The cost of the lecture is $15. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Lensic Box Office by calling 505 988 1234. They may also be purchased at the door. Proceeds from the lecture will benefit the New Mexico Museum of Art’s contemporary art programming.

About Karen LaMonte

Karen LaMonte is world-renowned for her monumental cast-glass sculptures of dresses and other drapery studies. Though originally from New York, the artist now lives in the Czech Republic, where there are facilities with the capacity to cast glass of the scale she requires. LaMonte graduated in 1990 from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she first began exploring clothing as a vehicle of portraiture in absentia. “I use clothing as a metaphor for identity and human presence,” she has said of her remarkable sculptures. “I believe we have two skins that outline and define who we are. One of course is our natural skin, but we obscure and conceal it beneath clothing which is a second skin, our social skin.”

In 1999, she received a Fulbright Fellowship to work in Czechoslovakia, where she ultimately moved. LaMonte’s other explorations have included cast glass mirrors with photographic imagery and printmaking. Most recently, LaMonte began investigating the use of ceramic in her sculptures at the European Ceramic Work Centre and was the recipient of the Corning Museum of Glass/Kohler Arts Center Joint Residency for working with ceramic and glass.

Karen LaMonte has received many prestigious awards, including: Corning Museum of Glass/Kohler Arts Center, Joint Artist-in-Residence Program; Jutta Cuny-Franz Memorial Award; Japan-United States Friendship Commission, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Artists ExchangeFellowship; Virginia A. Groot Foundation Recognition Award; UrbanGlass Award for New Talent in Glass; Creative Glass Center of America Fellowship; Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award; Fulbright Grant: Cast Sculpture in the Czech Republic.

Her work is included in many museum collections, including the Corning Museum of Glass, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery, the deYoung Memorial Museum, Palm Springs Art Museum, Musée des arts décoratifs, National Gallery of Australia, Chrysler Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, and Museum of American Glass.

The timing could not have been better, just in advance of the opening on July 4, 2010 of the exhibition Empowering Women and the world-famous annual International Folk Art Market which takes over Milner Plaza.

The Girard Wing is open regular Museum hours; 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day until Labor Day weekend.

Pectoral necklace with layered feather design by Antonio Pineda

Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda
Museum of International Folk Art
Opening June 6, 2010

In the mountain town of Taxco in Mexico’s state of Guerrero, large-scale mining can be dated to the sixteenth century, and silver is a way of life. In the years following the Mexican Revolution (1910-20), jewelry and other silver objects were crafted there with an entirely innovative approach, informed by modernism and the creation of a new Mexican national identity. Antonio Pineda was a member of the Taxco School and is recognized as a world-class designer. He lived a long and creative life, passing away at the age of 90 on December 14, 2009.

Nearly two hundred examples of Pineda’s acclaimed silver work will be displayed in Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda, a traveling exhibition opening at the Museum of International Folk Art June 6, 2010 through January 2, 2011.

From its inception, the Taxco movement broke new ground in technical achievement and design. While American- born, Taxco-based designer William Spratling has been credited with spearheading the contemporary Taxco silver movement, it was a group of talented Mexican designers who went on to establish independent workshops and develop the distinctive “Taxco School.” Pineda, internationally renown for his silver work identified himself primarily as a taxqueño, or Taxco, silversmith. These designers incorporated numerous aesthetic orientations-Pre-Columbian art, silverwork, religious images, and other artwork from the Mexican Colonial period, and local popular arts-merging them within the broad spectrum of modernism.

Pineda himself is lauded for his bold designs and ingenious use of gemstones. Silver Seduction traces the evolution of his work from the 1930s-70s, and includes more than a hundred necklaces and bracelets, as well as numerous rings, earrings, and diverse examples of his hollowware and tableware. All of the works feature Pineda’s hard-to-achieve combination of highly refined execution and hand-wrought appeal.

Pineda’s jewelry is especially known for its elegant acknowledgment of the human form. It is often said that a Pineda fits the body perfectly, that it feels right when it is worn. For example, a thick geometric necklace that might at first glance seem too weighty or rigid to wear comfortably is, in fact, faceted, hinged, or hollowed in such a way that it gracefully encircles the neck or drapes seductively down the décolletage.

