It takes a multitude of artists to create a rich and vibrant community like Santa Fe’s. And if you’re judging by the amount of energy that the Vladem Museum of Contemporary Art put into its second exhibition, it also takes an army of curators to put it all into perspective.
The goal of Off-Center: New Mexico Art, 1970-2000 is to encapsulate all the developments from local artists in one of the most turbulent times in American history. Four curators had a hand in building the exhibition, and different elements will rotate to show new pieces in late August, November, and again in January 2025.
“To see the whole thing, you have to come back more than once,” says Christian Waguespack, Vladem’s head of curatorial affairs and curator of 20th century art for the New Mexico Museum of Art. “None of the artists are being shown twice, so every time you come back, everything will be new and different.”
The Vladem opened last September, and its first exhibition was Shadow and Light, two aspects of New Mexico life that have inspired artists for generations. When the curators were planning how to follow that exhibition, they decided their responsibility was to tell the story of how New Mexico was transformed into an artist’s mecca.
The 1970 to 2000 era features a confluence of many trends, Waguespack says. Artists of that time were considering the repercussions of 20th century movements such as feminism and postmodernism, and the result is a deeply integrated stew of creativity.
“People, in many ways, are questioning and challenging what came before,” he says. “We see the proliferation of a lot of different types of institutions that support many different types of artists. I think the Institute of American Indian Arts is probably one of the best examples, but if you look at the artists coming through the University of New Mexico and the establishment of that fine arts program, you’re pulling in young artists who are being developed.
Delilah Montoya, La Guadalupana (1998), mixed media photo mural installation. From the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art
“You’ve got people working with computers for the first time, and people working collectively for the first time. You’ve got so many people going in so many different directions all at once, and I think the pluralism in the diversity at this moment just really explodes.”
But how do you take that idea — a survey of all the artists in a state over a span of 30 years — and turn it into a coherent exhibition?
Assistant curator Katie Doyle, who worked with curator Alexandra Terry to flesh out one section of the exhibition, says the planning took about 15 months.
”Trying to identify the who, what, where, and when has been the greatest undertaking of the project. And it’s taken so much time,” she says. “We already knew the names of artists, but we didn’t want to lock ourselves into any one particular way of crafting a show.”
Eventually, the curators settled on a structure that wouldn’t separate the art by chronology; rather, it would break it into three sections representing Place, Identity, and Spectacle. And those three sections were fluid, meaning that many pieces could fit in any of them.
“A huge part has been assessing our collection but also working with artists who had just come here in that time or whose career was just starting to blossom in that time,” Doyle says. “And they’re still making work now.”
The exhibition had one other challenge: The curators decided that each artist could only be represented by one piece, in the interest of diversifying the field of work. The final installment will show the work of more than 150 artists over the course of 11 months.
Off-Center will offer a bit of everything; painting and photography are represented, as well as sculpting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, and work with reclaimed industrial materials. For Terry, the Vladem’s new curator of contemporary art, the exhibit offered a crash course in the history of local art and the gems that are hidden deep in the museum’s vaults.
“I started in September,” she says, “I jumped right into this project, and it’s been an amazing way for me to learn about the landscape — literally and figuratively — in New Mexico.”
Waguespack is taking on Place, and his installations will be Off-Center’s first act. Viewers will see landscapes, of course, but also the figurative things that make up New Mexico culture. Waguespack says the work of noted Native American artist T.C. Cannon (1946-1978) and Native American expressionist Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) will be included as part of the conversation about the politics associated with Indigenous land. The exhibit also includes work from photographer Patrick Nagatani (1945-2017), feminist artist Judy Chicago, and Santa Fe sculptor Tony Price (1937–2000) that deals with the state’s atomic history, and work from Rick Dillingham (see “Homecoming for Dillingham,” December 8) and Santa Fe carver Louis Tapia that celebrates New Mexico car culture.
There’s also an interesting perspective about the state from Agnes Martin (1912-2004), a Taos artist famous for her grid paintings.
Gail Rieke and Zachariah Rieke, Love Nest (1998), mixed media. From the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art
“People think about grid paintings in terms of pure abstraction, nonobjective work, mathematics,” says Waguespack. “But there’s a quote from Agnes Martin where she’s talking about going on a hike in the mountains, and coming down from the mountains she’s looking at the plain, that flat horizon. When you think about the way people have represented the New Mexico landscape over the last century, one of the things people really are drawn to are our mountains, those dramatic views. For her, it was the opposite. She said those flat, simple plains are what spoke to her and made her think, ‘This is the place for me.’”
Vladem curator of photography Katherine Ware will oversee the segment on Spectacle, and Doyle and Terry will curate the section on Identity.
Waguespack says a new part of the collection will make its debut as part of Off-Center. Truth or Consequences artist Delmas Howe’s Ascension, which he dedicated to his partner who was dying of complications from HIV, will fill a prominent place in the Off-Center exhibit.
“One of the things we were able to do with this exhibition was do interviews with many of the living artists and record those for our archives,” Waguespack says. “When we interviewed Delmas, he said this is the most important painting he made over the course of his career.”
One of the innovative things the Vladem offered with its opening was the creation of a window box that allowed people to experience the art without entering the museum. Doyle says that feature has generated a lot of discussion among the Santa Fe community, and Off-Center hopes to capitalize on the same concept by switching up its displays over the life of the exhibit.
“You take one thing out, you put a new thing in, and it can change the space entirely,” she says of the nearly year-long exhibit for the Vladem’s second act. “I think that’s what I’m most excited about and what I’m really looking forward to. With each iteration of this show, the museum’s going to feel different, and the museum will be telling a different story each time.”
