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.

Art Department News
Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick on African American History in Anchorage
In June, Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick, Chair of UNM's Africana Studies Department and Professor of Art History...
Mariela Espinoza-León Awarded HECAA Mary Vidal Award and LAII Travel Grant
Mariela Espinoza-León was awarded the HECAA Mary Vidal Award and LAII Travel Grant.
UNM Alumna Awarded Fulbright Research Grant to Bulgaria
Eleanora Edreva, MFA Art & Ecology 2023 alumna, along with three other recipients, has been granted a Fulbright Research Award.
Department of Art Events
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
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
05feb(feb 5)9:00 am07may(may 7)9:15 amLive Performance Piece
Event Details
Live performance piece by Luca Berkley, at the South Gym in the Johnson Center. 9:00 am until approx. 9:09 am in the free weights area. Will be repeated every first
Event Details
Live performance piece by Luca Berkley, at the South Gym in the Johnson Center. 9:00 am until approx. 9:09 am in the free weights area. Will be repeated every first Wednesday, same time and place.
Time
February 5, 2025 9:00 am - May 7, 2025 9:15 am
Location
Johnson Gym
200 Cornell Dr NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
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
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.
Time
February 22, 2025 12:00 pm - July 27, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
UCR ARTS
3824 Main St, Riverside, CA 92501
07mar(mar 7)2:00 pm17apr(apr 17)4:00 pmPlacitas Artist Series
Event Details
Visual artist reception: Sunday: March 23, 2023, 2:00 pm Then stay for the concert on that same day at 3:00 pm Exhibiting artists this month are Dale Jenssen, Wall-hung Fibre and
Event Details
Visual artist reception: Sunday: March 23, 2023, 2:00 pm
Then stay for the concert on that same day at 3:00 pm
Exhibiting artists this month are Dale Jenssen, Wall-hung Fibre and Mixed Media; Cherie Martin Irwin, Fiber and Mixed Media; Logan Ortwerth, Natural Pigment Oils, Watercolors and Acrylics; Mary Louise Skelton, Mixed Media Embellished Gourds.
Time
March 7, 2025 2:00 pm - April 17, 2025 4:00 pm
Location
Las Placitas Presbyterian Church
7 Paseo de San Antonio, Placitas NM 87043
15mar(mar 15)12:00 pm31may(may 31)5:00 pmNew Tableau: Experiments in Photography
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 15,2025, 6:00-8:00 pm In this group exhibition curated by Daniel Ulibarri, “New Tableau: Experiments in Photography” explores how contemporary artists are returning to the photographic medium’s experimental
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 15,2025, 6:00-8:00 pm
In this group exhibition curated by Daniel Ulibarri, “New Tableau: Experiments in Photography” explores how contemporary artists are returning to the photographic medium’s experimental beginnings within the context of modernity. From thermal cameras to alternative darkroom techniques, these artists embrace subtraction, abstraction, amalgamation, unorthodox imaging, and non-traditional practices to explore new frontiers.
“New Tableau” features nine local and international artists, including Roger Ballen, Stefan Jennings Batista, Ryan Dennison, Jesse Draxler, Derrell Lopez, Emily Margarit Mason, Zuyva Sevilla, Nick Tauro Jr., and Ramona Zordini.
Time
March 15, 2025 12:00 pm - May 31, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
516 Arts
516 Central Ave SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
29mar(mar 29)3:00 pm16jun(jun 16)5:00 pmExtant Erosions: MFA Thesis by Emma Ressel
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00-6:00 pm Artist Talk: Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 5:00 pm, Zimmerman Library, Frank Waters Room MFA Thesis exhibition by Emma Ressel ’25 at the New
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00-6:00 pm
Artist Talk: Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 5:00 pm, Zimmerman Library, Frank Waters Room
MFA Thesis exhibition by Emma Ressel ’25 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, 2nd floor.
Time
March 29, 2025 3:00 pm - June 16, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
1801 Mountain Rd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104
02apr(apr 2)12:00 am12(apr 12)5:00 pmGlitches in the Fabric: MFA Thesis by billy von raven
Event Details
Performance: Saturday, March 29, 2025, 7:00 pm UNM Mattox (#123 on UNM map) Artist Talk: Friday, April 4, 2025, 4:00 pm Zimmerman Library Frank Waters Room Closing Reception: Saturday, April 12, 2025,
Event Details
Performance: Saturday, March 29, 2025, 7:00 pm
UNM Mattox (#123 on UNM map)
Artist Talk: Friday, April 4, 2025, 4:00 pm
Zimmerman Library Frank Waters Room
Closing Reception: Saturday, April 12, 2025, 3:00-5:00 pm
Woven graphic score of lunar cycles as felt time.
