MOIFA | DECEMBER 2023

Opening of Protection: Adaptation and Resistance
On December 3, the museum opened a new traveling exhibition in the Mark Naylor and Dale Gunn Gallery of Conscience, Protection: Adaptation and Resistance. The exhibition presents the work of more than 45 Alaska Native artists who explore the themes of climate crisis, struggles for social justice, strengthening communities through ancestral knowledge and imagining a thriving future. You can read more here.

Protection: Adaptation and Resistance is a project of the Bunnell Street Art Center in Homer, Alaska. It is made possible, in part, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The CIRI Foundation, the Alaska Community Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, and the Alaska Humanities Forum. Lead support for the museum’s presentation in Santa Fe is generously provided by the International Folk Art Foundation, Shelly Brock and Bud Telck, Rosalind Doherty, Edelma and David Huntley, Beverly and Michael Morris, Mark Naylor and Dale Gunn, Courtney and Scott Taylor and other private donors through the Museum of New Mexico Exhibition Development Fund.

This presentation of Protection complements the exhibition "Ghhúunayúkata/To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka," which opened at the museum in May 2023. Both exhibitions will be on display through April 7, 2024.

Exhibition Development for Between the Lines: Prison Art and Advocacy
After a 6-month prototype in the Mark Naylor and Dale Gunn Gallery of Conscience (GoC), the Between the Lines: Prison Art and Advocacy | A Community Conversation (March 31 - Nov 4, 2023) exhibition is now setting the stage for a full exhibition opening August 9, 2024. Based on talk-back-board visitor input, collected narratives, and public/ private programs including public gallery talks, Father’s Day/Juneteenth Spoken Word Poetry event and private events with ¡YouthWorks! school-to-prison pipeline dialogues and paño dialogues with local artists, this GoC prototype will help inform and refine the final exhibition. Research, interviews, community engagement and exhibition content refinement will continue throughout the end of June 2024.

The exhibition planning team is deepening key partnerships with co-developers John Paul Granillo, formerly incarcerated artist and community organizer and Diego Medina, Piro/ Tiwa artist, focused on bringing Indigenous narratives and perspective to the exhibit. By integrating feedback from the GoC, the exhibition team will create an inclusive and expansive presentation of prison systems, art and provenance.

Preparing for iNgqikithi yokuPhica / Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa
A significant donation by Museum Foundation trustee, David Arment, designer and co-author of Wired, will form the basis for a new exciting exhibition in the development stages, iNgqikithi yokuPhica / Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa. Foregrounding artists’ voices, Weaving Meanings shares histories of the wire medium in South Africa, from the 16 century uses as currency to the dazzling artworks wire weavers create today. From beer pot lids (izimbenge) to platters and plates, from vessels to sculptural assemblages, works in the exhibition speak to the continued development and significance of this artistic tradition, both locally in KwaZulu-Natal and to global markets and audiences. You can read more here.

National Premiere Screening of the PBS Award-winning Series
Join the museum on Saturday, December 9 at 2 p.m. for the screening of the PBS Craft in America special, MINIATURES, which explores the world of tiny objects and the artists who make them. From folk art to marionettes to tiny furniture, the artists of MINIATURES reveal what motivates them to work at a scale that demands a masterful attention to detail.

New Mexico artists and organizations figure prominently in MINIATURES, which includes segments on Alexander Girard’s spectacular invented world housed in the museum’s Girard Wing; beloved New Mexico artist Gustave Baumann’s marionettes from the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art; and International Folk Art Market artists who work at a diminutive scale, including Cuban artist Leandro Gómez Quintero, who creates small-scale, painstakingly detailed re-creations of vehicles using found materials.

Patricia Bischetti, executive producer and director of Craft in America, will facilitate the panel discussion featuring individuals interviewed in the episode. Read more here.

For more information on upcoming museum events, including Holiday events on Museum Hill and Friends of Folk Art programs, please click here.

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To support MOIFA’s Exhibition Development Fund or Education Fund, contact Laura Sullivan at laura@museumfoundation.org or by phone at 505.216.0829.