by-side in 1969 to organize the historic Art Workers’ Coalition to advocate for artists’ rights inside the art establishment. She and Sol Lewitt met at entry-level jobs at MoMA, but when Sol published his influential 1967 essay on Conceptualism in Artforum magazine, Lucy built upon his foundation with other essays and produced her acclaimed Numbers exhibitions across the country (1996 – 1972) to show conceptual and minimalist art to new audiences.

Lucy and Sol Lewitt championed the work of post-minimalist, Eva Hesse. Lucy included Eva’s work in her 1966 exhibition Eccentric Abstractionism at Fischbach Gallery, and both worked tirelessly to keep Eva’s work front and center after her untimely passing in 1970 at age 34.

The exhibition underscores the tight relationships among artists during a period of rampant experimentation, happenings, pop art, anti-war protests, and organizations protesting discrimination and advocating for justice. All forms of expression were welcomed – from performance pieces to typewritten instructions to mail art.

Post-minimalism: Eva Hesse’s 1967 ink and graphite drawing on an invisible grid.
Concepual art: Douglas Huebler’s 1971 typewritten project declaration – 44/Variable Piece #7: 1971 (In Process) Global.
Details of On Kawara’s 1968-1973 I Got Up – commercial travel postcards stamped with reductive messages and mailed to friends.

The array of feminist and political/social protest art in the exhibition reinforces the activist theme that runs through Lucy’s life.  Works by Louise Bourgeois, Harmony Hammond, Ana Mendieta, Faith Ringgold, Mary Beth Edelson, and many more are shown – including the founders of A.I.R., New York’s first women-operated cooperative gallery, and the Heresies Collective, who published the first feminist art journal. Over time, their collective pressure worked, as museums and galleries finally opened up to exhibiting works by women and people of color.

Feminist power: Mary Beth Edelson’s 1972 satirical poster Some Living American Women Artists a spoof of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper with O’Keeffe and Nevelson at center stage.
Performance art documentation: Ana Mendieta’s 1976 photo Silueta de Cohetes from her Siluetas eries – showing a body-shaped fireworks display agains the night sky.

The last section downstairs contains works on the Vietnam War, civil rights, Indigenous rights, the Cold War, and the risks from nuclear power. Lucy and her fellow artist were extremely active in response to injustice. In 1965-1967, they created the Angry Arts Festival through their collective, Artists and Writers Protest the Vietnam War to mobilize cultural leaders against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In 1975, Artists Meeting for Cultural Change successfully lobbied for disenfranchised artist’s inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. In 1979, Artists Against Nuclear Madness mobilized.

Artist power: selections from the 1986 mixed-media portfolio La linea quebrada = The Broken Line – a project to promote exhibition opportunities and cultural exchange in communities across the US-Mexico border; created by Guillermo Gomez-Pena, D.Emily Hicks, Harry Polkinhorn, and Cesar Espinoza.

In 1984, Lucy and other colleagues led Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America. Over1,100 artists and activists mobilized to create over 200 events in 27 cities. (Click here to read our 2022 post about the University of New Mexico Art Museum’s exhibition on this mobilization.)

Lucy’s philosophy: “Artists alone cannot change the world. Neither can anyone else alone. But we can choose to be part of the world that is changing.”

The second-floor gallery is dedicated to artists books – a movement that started around the same time that everything else was happening. Many artists felt the high-end art market on the East Coast was too elitist. Many artists wanted to bypass the whole thing and create affordable art.

Lucy Lippard, Sol Lewitt and others decided to open a storefront in 1976 where anyone could buy inexpensive books created by artists…books that were themselves affordable art! Although it moved from Tribeca, to Soho, and Chelsea, it’s still selling artist’s books fifty years later!

The upstairs gallery is a tribute to the decades of “affordable art” perseverance.

Environmental awareness: Kiki Smith’s 1997 accordion book The Fourth Day: The Destruction of Birds.

You can wander through imagining you are in the Printed Matter bookshop in the late 1970s, browsing through all the different projects, statements, picture books, and manifestoes flowing out of the Downtown New York art scene! 

Social commentary: 1984 book Tense by Jerry Kearns and Lucy Lippard. Publisher: Kunstverein Amsterdam.
Feminist book: Avis Lang’s 1981 book Pork Roasts: 250 Feminist Cartoons. Publisher: UBC Fine Arts.

The gallery also contains some of the artist books that started it all by Ed Rucha.

Two infamous artist books:  Ed Ruscha’s 1964 Various Small Fires and Bruce Naumann’s 1968 Burning Small Fires that documents his performance-art destruction of Ruscha’s earlier book. Publishers: Fluxus editions; Seth Siegelaub, The Louis Kellner Foundation.