Performed By:
Kelly Feng
Genevieve Humenay
Adrian Angel
Jen Medina-Gray
Taylor Engel
Kenton Bueche
& billy von raven
Time
April 2, 2025 12:00 am - April 12, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
Masley Gallery
04apr(apr 4)12:00 pm15(apr 15)5:00 pmat the edge of the known world: MFA Thesis by Zoe Gleitsman
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 4, 2025, 5:00-8:00 pm Artist Talk: Monday, April 7, 2025, 3:00 pm CFA, Room 1020
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 4, 2025, 5:00-8:00 pm
Artist Talk: Monday, April 7, 2025, 3:00 pm
CFA, Room 1020
Time
April 4, 2025 12:00 pm - April 15, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
6th Street Studio
1029 6th St NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
05apr(apr 5)12:00 pm04may(may 4)4:00 pmMind @ Large: MFA Thesis by Lana Scholtz
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 5, 2025, 6:00-9:00 pm Gallery Hours: 12:00-4:00 pm or by appointment Artist Talk: Monday, April 14, 2025, 4:00 pm CFA, Room 2018
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 5, 2025, 6:00-9:00 pm
Gallery Hours: 12:00-4:00 pm or by appointment
Artist Talk: Monday, April 14, 2025, 4:00 pm
CFA, Room 2018
Time
April 5, 2025 12:00 pm - May 4, 2025 4:00 pm
Location
AC2 Gallery
301 Mountain Rd NE
07apr(apr 7)8:00 am18(apr 18)5:00 pmBirds and Bees: BFA Honors Thesis by Sarah Bauman
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 2025 Artist Talk: 5:00 pm
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 2025
Artist Talk: 5:00 pm
Time
April 7, 2025 8:00 am - April 18, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
John Sommers Gallery
MSC 04 2560, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
07apr(apr 7)10:00 pm18(apr 18)5:00 pmred light buena vista: MFA Thesis by Kenton Bueche
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 2025, 4:00-7:00 pm Artist Talk: Monday, April 14, 2025, 4:00 pm Clark Hall, Room 101
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 2025, 4:00-7:00 pm
Artist Talk: Monday, April 14, 2025, 4:00 pm
Clark Hall, Room 101
Time
April 7, 2025 10:00 pm - April 18, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
Tamarind Institute
2500 Central Ave SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 2025, 5:00-9:00 pm Closing Reception: Saturday, May 3, 2025, 5:00-7:00 pm Artist Talk: Monday, April 14, 2025, 2:30 pm CFA, Room 1020
Event Details
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 2025, 5:00-9:00 pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, May 3, 2025, 5:00-7:00 pm
Artist Talk: Monday, April 14, 2025, 2:30 pm
CFA, Room 1020
Time
April 11, 2025 3:00 pm - May 3, 2025 8:00 pm
Location
Exhibit/208
208 Broadway Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87102
12apr2:00 pm4:00 pmCurator Tour w/Daniel Ulibarri: 'New Tableau: Experiments in Photography'
Event Details
In this group exhibition curated by Daniel Ulibarri, ‘New Tableau: Experiments in Photography’ explores how contemporary artists are returning to the photographic medium’s experimental beginnings within the context of modernity.
Event Details
In this group exhibition curated by Daniel Ulibarri, ‘New Tableau: Experiments in Photography’ explores how contemporary artists are returning to the photographic medium’s experimental beginnings within the context of modernity. Join us for a guided tour through 516 ARTS as Ulibarri shares insight on the works and their processes.
‘New Tableau’ features nine local and international artists, including Roger Ballen, Stefan Jennings Batista, Ryan Dennison, Jesse Draxler, Derrell Lopez, Emily Margarit Mason, Zuyva Sevilla, Nick Tauro Jr., and Ramona Zordini. These artists embrace subtraction, abstraction, amalgamation, unorthodox imaging and non-traditional practices to explore new frontiers.
