Albuquerque Museum purchases of five new works, plus prints and photographs
Feb. 25—When the pandemic shuttered nearly everything, a statistician dropped by the Albuquerque Museum to find a shortage of female artists, especially Hispanic women in its collection.
The City of Albuquerque provided a $100,000 investment to fill that gap through the purchase of five new works, plus prints and photographs.
The artwork includes a neon sculpture by Neal Ambrose-Smith; sculpture by Vicente Telles and Jason Garcia; a textile and audio by composer Raven Chacon; sculpture by Marietta Leis; a wood block print by Yoshiko Shimano; and prints and photographs by Delilah Montoya.
⋄ Albuquerque's Telles is a santero working within the Hispanic carving tradition. Garcia is from Santa Clara Pueblo. The altar "La Malinche y Los Matachines" demonstrates an intersection between Hispano and pueblo culture, and supports the museum's mission to continue to break down the "tri-cultural myth" by showing how different cultures within the state are connected.
—A Corrales resident, Ambrose-Smith is a professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. "Abstract in Your Home" is a neon installation exploring concepts of home, abstract art and cultural experiences. He calls a teepee as a perfectly engineered structure that is both versatile and sturdy — able to withstand the harshness of the Southwest. It also represents his Indigenous culture and shows that although the concept of home may differ in time and place, it still embodies universal ideas of shelter, tradition and family.
—Stories provide the fuel for Albuquerque photographer Montoya's prints.
"She's willing to look at stories most people don't think are necessary to document," said Andrew Connors, museum director.
Those stories encompass gang members, women boxers and prisoners.
"La Loca y Sweetie" (1993) captures two local women before a graffiti-embellished backdrop. "La Virgen" (1997) shows the Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo across a prisoner's back, draped in a mantilla and long skirt.
"She noted a lot of prisoners in New Mexico had a picture of the Virgin tattooed on their back," Connors said.
"She took their photos with great respect," he added.
—Shimano's mammoth 96-by-137 1/4 -inch print "The Wisdom of Water" depicts the Japanese city of Edo, the original capital of Japan.
"She is very interested in cartography and map-making, recasting our perceptions of the world," Connors said. "The way most cultures have been isolated is because of water. She's mapping local locations onto a more global presence."
Shimano is a professor and printmaker at the University of New Mexico.
—World-renowned Albuquerque composer Chacon continues to create work that is political and traverses the worlds of Indigenous and Chicano cultures. He is a 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner and has exhibited widely as a solo artist and as part of the collective called Postcommodity. "Storm Pattern" is a large-scale installation that explores music and the visual arts, Standing Rock, Indigenous history and activism, and new formats for contemporary art.
—Leis is a contemporary artist from Albuquerque living and working in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. "Breathless 1—4" interacts with the natural world, reflecting on both the beauty and power of nature, but also the fragility of the environment. Leis is interested in transforming spaces by using series of objects, color and spatial relationships to create connections between the viewer and the artwork.
"The museum has steadily grown its collections, its physical site, and its programming for more than 50 years," Connors said. "Over the next 10 years, the museum will expand on this work, which will include the continued development and interpretation of the art and history collections and photo archives."