In addition, no other taxqueño jeweler used as many costly semiprecious stones or set them with as much ingenuity, skill, and variety as did Pineda. Only the most talented of silversmiths could master the unique challenges posed by setting gemstones in silver at the high temperature necessary to work the metal. Pineda, however, managed to set gems with as little metal touching them as possible, giving them a free or floating look while still holding them firmly in place. In Pineda’s hands, some stones were embedded; rows of gems were set close together to emphasize the structural lines of a design; or stones were cut to fit irregular shapes in a design. Pineda often used cultured pearls, large amethyst drops, and onyx in his designs, many examples of which are on display in the exhibition.

The remarkable creativity of this “Silver Renaissance” era represents a unique moment in the design of Mexican jewelry. Pineda’s and his colleagues’ modernist works lives on today in Taxco with a thriving industry in silver smithing.

The opening on Sunday, June 6, 2010 will be hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda and its publication are made possible through the generosity of the Donald B. Cordry Memorial Fund and Jill and Barry Kitnick. The exhibition was developed by the curatorial team of the Fowler Museum with consulting curator Gobi Stromberg. All works presented are either from the collections of Cindy Tietze and Stuart Hodosh or the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

Museum of International Folk Art

The Museum of International Folk Art houses the world’s largest collection of international folk art. Changing and traveling exhibitions are offered in the Bartlett Wing and exhibitions highlighting textiles are featured the Neutrogena Wing. Lloyd’s Treasure Chestoffers visitors interactive displays about collections and how museums care for collections.

The Museum of International Folk Art is a Division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

Pectoral necklace with layered feather design by Antonio Pineda

In honor of its accomplishments and in gratitude to those who helped make the first year such a success, the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents voted to open the museum for free May 22 and 23.

“We want to throw a party to say `thank you’ for everything that New Mexicans and out-of-state visitors have done for us,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the museum. “The outpouring of support from visitors, scholars, donors, businesses, and especially our volunteers has carried us beyond our expectations.”

The highlight of the free “Wild Weekend” is the opening of Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton, an original exhibit created with special support from the Academy for the Love of Learning, home of the Seton Legacy Project.

“It took 20 years and the hard work of many dedicated staff members, volunteers and donors to create this wonderful new museum,” said Stuart Ashman, State Cultural Affairs Department Secretary. “The overwhelming successes that we’ve witnessed during its first year of life are endorsements of these efforts.”

The full weekend schedule:

Saturday, May 22

10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: Free admission, plus a sneak peek at the new exhibit, Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton, from 12 – 5 pm.

12 – 2 p.m.: The Wildlife Center in Española displays an assortment of the wild mammals and raptors it has rescued. Palace Courtyard.

Sunday, May 23

10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: Free admission. Grand opening of Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton. Albert and Ethel Herzstein Changing Exhibitions Gallery.

12 – 4 pm: Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary brings a live wolf to the Palace Courtyard. Special program at 1:30 p.m.

2 – 4 p.m.: Wild at Heart opening reception, hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico. Booksigning of Ernest Thompson Seton: The Life and Legacy of an Artist and Conservationist with author and guest curator David L. Witt. Palace Courtyard.

Upon opening, the 96,000-square-foot History Museum joined a campus that included the Palace of the Governors, the nation’s oldest continuously occupied public building; Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives; Palace Press; and Portal Artisans Program. In its last year as a solo museum, the Palace drew 68,454 visitors

Major accomplishments of the last year include:

• Renovation of the Palace Press, including the addition of a new permanent exhibit recreating famed artist Gustave Baumann’s original printing studio
• Opening the exhibit Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time and hosting a series of lectures on the founding of the city, in honor of its 400th birthday
• Moving 3,700 textiles and 10,000 artifacts (including 1,404 pieces of furniture) into new, state-of-the-art collections storage inside the museum
• Acquisition of an 1842 book printed by Padre Antonio José Martínez on the first press in New Mexico, as well as letters written by Billy the Kid to Gov. Lew Wallace
• Winning a $147,000 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to partner with KNME-TV on development and broadcast of history documentaries
• Playing host to His Royal highness Prince Felipe of Spain and his wife, Letizia, during a 400th Anniversary event
• Publication by the Palace Press of Santa Fe Poet Laureate Valerie Martinez’s book, This Is How It Began, commemorating the 400th anniversary
• Unveiling the commemorative Bill Mauldin stamp with the US Postal Service