Time
April 12, 2025 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location
516 Arts
516 Central Ave SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
12apr2:00 pmJAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH: Panel Discussion
Event Details
Join us for a panel presentation discussing one of the most important Native American artists of the past century. Panelists: Prof. Karsten Creightney, University of New Mexico Art Department Neal Ambrose-Smith: artist and
Event Details
Join us for a panel presentation discussing one of the most important Native American artists of the past century.
Panelists:
Prof. Karsten Creightney, University of New Mexico Art Department
Neal Ambrose-Smith: artist and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s son
Dr. Carolyn Kastner, curator emerita of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and author of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: An American Modernist
The panel will discuss Smith’s mission and legacy as artist, activist, educator, historian, feminist, curator, and advocate for other Native artists, and explore her work and why it was, and will remain, among the most important in American modern contemporary art.
Time
April 12, 2025 2:00 pm
Location
LewAllen Galleries
1613 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501
16apr(apr 16)10:00 am20(apr 20)7:00 pmFantasy Infinity: MFA Thesis by Taylor Engel
Event Details
Concert: Friday, April 18, 2025, 8:00 pm Artist Talk: Tuesday, April 22, 2025, 5:00 pm, at Kiva Auditorium
Event Details
Concert: Friday, April 18, 2025, 8:00 pm
Artist Talk: Tuesday, April 22, 2025, 5:00 pm, at Kiva Auditorium
Time
April 16, 2025 10:00 am - April 20, 2025 7:00 pm
Location
Immanuel Presbyterian Church
114 Carlisle Blvd SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
18apr11:00 am1:00 pmVisiting Artist Talk: Lindsey White
Event Details
Friday, April 18, 2025, 11:00 am Room 304 Zoom Link: https://unm.zoom.us/j/94560315932 Lindsey White (b. Tulsa, OK) is an artist living and working in San Francisco, CA. In her enigmatic and slyly
Event Details
Friday, April 18, 2025, 11:00 am
Room 304
Zoom Link: https://unm.zoom.us/j/94560315932
Lindsey White (b. Tulsa, OK) is an artist living and working in San Francisco, CA.
In her enigmatic and slyly humorous works, Lindsey White (b. 1980) explores the aesthetics of stand-up comedy and the related field of magic. Trained as a photographer, she sees comedians and magicians as kindred spirits-similarly sensitive people who notice things that others might overlook and call them to our attention. She’s particularly interested in the difficulties women face in these arenas, which are traditionally dominated by men. In addition to photographs, White creates sculptural objects inspired by everyday items. When remade and decontextualized, these “props,” as White characterizes them, can take on eerily strange or dark tones. Emblazoned with kitschy phrases, they share the theatrical quality inherent to her photographs. When presented together, her works evoke the buzz of anticipation one feels in the moments before the start of a stage performance.
She has a new book, “What? Is? Art?” is out now on Colpa Press. She is represented by Casemore Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Time
April 18, 2025 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Location
Art Building
19apr3:30 pm5:30 pmXR Performance Hack-a-thon Performance
Event Details
This performance workshop is part of an initiative to foster intellectual and artistic exchange in XR (extended reality) studies. We invite you to join a three-week workshop, a collaboration between
Event Details
This performance workshop is part of an initiative to foster intellectual and artistic exchange in XR (extended reality) studies. We invite you to join a three-week workshop, a collaboration between faculty/students in the Art Department and the Department of Film & Digital Arts at UNM.
The workshop will begin in Week 10 of the semester and will include students from FDMA 491: Blender and ARTS 446/546: The Politics of Performance, along with interested performers from various fields. Interested artist/scholars will collaborate with students in FDMA 491 to create performances that incorporate 3-D rendered objects in virtual reality.
The three-week collaboration will culminate in a public performance. The performance will be streamed online through the Department of Film & Digital Arts platform and presented at the UNM Art Museum.Attendance is free. Selected participants will commit to at least 3 meetings with collaborators, as well as participation in the final rehearsal and performance.
