Harwood Museum of Art Centennial
through January 28, 2024
Affiliated with the University of New Mexico since 2007, the Harwood Museum of Art (Taos, New Mexico) is home to a 6,500-object collection featuring works by Native American, Hispano-, and European-American artists, including members of the Taos Society of Artists and Taos Moderns. It was a century ago that Lucy Harwood created the museum, though she and her husband, Burt, had purchased the property in the heart of Taos seven years earlier.
This year’s centennial exhibition fills all nine galleries, highlighting the institution’s history with 200 artworks from the collection, plus important loans of art by such talents as Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Elaine de Kooning, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Paul Strand.
It is accompanied by a new publication from the Museum of New Mexico Press, authored by Nicole Dial-Kay and Emily Santhanam. Both projects trace the ownership of the museum’s site from the Taos Pueblo to Spanish occupation and the Don Fernando de Taos land grant, onward to U.S. Army Captain Smith H. Simpson and ultimately the Harwoods.
The exhibition includes the museum’s original logo designed by Gustave Baumann in 1923, a never-before-exhibited work by Ernest Blumenschein, an array of WPA-era furniture and other objects, and artworks created as a collection for the Taos Municipal School District by such locals as Larry Bell, Emil Bisttram, Agnes Martin, Earl Stroh, and Katie Wells.
Also on view are photographs of John Gaw Meem’s original clay model of the museum building plus a new clay model by a Taos artist.
On August 3 and November 2, local artists will be able to exhibit their works on an “Open Wall.” For details on the year’s many upcoming programs, visit the museum website: harwoodmuseum.org.
View more art museum announcements here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
