New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary Grand Opening

The New Mexico Museum of Art is excitedly counting down the days until we open the doors to the Vladem Contemporary. The Grand Opening is September 23rd and will be an exciting celebration that the entire community is invited to.
At the Plaza Building, the amazing exhibition of New Mexican woodcarving, With the Grain is in its final weeks. We invite you to see it for the first time or visit it again. The last weekend to see this impressive show is September 2nd-3rd, so don't miss out.
Join us for the Grand Opening of Vladem Contemporary on Saturday, September 23rd. The Museum will offer free admission at both locations all weekend, with festivities primarily taking place on Saturday, the 23rd.
Throughout the building, we will have a variety of art activities related to the inaugural exhibition, Shadow and Light. Coloring with prisms, sketching shadows with forms, silhouette portraits, shadow puppets, and more.
On September 23rd, free refreshments will be provided, and we are pleased to have the Women’s Board join us in celebrating the Grand Opening with their hospitality. Over the past 100 years, the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico has been dedicated to increasing the participation and enjoyment of the public in museum programs. The Women’s Board will be serving refreshments on the Museum’s Terrace throughout the day on Saturday, the 23rd. Enjoy the view and a nice snack.
On Sunday, September 24th, enjoy a 30-minute, docent-led tour on the half-hour, 10:30 a.m. through 3:30 p.m.
The New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary has multiple spaces for viewing artwork on the exterior of the building. Accessible 24/7 from near the corner of Guadalupe Street and Montezuma Ave will be the Windowbox Project, which features different emerging artists or artist collectives on a three-month rotation. The Windowbox Project champions emerging New Mexican artists and offers an accessible platform for artists to challenge convention, experiment, and grow in their studio practice.
On the opposite end of the building, we are giving a permanent home to a new light installation by New Mexican artist Leo Villareal. Titled Astral Array, Villareal's installation implies a connection to the myriad stars visible in the night sky, while also referring to a hidden spiritual realm. Employing an array of LEDs to create random patterns suggestive of natural phenomena, the traces created evoke constellations, microscopic life, or climatic forms such as clouds. Astral Array encourages viewers to find order in random phenomena and to consider how human beings make sense of the natural world.
Upstairs on the Ashlyn Perry Studio Terrace, the Museum of Art will be venturing into a new way of making: sound sculpture. Artist Oswaldo Maccia's El Cruce explores the nature of movement and transgression. The work is encountered as an acousmatic wall of sound with no certain source. This concept is attributed to Pythagoras, who taught from behind a curtain so that his students would be able to focus purely on the substance of his lectures. The eight-channel composition fills this outdoor space with audible volumes as each of the sources engage in a crosscutting dialogue. In this piece one can hear the sound of migratory winds, bats, and insects. The wind recordings were captured in the deserts of New Mexico and the American Southwest. The calls of bats and insects were captured throughout the Americas. The regular interposition of sounds from the Santa Fe Railyard punctuates the piece and reminds us of the city’s history as a waypoint on journeys across the states.
This article is from the New Mexico Museum of Arts E-Newsletter Summer 2023. Image is compliments of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.