Time
April 19, 2025 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Location
UNM Art Museum
Center for the Arts, 203 Cornell Dr, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 19, 2025, from 4:00-7:00 pm Closing Reception: Sunday, April 27,2025, from 2:00-4:30 pm Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Friday from 12:00-4:00 pm In their separate yet related Graduate Thesis
Event Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 19, 2025, from 4:00-7:00 pm
Closing Reception: Sunday, April 27,2025, from 2:00-4:30 pm
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday through Friday from 12:00-4:00 pm
In their separate yet related Graduate Thesis Exhibitions, Amari Becker and Isabel Heiland share works that include sculpture, weaving, drawing, installation, photography, and field research. Both artists explore and question their relationships within a diverse, enmeshed multi-species planet. Rainbows are found in burned remains. Plastic is remembered as a descendant of long-gone forests. The theme of more-than-human interconnectedness imbues the works with both grief and love.
Exhibition curated by Elie Porter Trubert — http://www.elieportertrubert.com/
Tending to…
Art Talk: Monday, April 21, 2025, 11:00 am
Tending to… honors the sentience of material-beings. Grandmother’s prayers weave across a milpa farmer’s hands. Buttons sprout from twisted poplar. Peanuts growing spices, pigments, seeds, and plastic remains hang stitched with heirloom threads encased in paraffin wax, bringing the latest updates on exchange rates. The bricolage beings of garbologist Amari Becker’s thesis installation stitch together bits of detritus with medicinal plants and family heirlooms. Amari’s interest in movements, places, and stories drives their research to trace repeating systems and patterns. Over a decade of working in documentary filmmaking and commercial television propels questions about power and cultural production. Family dreams intersect local myths, national systems, and global infrastructure to create a body of whimsical beings brimming with contradiction.
Absorb – Reflect – Refract
Artist Talk, Monday, April, 2025, 1:00 pm
Informed by first-hand experience in forestry and field research in places altered by fire, Colorado artist Isabel Heiland shares the beauty of disturbed landscapes in Absorb-Reflect-Refract. Through her work, she examines how natural areas, specifically the coniferous forests of Colorado and New Mexico’s Rocky Mountains, transform and reciprocate through trauma, growth, disaster, relationships, time, and love. Looking at these changes from the outside prompted Isabel to examine the ways that she herself transforms under stress and care, and how she reflects that back into the world. And, ultimately, the beauty she finds around her–whether intact or heavily disturbed–has led to her acceptance of constant change and chaos as part of life.
Time
April 19, 2025 4:00 pm - April 27, 2025 7:00 pm
Location
6th Street Studio
1029 6th St NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
24apr3:00 pm6:00 pmFrederick Hammersley Visiting Artist Larry Madrigal: Open Studio
Event Details
Open Studio: Thursday, April 24, 2025, 3:00-6:00 pm Larry Madrigal (b. 1986, Los Angeles) is a Mexican American painter living and working in Phoenix, Arizona. Madrigal completed his MFA at Arizona
Event Details
Open Studio: Thursday, April 24, 2025, 3:00-6:00 pm
Larry Madrigal (b. 1986, Los Angeles) is a Mexican American painter living and working in Phoenix, Arizona.
Madrigal completed his MFA at Arizona State University in Tempe in 2020. He has had solo exhibitions with Veta Gallery in Madrid, Spain, Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles and New York, Galeria Nicodim in Bucharest, Romania, the Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art and more. He has also been included in group exhibitions in Bucharest, Paris, Tokyo, Tel-Aviv, New York and Los Angeles, Madrigal is represented by Nicodim Gallery.
Time
April 24, 2025 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Location
Art Annex
1901 Central Ave NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Event Details
Reception: Friday, April 25, 2025, 5:00-7:30 pm Join the free public reception celebrating the opening of the exhibition, Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico, curated
Event Details
Reception: Friday, April 25, 2025, 5:00-7:30 pm
Join the free public reception celebrating the opening of the exhibition, Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico, curated by Ray Hernández-Durán, Ph.D. and Irene Vásquez, Ph.D.
This is an exhibition 7 years in the making that features a group of New Mexican artists who were among the earliest generation of Chicana and Chicano activists in the state. All 6 artists, 3 men and 3 women, were students at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) in Las Vegas in the early 1970s when Chicano scholar Pedro Rodríguez was hired as the inaugural Director of Chicano Studies at NMHU. It was at NMHU that these young men and women became politically active and proceeded to paint murals, produce art, and organize in New Mexico as part of the nascent Chicano civil rights movement that was unfolding nationally. The artworks on display capture a distinctly New Mexican Chicana and Chicano experience that has received little attention in Chicano art history.
Time
April 25, 2025 10:00 pm - February 8, 2026 4:00 pm
Location
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 ·