But maybe some of the best books are those found in the back reading room – some of the 30 influential treatises written by Lucy herself, publications that document art, life, and society in our times.

Lucy Lippard’s celebrated publications on display in the second-floor reading room.

Georgia’s Circles and Musical Abstractions

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As a young woman, O’Keeffe learned to play the violin and piano. But she was also a talented visual artist, which made her wonder which path she would take in her education – music or art? We know which career path she chose – a modernist painter of nature, New York cityscapes, and New Mexico landscapes.

But deep in her artistic upbringing, she figured out a way to have the best of both – using music as a conduit to make abstractions that express emotion, hidden feelings, and channel pure beauty. It’s a hidden, personal dimension to O’Keeffe’s creativity that is on display at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s capsure exhibition, A Circle that Nothing Can Break, on view in Santa Fe through June 7, 2026.

O’Keeffe’s 1970s watercolor Untitled (Abstraction Blue Wave and Three Red Circles). Painted after she lost her central vision with help from Belarmino López.

The title of the exhibition refers to a comment by Georgia in a 1922 letter to her husband – the influential photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz – in which she said their relationship was “like a circle that nothing can break.” Looking around the small gallery, circles and arcs are everywhere – in her earliest charcoal abstractions, a circle of blue sky seen through a curved goat horn, and her late-in-life abstractions.

O’Keeffe’s 1945 pastel Goat’s Horns with Blue. Courtesy: private collection

Even some of her favorite fashion accessories feature circles! Take a look at some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

O’Keeffe’s 1915-1916 charcoal drawing Abstraction with Curve and Circle.
Personal accessories featuring the circle motif – a 1960s-1970s Italian scarf with concentric circle designs and her signature 1930s “OK” brooch from Alexander Calder.

When O’Keeffe took summer classes at the University of Virginia in 1912, her teacher Alon Bennett often played music on his Victrola during class and encouraged her to explore expressionist synergy between music and art. Around 1914, she also read Kandinsky’s influential book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. It made quite an impression on her with quotes such as “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmony, the soul is the piano…(and) the artist is the hand which plays…”

Georgia’s early charcoal works show her experimentation in using lines as “sounds” and interest in using circles in an expressionistic way. In letters to her long-time friend Anita Pollitzer, sent in 1915-1916 while she was teaching in South Carolina, Georgia said she did a “liberating series of drawings.” She explained that she often played violin for many hours to interpet her feelings, and then translated it all through her charcoal drawings.

O’Keeffe’s 1919 oil painting Green Lines and Pink.
O’Keeffe’s 1970s watercolor Abstraction Dark Green Lines with Red and Pink. Painted with the assistance of Belarmino López.

These drawings electrified her future husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who immediately mounted them for a show in his gallery and kick-started her career.

Four O’Keeffe 1970s watercolors (painted with assistance from Belarmino López) – Untitled (Abstraction Pink Curve and Circles), Untitled (Orange and Red Wave), Abstraction, and Untitled (Abstration Blue Curve and Circles).

In New York, the couple shared a love of live concert and recorded music throughout their lives together. By the time Georgia moved to New Mexico, she had assembled an extensive classical record collection. During the 1960s, when she began to lose her eyesight, listening to music from the comfort of her BARWA Lounger was a near-daily afternoon routine.

The exhibition selects paintings from throughout Georgia’s life featuring this circle motif – early oil paintings and sketches through to her late-in-life watercolors (done in her nineties with help from artist Mino López) that revisit these early themes. Note the upper arcs that suggest the top of a violin. She remembered it all.

Listen to this fascinating talk by music education professor Janet Revell Barret, who provides an in-depth explanation of how O’Keeffe’s early training and musical inclinations led her to greater expression on the page and canvas:  

Environmental Alerts by Native Artists

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Who better to ask us to pay attention to environmental impacts than people whose ancestors have been stewards of the land for millennia? Earth, air, fire, and water is the thematic structure for this beautiful, throught-provoking contemporary art show Essential Elements: Art, Environment, and Indigenous Futures, on view at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture through May 31, 2026.

The curators have selected 31 artists from 18 tribal communities across the United States to draw our attention to how tribal communities and the rest of us can listen to the Earth and imagine positive outcomes in the future.

The Earth on edge: 2020 fired clay Unstable World by Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo). Courtesy: private collector.

Some jewelry, paintings, drawings, pots, and installations draw attention to traditional symbols of the Earth’s health (traditional symbols, wildlife living in a healthy environment), but many include pointed references to recent wildfires and other devastating alterations affecting tribal agriculture and people’s health.

2025 pen-and-ink drawing Biohazard Beauty II by Rowan Harrison (Diné/Isleta Pueblo). Courtesy: the artist.

Take a look at some of our favorite work in our Flickr album.