Praise has come from numerous corners, including:

• The New Mexico Association of Museums’ 2009 Edgar L. Hewett Award
• True West magazine’s Best Western Museum of 2010
• Two first-place honors from the American Association of Museums for the grand-opening advertising and publicity campaign
• The Governor’s Commission for Community Volunteerism’s 2009 Nonprofit Program Award
• An architectural design award from the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division
• Two awards from the New Mexico Historical Society, for publication of Telling New Mexico: A New History, the book accompanying the museum’s core exhibition; and for educational programs ranging from the Web site to interactive exhibits, curricula, lectures, events and more
• Two awards for publication of the book, Through the Lens: the 2009 PubWest Book Design Award; and one of the top 12 Southwest books of 2009 by the Arizona Historical Society

“Visitors tell us time and again that they love what we’re doing – and that they want more,” Levine said. “Our goal is to continue bringing forward even more of the stories that shaped the West, more exhibitions, more lectures, and more ways for people to engage with history and be inspired to explore more of New Mexico.”

New Mexico History Museum

The New Mexico History Museum is the newest addition to a campus that includes the Palace of the Governors, the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States; Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives; the Press at the Palace of the Governors; and the Native American Artisans Program. The New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs. For more information, visit www.nmhistorymuseum.org.

Two Cowgirl Trophy by Greg Mac Gregor, 2009

Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art
New Mexico Museum of Art
May 14 through September 5, 2010

Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art celebrates the art of the West and views cowboy boots as important symbols of western life. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, postcards, advertisements, sculptures, video imagery, and of course boots. The images define changing aspects of the West, from 1880 to the present. The exhibition includes more than 130 objects and pairs of boots that investigate freedom, neliness, gender, fashion, allure and contemporary art.

The exhibition opens May 14, 2010 and runs through September 5, 2010.

Joseph Traugott, Ph.D., summarized the goal of the exhibition by stating that “Sole Mates broadens our understanding of the West and western art, and encourages discussions between western artists and the general public.” He is curator of twentieth century art at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the organizer of Sole Mates.

Each section of the exhibition is titled with a line from a well known western song. The introduction- I See by your Outfit that You Are a Cowboy-sets the tone for the exhibition which is simultaneously stimulating, educational, and fun. Western songs will play in the background of the exhibition.

The historic section of the exhibition includes works by Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and Herbert “Buck” Dunton. These artists defined and then promoted a view of cowboy life that is descriptive, inspiring, and romantic. This section also describes the construction of boots through the work of Deana McGuffin, a third generation bootmaker from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Conceptual sections of the exhibition allude to western attitudes that are infused into boots and art. These sections incorporate popular culture images that help to expand the notion of western art beyond the restrictive stereotype of ranch workers as men on horseback riding with a herd of cattle. For example, David Politzer’s video self portrait, Rio Macho, shows the artist dressed as a middle-aged dude-ranch cowboy bemoaning his lost youth and his failure to become a working cowboy.

Playing cards from the 1950s

The contemporary art in the exhibition presents the West in a complex, provocative manner. The nationally known contemporary western artists in this section include James Drake, Betty Hahn, Martin Cary Horowitz, Luis Jiménez, Bruce Nauman, Patrick Oliphant, Bill Schenck, Lisa Sorrell, and Donald Woodman. The contemporary artists’ point of view can be summarized by Horowitz’s sculpture Baby Bomb that references Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, but also presents a powerful antiwar commentary.

Oklahoma artist Lisa Sorrell’s leather sculptures, such as Butterflies and Bluebirds, are included in the exhibition. In addition, this sculpture just happens to be a pair of cowboy boots. Butterflies and Bluebirds captures the essence and irony of the West- while the sculpture can worn, it may never hit a dance floor.

