Plaza Building

Art collectors are often said to have “a good eye” for pictures, but what does that really mean? This selection of photographs from three collections recently donated to the museum and one promised gift illustrates a variety of approaches to choosing works of art and assembling a collection. United by a passion for photography, each...

A prominent fixture in the Santa Fe arts community, Rick Dillingham was a scholar, author, collector, curator, dealer, and ceramic artist who was firmly grounded in the tradition and canon of Southwest ceramics. After his death in 1994 due to complications from AIDS, Dillingham’s collection of ceramic artworks was distributed across multiple institutions in central...

Out West surveys the work of gay and lesbian artist in the American Southwest from the early twentieth century through the Stonewall Riots of 1969, when the face of queer representation changed dramatically in the United States. While some artists built lives for themselves in states less welcoming to queer people, other areas, including northern New...

Mexican photographer Manuel Carrillo (1906-1989) turned to the camera fairly late in life, joining the Club Fotográfico de México at the age of 49. He quickly found his voice by making images of everyday life throughout Mexico, celebrating local culture and the human spirit. His work is an extension of Mexicanidad, a movement begun in...

An American in Paris: Donald Beauregard surveys the short yet ambitious career of one of the first artists affiliated with the New Mexico Museum of Art. When artist Donald Beauregard (1884-1914) passed away prematurely at age 29, he left behind an impressive body of work conversant in the latest artistic developments in Europe. Following his study...

Organized from the New Mexico Museum of Art’s growing art glass collection, this exhibition explores how artists working in glass have engaged the natural world as content for their work. It also examines the nature of glass as a medium, exploring the technical and material nature of glass, the natural qualities of the medium and...

This exhibition explores the dialogue between artists and their materials at play in the work of modern and contemporary Hispanic carvers in Northern New Mexico at the intersection of materials, form, practice, and place.  It traces the relationship between wood carvers in Northern New Mexico and the distinctive way in which the aesthetics of their...

Frederick Hammersley: To Paint without Thinking, brought from The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, showcases the American artist’s sketchbooks, notebooks, inventories, and vibrant color swatches to illuminate the systematic process he used to create his lively hard-edge geometric paintings. The presentation in New Mexico, where the artist lived from 1968 until his death in...

Photographer Patrick Nagatani (1945-2017) didn’t just take pictures, he made pictures. While most art photographs are the result of careful choices about subject, framing, lighting, and other factors, Nagatani went to even greater lengths to get the picture he wanted. With experience working in Hollywood special-effects and an MFA from UCLA, the artist began creating...

Stage, Setting, Mood: Theatricality in the Visual Arts examines the formal means artists employ to impart a sense of drama and setting in their compositions. The exhibition opens with a free public reception hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico at the New Mexico Museum of Art on February 5, 2016...