The Earth section begins with Roxanne Swentzell’s large ceramic sculpture Unstable World, which sets the tone for the rest of the show – Native art that calls attention to our current environmental balancing act. Nearby, several Diné artists ring the alarm bell about the insidious damage being done to Navajo Nation and nearby pueblos – and their own families – from the long legacy of open-pit uranium mining and contamination from nuclear testing.

Rowan Harrison’s intricate drawings are made to raise awarness of intergenerational health challenges and to honor and support to cancer victims. The curators have given lots of space to Diné artist Shayla Blatchford’s photo-interview Anti-Uranium Mapping Project, including a sobering map of the nearly 500 abandoned uranium mines scattered across her homeland. Biologist-artist-public health advocate Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo), creates abstracted works. Only when you get close do you see the shapes are radiation symbols of uranium contamination working its way into DNA strands.

2019 We Will Continue to Fight by biologist-artist Mallery Quetawki (Zuni Pueblo), raising awareness of how radiation contamination on native land damages people’s DNA. Courtesy: the artist, University of New Mexico Community Environmental Health Program

Beautiful, intricately woven baskets are displayed nearby. As you admire the creations of Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), a 2025 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant, it’s unsettling to learn that Jeremy and other Eastern art virtuosos are concerned that their baskets could be the last. Black ash and other natural materials are disappearing from their homelands at an alarming rate due to the triumph of invasive plant species.

Closeup of 2010 Lidded Basket with Porcupine Design by Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) woven from black ash, sweetgrass, and porcupine quills; 2010 SWIA Market award winner. Courtesy: private collection.
2015 Ash Basket by Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) woven from black ash, which is important to the tribe’s creation story, but highly endangered. Courtesy: private loan.

Other jewelry and ceramics artists incorporate images of animals, insects, and other indicators of what the world looks like when clean water and healthy air abound – dragonflies, tadpoles and frogs, and Avanyu, the all-important Puebloan water spirit. Multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger is seen (via video) in a ritual performance “from the future” to ensure people’s continual gratitude for food, shelter, and tools.

Art featuring creatures of healthy air: 2001 Dragonfly Tall Lidded Jar by Autumn Borts (Santa Clara Pueblo), 2005 Dragonfly Bracelet by Ramon Dalangyawma (Hopi), and 2006 Dragonfly Vase by Dolly Naranjo Neikrug (Santa Clara Pueblo).
Keystone water species: 1958 ceramic Tadpole Figurines by Lucy Lewis (Acoma Pueblo); clay, crushed potshard temper, slip, and carbon paint.

Considering the string of recent devastating wildfires that have plagued New Mexico in recent years, the artwork in the exhibition representing the element of fire is truly resonant. Kevin Naranjo made a tiny ceramic jar into which he carved his recollection of the wildly destructive 2011 Las Conchas Fire. Michael Namingha’s spectacular digital image is not just a pretty view of the sky. It’s the image of a cloud that only appears above an extremely intense heat source – exactly what he photographed during the 2022 Hermit’s Peak Fire or that New Mexicans witnessed in the Trinity blast.

2024 silkscreen Disaster 2 by Michael Namingha (Tewa-Hopi) – a pyrocumulus cloud emerging from the Hermit’s Peak Fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history. Courtesy: the artist, Niman Fine Art.
2011 Las Conchas Fire by Kevin Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo) – a carved (sgraffito) ceramic depcting trees, land, and fire that burned 150,000 acres of Santa Clara’s land on the Pajarito Plateau, including ancestral sites; the Avanyu water spirit hovers above.

Overhead, as you enter or leave this thought-provoking experience, you see paper poppies – the first flowers that bloom after a fire.  Artist Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash) is going a step further with her art after this exhibition ends. She’ll take her paper blossoms back home and burn them in a ritual that recycles her beautiful art back into the Earth.

2025 dyed handmade paper installation The Sun is on the Ground by Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash), suggesting the wild poppies that bloom right after a wild fire. Installation intended to be recycled with fire at the exhibition’s conclusion. Courtesy: the artist

Weaving Meanings into Colorful South African Art

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How do you take a domestic beer pot and lid and turn it into art? Take a look at the dazzling designs on display in the first museum exhibition dedicated to one of the most unique art forms to blossom in post-Apartheid South Africa – iNgqikithi yokuPhica/Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa, on view at Santa Fe’s International Museum of Folk Art through March 29, 2026.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed at the the intricacy of the colorful, whirling designs that first meet your eye. But when you slow down to look more closely, all sorts of meanings appear – ancient tribal writing, village scenes, Zululand wildlife, patriotic emblems, and even celebrated achievements in the sports world

Dudu Cele’s 1990s The New South Africa telephone-wire weaving celebrating the end of apartheid featuring the colors of the nation’s new flag.
Master weaver Bheki Diamini’s 1990s telephone-wire basket Why the Wire Plates? Courtesy: Arment-Rimelspach collection

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

The journey begins with Bheki Diamini’s 1990s telephone-wire basket, whose text asks the question “Why the Wire Plates?” T

The exhibition answers by explaining the long history of African wire weaving, the stories of innovators who started using colorful telephone wire in the 1990s, and how it became an economic game-changer for practitioners.

