UNM Art Museum - 50th Anniversary Exhibitions

Recently, I attended the opening reception for UNM Art Museum’s 50th Anniversary. In the early years following the opening of the museum in 1963, significant exhibitions were held of Georgia O’Keeffe, Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt, Cady Wells, Andrew Dasburg, John Marin, and other Modernists. Van Deren Coke was the founding director of the museum. For this anniversary event, the museum curated three concurrent exhibitions from it’s impressive permanent collection of over 30,000 works of art:

From Raymond Jonson to Kiki Smith, curated by Lisa Tamiris Becker and Robert Ware

This exhibition, on view in the Main Gallery, features many noted artists including Ansel Adams, Alexander Archipenko, Larry Bell, Ernest Blumenschein, Bruce Conner, Juan Correa, David Hare, Raymond Jonson, Donald Judd, Bridget Riley, Julius Rolshoven, Robert Ryman, Alison Saar, Fritz Scholder, Kiki Smith, and Luis Tapia. It encompasses major works of modern and contemporary painting, sculpture, and works on paper, European and Spanish Colonial paintings and sculpture, as well as selections of Retablos, African sculpture, and Mata Ortiz Pottery. Particularly noteworthy is the oil painting, Grand Canyon Trilogy - First Movement, by former UNM art professor Raymond Jonson who bequeath more than 1,300 of his own paintings to the museum. 

Raymond Jonson (American, 1891 - 1982); Grand Canyon Trilogy - First Movement, 1927; Oil on canvas; 45 x 56 inches; Bequest of Raymond Jonson, The Raymond Jonson Collection, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque; copyright The Raymond Jonson Collection, UNM Art Museum; Photo by Robert Reck

Edge of Color - Tamarind artists examine color as form, from 1960s to present

This week I ventured over to the University of New Mexico to view the group exhibition at the Tamarind Gallery featuring the works of Garo Antreasian, Valerie Arber, Frederick Hammersley, Robert Kelly, Nicholas Krushenick, John McLaughlin, Ruth Root, Leon Polk Smith and William Turnbull. The Edge of Color show includes a spectrum of lithographs, from the 1960s to the present, with geometric, hard edge color as a pure form in itself.

The Tamarind Lithography Workshop was established in Los Angeles in 1960 by artist June Wayne with funding from the Ford Foundation. Its goal was to bring attention to process of lithography—a method of printmaking invented in the late 18th century—and bolster its use among a new generation of artists. During its years in Los Angeles, the workshop was run by Wayne, Clinton Adams, and Garo Antreasian. In 1970, when funding had run out, Tamarind became affiliated with the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, where it remains today.

The Tamarind Institute opened in 2010 to celebrate Tamarind’s 50th anniversary. It’s gallery exhibits and sells original, limited edition lithographs and monotypes created at Tamarind by visiting artists working side-by-side with collaborative printers. Revenue from these sales partially supports the institutes’s educational and research programs, as does revenue from projects with artists who contract for pressroom service. 

After viewing this provocative and cutting edge exhibit, I started to wonder where are the artists today. According to Shelly Smith of the Tamarind Institute, “Valerie Arber currently lives and works as an artist in Marfa, Texas. Frederick Hammersley (January 5, 1919 – May 31, 2009) has a show now at Los Angeles Louver, and is one of the most important artists in evolution of abstraction in post-war Los Angeles. Robert Kelly, lives and works in New York City and Santa Fe (represented by Chiarscurro Gallery). Ruth Root also lives and works in New York City. Nicholas Krushenick (May 31, 1929 – February 5, 1999), John McLaughlin (May 21, 1898 – March 22, 1976), and Leon Polk Smith  (1906-1996) are all deceased. William Turnbull (born January 11, 1922, Dundee, Scotland) had a show back in 1997 at Waddington Custot Galleries in London.”

Edge of Color will run through May 25, 2012 at the Tamarind Gallery at UNM, 2500 Central Avenue SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, (505) 277-3901, http://tamarind.unm.edu