James Drake’s waterless lithograph Valley of the World relates to his Tony Lama boots with inserts of red snake skin that are also in the exhibition. The print shows a bridge over the Rio Grande connecting Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas. A rectangle of snake skin attached to the print can be understood as both a symbol of the economic ties bridging the two countries, as well as a reference to El Paso-the cowboy boot center of the universe.

Of course, these categories often overlap. Carol Sarkisian’s Maurice’s Boots, Galisteo, NM . Sarkisian transformed tin-artist Maurice Dixon’s worn out boots into jewel-like sculptures, encrusted with glass beads. This work combines sculpture, popular culture, jewelry, and western philosophy into a seductive form.

The content of the exhibition is further explained in Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press: www.mnmpress.org The publication includes 130 full-color illustrations with narratives by Traugott that further explain the concepts underpinning the exhibition. The book is designed by David Skolkin, the press’s award-winning designer.

Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art was organized by the New Mexico Museum of Art, Department of Cultural Affairs, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Teal McKibben's boots made by Montana Boots

Two Cowgirl Trophy by Greg Mac Gregor, 2009

Triptych by Francis Bacon, 1977

New Arrivals: Works from the Collection
New Mexico Museum of Art
Opens February 12, 2010

New Arrivals: Works from the Collection is an exhibition of recent acquisitions to the New Mexico Museum of Art’s permanent collection. New Arrivals highlights the important role the art patron plays in developing a Museum’s collection-either through an outright donation or partnering with the Museum in a purchase.

The works in New Arrivals: Works from the Collection will be on view for the first time featuring favorite New Mexico artists such as Susan Rothenberg and Gunnar Plake, among others, to the internationally recognized Francis Bacon and Roy Lichtenstein.

Approximately twenty-five works will be exhibited in nearly all media (including a skateboard by Artemio Rodriguez).

New Arrivals: Works from the Collection opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Friday, February 12, 2010 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. A reception will be hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico.

Exhibition curator Katherine Ware, curator of photography at the Museum, said; “The permanent collection is at the core of everything we do here at the Museum. It is especially wonderful, through the generosity of our community of donors, to share these treasures with the public for whom we hold these works in trust.”

The focus of New Arrivals: Works from the Collection will be contemporary works donated to the permanent collection. Work from other eras will be shown, such as Milton Rogovin’s photographs of New York City’s Lower East Side and a William Lumpkins landscape, Untitled (Red Butte), 1933.

Museums rely primarily on donations of artwork from various sources as acquisition funds are always limited. A highlight of this exhibition and these donations is that these works deepen the Museum’s collection of art of the Southwest and more specifically art by New Mexico artists while broadening the permanent collection with works by artists such as Francis Bacon.

Triptych by Francis Bacon, 1977

Artists Victoria Sambunaris and Bill Gilbert will hold a dialogue at the New Mexico Museum of Art about “The Road Trip” as an artistic practice on Thursday, December 3, 2009, at 6 p.m.

Bill Gilbert is the Lannan Chair and Director of the Land Arts program at the University of New Mexico. As part of his work as both an artist and a professor, he is often on the road, traversing the Southwest to live and work in the landscape. Bill Gilbert’s work from his journeys in 2005-2006 are the subject of the University of New Mexico Art Museum exhibition Physiocartography, on view through November 25, 2009.

Victoria Sambunaris is one of the nine artists featured in the New Mexico Museum of Art exhibition, Manmade. She too travels the American byways in search of photographic images that often capture human interventions in the landscape, whether the road itself, distribution warehouses and other vehicles of manufacturing and commerce, or the wondrous geological features of Yellowstone National Park.

This is the third and final in a series of lectures presented in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition Manmade: Notions of Landscape from the Lannan Collection. This event is generously sponsored by the Lannan Foundation.

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe Plaza, 107 West Palace Avenue, December 3, 6:00 p.m. Free admission.

Landmine by Sarah Pickering, 2005

Manmade: Notions of Landscape from the Lannan Collection
New Mexico Museum of Art
October 9, 2009 to January 10, 2010

The work of nine artists will be featured in Manmade: Notions of Landscape from the Lannan Collection at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Landscape is often thought of as a pristine wilderness, uninhabited and unmarred by human presence, despite the fact that for many decades now landscape has in practice been represented as incontrovertibly interconnected with mankind and the land itself has been the very material of artmaking.

