Department of Art

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By providing an environment where creativity, experimentation, and intellectual discourse can flourish, the Department of Art demonstrates a strong commitment to its community of Studio Artists, Art Educators and Art Historians.

The Department recognizes the advantages that are gained through the integration of these disciplines and through broader association with other disciplines and research units across the university. Creative and intellectual energy generated by crossing boundaries benefits our graduate and undergraduate students and prepares them for an ever-changing global culture.

an artist working with mixed media materials

Lee Montgomery<br />
Associate Professor and Chair

Lee Montgomery
Associate Professor and Chair

From the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Art where artists, scholars, and educators engage and collaborate in vibrant research and artistic production. Our nationally and internationally renowned faculty mentor a talented and diverse student body, and together they create an inclusive environment where creativity and critical discourse thrive. Our students engage in contemporary and emerging media in art studio, they explore interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to art history of various places and periods, and they train as artist-educators responsive to cultural and artistic developments.

The Department of Art ranks among the top 50 programs in the nation and placed 8th in the area of Photography. I encourage you to explore our website and learn about the range of degrees you can obtain, the exciting possibilities and opportunities offered in the department, and the exhibitions and lecture series organized each year by faculty and students. Your career in the arts – be it in the studio, in research, criticism or in education – begins with an inspiring education you receive at the University of New Mexico Department of Art. I invite you to meet with me to discuss your future in the visual arts.

Department of Art News

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An Engaging Talk with Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist Larry Madrigal: Upcoming Workshops and More!

On February 20, 2025, painter Larry Madrigal gave an inspiring artist talk at the Albuquerque Museum as part of the Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist program.

Professor Ray Hernández-Durán Joins National Think Tank to Redefine American Art and Identity

Over the summer of 2024, Associate Department Chair of Art and Professor of Art History, Ray Hernández-Durán, was invited to join a national “Think Tank” of 18th century experts.

Amanda Curreri, ‘In Bocca al Lupo,’ Solo Exhibition at Romer Young Gallery San Francisco, CA

The exhibition is on-view through March 1, 2025 in San Francisco, CA.

Department of Art Events

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13dec(dec 13)8:00 pm03apr(apr 3)5:00 pmSeeding Radicle Futures

31jan(jan 31)10:00 am17may(may 17)5:00 pmPush & Pull: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler and Her Contemporaries

Event Details

Celebrate the opening of Push & Pull: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler and Her Contemporaries

UNM Art Museum latest exhibition celebrates abstraction in all print processes. Featuring Modern and contemporary abstract prints and drawings, the exhibition focuses on the works of Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine de Kooning. Displayed alongside prints by their contemporaries, the works in this exhibition demonstrate important collaborations with American publishers such as Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Tyler Graphics Ltd., and Tamarind Institute. Read more about Push and Pull.

We invite you to join us for an opening reception on Friday, January 31, from 4:00 – 7:00 pm, with opening remarks beginning at 4:45 pm from UNMAM Curators Mary Statzer and Angel Jiang, and Director Arif Khan.

This exhibition is made possible by a generous donation of twenty prints from Helen Frankenthaler as part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative. UNM students from the course Abstraction on Paper: Curating Postwar American Prints and Drawings (AHIS 429/529) played a key role in developing this exhibition, providing labels and sound pieces.

Kayliegh Begay
Hannah Cerne
Ava Marr
Logan Petersen
Marina Perez
Savannah Phelps
Sophie Rubeo
Michael Schultze
Brianna Tadeo
Yoma Wilson

In response to Frankenthaler’s work, students created original pieces featured in the exhibition. Adrian Ricca Lucci (BFA student in painting and drawing), Brianna Tadeo (third-year MFA student in photography), and Yoma Wilson (second-year MFA student in printmaking). whose works reflect a deep engagement with Frankenthaler’s artistic vision.

Time

January 31, 2025 10:00 am - May 17, 2025 5:00 pm

Location

UNM Art Museum

Center for the Arts, 203 Cornell Dr, Albuquerque, NM 87106

Calendar GoogleCal

03feb01aprto return to community = balikbayan: MFA Thesis Exhibition by Gabriel Hudson

Event Details

Opening Reception: Friday, February 7, 2025, 6:00-8:00 pm, Performance at 6:30 pm

Masquerade: Friday, February 14, 2025, 6:00-8:00 pm

Artist Talk: Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm, at George Pearl Hall, UNM School of Architecture and Planning

This exhibition is a non-traditional book about what it’s been like growing up mix-cultured in the 21st century United States and gabriel needed more than words and images to accomplish this, so they’ve dispersed their written words amongst sculptures including video, audio, and mixed media.

gabriel takes the literal cardboard boxes that enable our society to function, and the psychic, mental, metaphysical, socio-emotional, societally-constructed boxes that also shape individual people and communities, and made art from harvesting, ripping, shredding, soaking, pulping, blending, then re-sculpting these boxes.

gabriel found a sense of futuristic self-determination, present fulfillment, and a capacity to contribute to old-old efforts of social engagement by playing in the box, outside of the box, but most of all: with the box.

~~~

Friday 7th – free exhibition, a night of masks, remixed photography, and video; bring $$ for food truck, and art with sliding scale pricing. Performance starts at. 6:30 pm.

Friday 14th – Free masquerade! Come ready for a semi-formal, fully-groovy night of dance and food to close out the show. Come with a mask (Halloween mask, health mask, or something of your own creation) and get ready to boogie. All ages, bodies, and dress welcome – come in that prom outfit that got canceled because of COVID, come in those snazzy sweats that make you feel so cozy – and enjoy a de-colonial valentines art-dance-party.

*email ghudson8@unm.edu to schedule a gallery visit or tour, classes and large groups welcomed.

Time

February 3, 2025 6:00 pm - April 1, 2025 8:00 pm

Location

SIX O SIX Studio

606 Broadway Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87102

Calendar GoogleCal

05feb(feb 5)9:00 am07may(may 7)9:15 amLive Performance Piece

22feb(feb 22)12:00 pm27jul(jul 27)5:00 pmShadow Archive

Event Details

Spring Reception, Saturday, March 22, 2025, 3:00-6:00 pm

Professor Meggan Gould, who teaches photography within the Department of Art at UNM and serves as the Associate Dean of Research, is a contemporary photographer whose work often explores the rhetorical, semiotic, and material ways in which photography and its tools—namely, cameras—have been socially constructed. She places under the lens facets of camera technology that usually reside comfortably outside the resultant image—the varying structures and functions of viewfinders, film frame counters, and camera icons—questioning the particular ways in which these seemingly natural and neutral attributes shape the photographer, and the medium itself.

During the creation of her series “7 Pictures Remaining,” the artist’s images of camera counters took on a surprising new dimension when she discovered that many of the cameras documented contained rolls of undeveloped film. Gould opened nearly all the cameras in the collection and discovered hundreds of never-before-seen images residing within. This yielded fascinating discoveries and intimate moments connecting cameras, and former camera owners, to their images, effectively operating as a “shadow archive” within the California Museum of Photography (CMP) technology collection. A selection of prints made from these anonymous images are presented alongside Gould’s own work, attributing personal histories and biographies to these otherwise mute objects.