About

The importance of the arts as communication, in the past, the present and the future, is pivotal.

This belief is the keystone of our programs, and it is the foundation for our primary goal, which is to expose students to the richness of art through a wide range of new and traditional media. We also seek to develop critical thought in our classes, and the practice and methods for understanding the teaching of the arts and the history of art.

The Department is dedicated to providing the best education possible no matter which degree a student might be pursuing. We are also committed to benefiting UNM, the city of Albuquerque, the state of New Mexico, as well as national, and international communities. To achieve these aims, the Department maintains a world-class faculty that is actively engaged in creative art, art education, and art history.

an art history professor pointing to a work during a lecture

Art Department News

Assistant Professor, Amanda Curreri’s, Newest Exhibition “Liber Floridus”

Congratulations to Assistant Professor and graduate director Amanda Curreri, who, along with multimedia artist Andy Ness, created the exhibition Liber Floridus presented by the Wege Gallery. Curreri contributed woven textile-based works, while Ness contributed...

Engaged Practices, Professor Subhankar Banerjee’s Showcase, looking at Nature Journaling as Pedagogy

Congratulations to Professor Subhankar Banerjee, whose classes “Introduction to Art and Ecology” and “Biodiversity, Creative Practice, Justice” explored nature journaling as both a visual and literary practice, culminating in a showcase last week.

Art MFA Student, Hanna Brody, featured in The New York Times

Art MFA student, Hanna Brody, recently completed a painting for author T Kira Māhealani Madden that was featured in The New York Times. Her book, titled “Somebody Killed Her Assailant. Was Justice Served?” has a featured review written by Catherine Chidgey and original art by UNM MFA student Hanna Brody.

Department of Art Events

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21feb(feb 21)12:00 pm02may(may 2)5:00 pmMetal Rules!

27mar(mar 27)8:00 pm03may(may 3)8:00 pm𝙇𝘼𝙉𝘼 𝙎𝘾𝙃𝙊𝙇𝙏𝙕: 𝘾𝙀𝙉𝙏𝙍𝙄𝙁𝙐𝙂𝙀 and 𝙃𝙊𝙊𝙆, 𝙀𝙔𝙀, 𝙈𝙊𝙐𝙏𝙃: Eleanor Aldrich, Matthan Cowart, Poppy DeltaDawn and Higinio Martinez

Event Details

Opening Reception: Friday, March 27, 2026, 6:00-8:00 pm
Artist Conversation: Saturday, April 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

smoke the moon presents Centrifuge, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Lana Scholtz. The Albuquerque, NM based artist will exhibit a suite of large scale, saturated oil paintings on linen throughout smoke the moon’s main gallery space. Scholtz received an MFA in Painting from UNM in 2025. This is the artist’s debut solo show in Santa Fe. The works in Centrifuge are filled with layered vision, the prismatic force of the universe on full display.

A gravitational language with mysterious laws emerges in Scholtz’s paintings. Her scenes depict the helixed relationship between internal and external worlds. Objects yield toward an unknown center, compelled by great forces. The center never holds, and a kaleidoscopic system transforms recognizable structures into otherworldly terrains. The material research for Centrifuge traversed physics, anatomy and the earth sciences. Scholtz’s paintings play within the phantasmic outer limits of the scientific world.

There is something larval, vertebral and cosmic about the paintings on view in Centrifuge. They are bodily but not distinctly human. They oscillate between planetary and microscopic, as if each view will shed new light on the same equation. Scholtz’s work is like Reich’s cloudbuster turned technicolor; her paintings could be biological studies for the machines of a far away future or distant past. Each painting is both its own mystic universe and a page out of a transcendental fairytale. In Stone Milk, a milky, incandescent orb spins out of a winged form backgrounded in washy rose pinks and evening sky blues. The flittering outlines of a worm-like creature emerge and recede across the canvas. Interiority Complex ventures further into abstraction: hard lines weave and tessellate in sharp, molten cadmium reds and oranges punctuated by deep jewel tones. The pale moon and the grid on fire; both carry a distinctive glow.

Scholtz has honed a patience and control in her work that translates to an ecstatic final form. Her work is methodical and trusting in composition: layers and layers of hazy underpaintings are built up until the sensory logic of a painting presents itself to Scholtz. This is a practice that requires great fidelity to the language of paint and its embodied and instinctual articulation. What emerges is material documentation of vast research married with emotional and sensory experiences.

Each painting in Centrifuge mediates the space between transparency and opacity. Scholtz has found a way to paint the circle through a hole in its center; a place where new light shines through and patterns fray their outer limits. Scholtz’s paintings are both centered and wild: they plumb earthly logic with an open hand.

Time

March 27, 2026 8:00 pm - May 3, 2026 8:00 pm

Location

smoke the moon

616 ½ canyon road, Santa Fe, NM 87501

Calendar GoogleCal

29mar(mar 29)10:30 am09may(may 9)5:00 pmShimmer: Vibrant Art/Science of New Mexico Opening LASER Panel

Event Details

Come to our first LASER Panel for our exhibition Shimmer: Vibrant Art/Science of New Mexico
Saturday, April 4, 2026, 3-5pm in conjunction with an opening reception at the newly remodeled Peterson Gallery of St. John’s College Santa Fe
Atmosphere, Water and Light: Shimmer LASER Panel at St. John’s College on Saturday, April 11, 2026. RSVP here

Panel Presenters: Alyce Santoro, Kira Howard, Jeanette Hart-Mann and Palma Maya-Johnson
Featured Artists: Sophie Azzolina, Morgan Barnard, Bobbe Besold, Paul Biagi, Chad Colby, Shirley Crow, Deidre Greenly , Jeanette Hart-Mann , Evgenya Kirichenko, Jessica Lanham, Susan Latham, Richard Lowenberg, Palma Maya-Johnson, Jess Merritt, Heather Murphree, Andrea Polli, Nico Rasmussen, Alyce Santoro, Abigail Sapien and Lila Steffan

SHIMMER is dazzling, alluring, brilliance. According to multi-species ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose (1946-2018), SHIMMER is the iridescence of aliveness, the world as interactive, vibrant, and vibrating. It is ripples of sunlight glimmering on water, the irresistible sweetness that draws bee to flower, the pulse in a work of art that resonates in the viewer. SHIMMER is the visceral awareness of interconnection between species, between human and biosphere, between observer and observed. For our Spring 2026 exhibition, SciArt Santa Fe features 20 New Mexico artists whose work responds to this concept of SHIMMER.

Project Venue and Setting
At St. John’s College, science and art are complementary ways of knowing, and all students engage with the great works of mathematics, natural science, philosophy, poetry, music, and literature through close reading and sustained conversation. With a curriculum that moves from Euclid, Darwin and Einstein to the study and illustration of plants and the movement of celestial beings, St. John’s fosters an education rooted in inquiry, imagination, and the enduring dialogue between scientific discovery and artistic expression.

SciArt Santa Fe, founded in 2019, fosters artists across disciplines that reflect the cultural diversity of New Mexico, supports research that addresses issues that disproportionately affect people of under-represented races, ethnicities, religions, genders, sexual orientations, national origins, citizenship statuses and ages including climate change, species extinction and migration, that often do not fit within a traditional gallery framework.