Manmade is an exhibition primarily of photography, including images of James Turrell’s earthwork project Roden Crater, as well as a significant Robert Smithson installation. The exhibition will be on display at the New Mexico Museum of Art October 9, 2009, through January 10, 2010.

One of the threads that runs through the Santa Fe-based Lannan Foundation collection is an exploration of man and the landscape—not landscape in its most literal sense, but landscape as a construction of meanings and relationships that are always morphing, growing, decaying, and exploding. These various facets of landscape include the natural, the cultural, the social, and the political. Everywhere human presence, for good or bad, is evident and our relationship to our environment is always under negotiation.

The Lannan Foundation works related to landscape are never of the sort that is a celebration purely of a sublime or pristine nature; rather they are of the terrain inscribed with all manner of human interaction, including manmade creations meant to guide our way through the oceans, earthworks, human-aided natural disaster, and the theatre of war.

“For over 20 years, Lannan Foundation has supported the creation and maintenance of important land art projects such as James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Michael Heizer’s City Complex, and Walter de Maria’s Lightning Fields,” states Lannan Foundation Program Director for Art Christie Mazuera Davis. “Our collection, which numbers over 800 works of art, features a significant amount of photography, much of which focuses on the land or manmade environments. While the Foundation has not established a specific criterion to collect landscape-oriented artwork, it is this medium that has perhaps best captured the many-faceted relationship between man and the environment in recent decades.”

The photo-based works that will be on view in Manmade: Notions of Landscape from the Lannan Collection includes post-Katrina photographs of a ravaged landscape by Debbie Fleming Caffery; images of the meeting of land and sea that have been witness to historic moments by Thomas Joshua Cooper; a typological grid of lighthouse photographs by Olafur Eliasson; the confessional water images of Roni Horn; nighttime photographs of wars acted out in the desert by An-My Lê; “portraits” of explosions in the landscape by Sarah Pickering; and photographs of the contemporary industrial landscape by Victoria Sambunaris.

Two well-known Earthwork artists are also represented in the exhibition. The Lannan Collection has rich holdings of James Turrell’s work, including hand-worked aerial views of Roden Crater, an extinct volcano outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, that the artist has been “sculpting” into a monumental earthwork since 1979. Also on view in the New Mexico Museum of Art’s galleries will be Robert Smithson’s 1969 sculptural masterwork Map of Broken Glass (Atlantis), an example both of his early work with earth and glass or mirrors and of his reconsideration of the nature of sculpture.

“This is the museum’s first exhibition of works from the Lannan Foundation collection,” states Curator of Contemporary Art Laura Addison. “There is a tremendous consistency of vision between the Lannan Foundation’s collecting interests and their broader mission. The works in Manmade may take landscape tradition as its point of departure, but there is nothing ordinary about the artists’ approach to their subject matter. These are not simply pretty pictures of the environment. There is a strong sense of purpose that underlies the photographs, in keeping with the Lannan Foundation’s ethos of social responsibility and critical engagement. Each of the artists in Manmade single-mindedly pursues a particular question or problem with respect to the man/land relationship or in terms of art historical paradigms from Minimalism to New Topographics. In some instances that pursuit will take an artist to the ends of the earth, literally.”

Upon entering, I was immediately drawn by the work of Dana Draper. Mr. Draper expertly uses acids and oxides on copper for his figurative paintings. I really liked his bathers series, a composition of three female forms. Mr. Draper’s works explores the female form in a beautiful way.

Another standout is the work of Antonio Arellanes. At first glance Mr. Arellanes’s paintings look like simply textured black canvases, but when viewed from different angles, a multitude of colors appear on the surface. When Mr. Day noticed our interest, he placed the painting under a better light and the colors became more dramatic and interesting. There’s an obvious industrial theme in his work as well as exploration of light.

I enjoyed my experience at the Alan Day Contemporary. Mr. Day happily answers all questions and passionately answers questions about the paintings, making the experience more enjoyable. If you are in Santa Fe, I would recommend stopping by Alan Day Contemporary.

Alan Day Contemporary is located at 129 West Water Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Visite them online at www.alandaycontemporary.com.