As far back as the 16th century, wire and metal rods were popular trade items in South Africa, and by the 19th century, everyday people were embellishing snuff containers and traditional sparring and walking sticks with intricate wire weaves. Although traditional beer and grain pots were made of woven fiber, and sometimes people wove in beads to personalize (and identify) their own.

An array of sparring sticks embellished with telephone wire and other materials –dancing sticks, 2005 walking stick, and Peter Lekotjo’s 2005 knobbed fighting stick.
Rare late 20th-century works made of telephone wire and natural materials – a palm and grass basket embellished with telephone wire, an earthenware grain-storage pot, and Laurentia Diamini’s grain storage basket woven with palm and grass.

In the 20th century, when a few weavers began incorporating colorful telephone wire into their work, it didn’t take long until highly decorated sticks, colorful hats, amped-up drinking cups, and beer pot lids were transformed. Under the repressive apartheid system, Black South Africans lived under highly restrictive work-life conditions, just scraping by and hardly able to afford most art making materials.  

As telephone technology was deployed across Black communities in South Africa, the spools of colorful, coated wire surged in popularity as a tool more creative expression because workers often cast it off when industrial projects were done. Cheap (or free!), plentiful, and in a dozen colors! Perfect!.

Two hats embellished with telephone wire – a top hat (pre-2007) and Shadercke Ntuli’s 2000 hard hat – similar to those used for mine-worker dance performances.
Michael Mfeke’s late 20th-century telephone-wire basket in the shape of a beer pot (ukhamba).

Rather than making an historical exhibition, the curators have chosen to focus on grouping work by and presenting biographies of the innovators – like master weavers Bheki Diamini, Jerita Mmola, Elliot Mkhize, Vincent Sithole, and othes – who popularized this art form with makers in their own country and collectors internationally. It’s captivating to see all the ways Sithole, for example, incorporated wildlife into his designs to satisfy demand from tourists who began flocking to South Africa as a safari destination.

Colorful 1990 telephone-wire food basket (xirutu) by Jerita Mmola of Limpopo, South Africa.
Elliot Mkhize’s 1997 telephone-wire basket with abstract symbols inspired by ancient Zulu hierographic writing.

A compelling video in the center of the exhibition takes visitors into the Maphumolo family home to show how increased revenue from art sales – in South Africa and abroad at art festivals – have boosted living standards and opportunities for artists on an intergenerational basis.

Renowned soft-wire weaver Jaheni Mkhize’s dynamic 2006 telephone-wire basket.
Two by master soft-wire innovator Jaheni Mkhize – 2004 cone-shaped basket and colorful 2000 telephone-sire basket.

In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, as tourism to South Africa increased, weavers began to incorporate South African wildlife, create whimsical wire animals, and depict rural villages to boost a new pride in the homeland. Sports triumphs are celebrated by weavers, too.

Figurative master Vincent Sithole’s 2008 telephone wire basket depicting numerous species of South African birds. Courtesy: Arment-Rimelspach collection.
Octavia Gwala’s 2005 telephone-wire and wire weaving showing a rondavel – a circle of thatched-roof Zulu homes that form a homestead.

The exhibition walk-through concludes with work exemplifying new trends – baskets that incorporate pop culture references. three-dimensional wall pieces, and shimmering works in gleaming woven copper wire.

Simon Mavundla’s 2013 telephone-wire and wire basket Grey’s Anatomy Series: Norma Frontalis from a design by Marisa Fick-Jordaan. Courtesy: Arment-Rimelspach collection.
Details of 2009 Nature Series, Wall Platter, Rousseau, a three-dimensional telephone-wire sculpture designed by Marisa Fick-Jordaan

In the exhibition promo, indigenous knowledge-keepers explain more about what these artworks mean and see some of the masters at work.

Enjoy this look at the riches on display in this beautiful show.

Thanks to collectors David Arment and Jim Rimelspach, whose passion, patronage, and vision have introduced us to beautiful work by the most innovative artists and families creating in South Africa today, and donated so many exquisite works to IFAM’s permanent collection.

Two metal baskets from Threads of Africa project: Bandile Mtshali’s 2010 brass and copper-wire basket and Jobe Sithole’s 2016 copper wire and brass bead basket.

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

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

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

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

See some of our favorites in our Flickr album.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.