The arts community goes head-to-head with a sports magnate in Salt Lake City, and other recent Southwest art news headlines.
News
In Downtown Salt Lake City, Arts and Sports Communities Debate Demolition of Arts Complex
A multibillion-dollar bid to reshape the heart of Salt Lake City, Utah, sparked fierce debate following murky statements about the future of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts and Abravenal Hall, home of the Utah Symphony. Sports magnate Ryan Smith’s ownership group pledged $3 billion for an “entertainment district” (also referred to as a “sports district”) in downtown Salt Lake City that would open a connective corridor straight through the 1970s-era Bicentennial Arts Complex, which is anchored by the museum and performance hall. The group floated the idea of keeping the institutions somewhere “on-site” but didn’t rule out demolishing and relocating them as part of the revitalization plan. “I would say that downtown has a bit of our teeth in every direction, and our town is in need of some braces,” said one of Smith’s business partners. A longtime proponent of Abravenal Hall labeled the concept a “generational blunder,” and UMOCA threaded the needle with an op-ed calling for “partnership and investment” in the arts.
Santa Fe Fire Effigy to Take Flight with Hot Air Balloon Tribute in Albuquerque
Santa Fe, New Mexico, is preparing for the 100th anniversary of Will Shuster’s Burning of Zozobra, a late summer festival during which the city’s inhabitants purge their sorrows by torching the world’s largest working marionette. There are plans for a Zozobra-themed exhibition at the Palace of the Governors and an operetta at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. Down south, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta will vault the tradition to new heights. City officials from Albuquerque and Santa Fe recently unveiled the design for a Zozobra-shaped hot air balloon set to launch at the October festival.
Grants and Awards
Nevada Museum of Art Announces Experimental Field Photographer as 2024-25 Fellow
Tristan Duke is the 2024-25 recipient of the Peter E. Pool Research Fellowship, a one-year engagement that funds innovative explorations of the Center for Art + Environment archives at Reno’s Nevada Museum of Art. The Los Angeles-based experimental photographer will further his project Glacial Optics, in which he harnesses glacial ice as a photographic lens to depict glacial landscapes in the Sierra Nevada. Duke explains, “I began to think of the glaciers… [as] giant lenses compacted under the weight of eons, polished by wind and snow.”
Bella Varela Wins 2024 Tito’s Prize, Solo Show at Big Medium in Texas
Austin-based artist Bella Varela is the winner of a $15,000 prize courtesy of Tito’s Handmade Vodka. The unrestricted award comes with a solo exhibition at Big Medium, the nonprofit art space that facilitates the annual initiative. In the award announcement, Varela revealed that she’ll feature her Blanket Zone series of pictographic fleece tapestries in the show.
2024 Forge Project Fellows Include New Mexico Artist, Institute of American Indian Arts Graduate
Delbert Anderson (Diné) of Farmington, New Mexico, and Mikayla Patton (Oglala Lakota), who holds a BFA in printmaking from Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts, have received $25,000 grants from Forge Project in Upstate New York. The fellowships include a residency of up to three weeks on the nonprofit’s sixty-acre campus, which features structures by Ai Weiwei and serves as an incubator for “new and urgent models of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.”
Cannupa Hanska Luger Awarded Unrestricted $75,000 Prize from California Institute of the Arts
The Herb Alpert Awards have honored Southwest-based artist Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/
Utah Division of Arts and Museums Announces 2024 Fellows
Fifteen Utah-based artists who practice design, performing, and visual arts have received fellowships from the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, which celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. The visual arts recipients are Alexandra Fuller of Boulder, Meaghan Gates of St. George., Byron Ramos of Provo, Holly Rios of Salt Lake City, and Dana Worley of Logan.
Santa Fe Photography Center Lands NEH Grant to “Activate the Archive”
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Center, a nonprofit photography foundation that runs a popular portfolio review in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with grant funding aimed at cracking open the thirty-year-old organization’s vast archives. The funds will launch a planning phase for Activating the Archive: Preserving 21st-Century Photography, a project that will make nearly 20,000 images and related text available as an online resource.
Taos Artist Headed to North Carolina for Craft-Oriented Residency
The Center for Craft in Asheville, North Carolina has invited Taos-based artist c. marquez to a summer residency in the regional craft mecca. The Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency will surely present new challenges and opportunities to marquez, who has worked for years in a single medium: the tall tumble mustard. The engagement includes a $10,000 grant and use of a shared studio space.
Arizona Visual Artists Enter Multidisciplinary Fellowship with Border Arts Corridor
Arizona-based visual artists Jose Luis Cabrera, Josselyn Vega, and Felipe Nery Ramírez López have joined a multidisciplinary cohort of 2024 Border Arts Corridor fellows. The group of seven creatives, which also includes a musician and a writer, will work alongside mentors and experts in various fields such as psychology, migration, and border history. Based in Douglas, Arizona, Border Arts Corridor is a nonprofit organization that fosters storytelling by and about borderlands artists.
Leadership Changes and Appointments
Stewart Indian School Museum and Cultural Center Announces New Educational Curator
Melanie Smokey (Yomba Shoshone/Washoe) is the new educational curator at the Stewart Indian School Museum and Cultural Center in Carson City, Nevada. Smokey previously served as the GED instructor for the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California. The institution writes, “[Smokey] has 20 years of experience as a cultural-based teacher for youth and adults. […] She is also an amazing basket weaver, and she is installing our medicinal garden at Stewart.”
Elisa Phillips, New Head of Curatorial Affairs at MIAC, Ready to Reconfigure Museum Collection
Elisa Phillips knows how to transform an institution: in her time as vice president and chief curatorial officer at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, she spearheaded a complete reinstallation of their 12,500-square-foot Native American galleries. Phillips recently joined the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico as head of curatorial affairs.
Gifts and Acquisitions
Palm Springs Art Museum Gifted Seventeen Artworks, Including Piece by Little-Known Basquiat Influence
An artwork by Sam Doyle, an African American painter who influenced Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ed Ruscha, is part of a major gift to the Palm Springs Art Museum from Los Angeles-based scholar and collector Gordon W. Bailey. Announced in late May, the transfer of seventeen artworks includes a number of works by self-taught African American artists who have historically been labeled “outsider artists.” That includes Doyle, who counted Basquiat as a collector and received a painted tribute from Ruscha after his death in 1985. Bailey’s gift also includes works by Herbert Singleton, Daniel Johnston, and Sister Gertrude Morgan.
