Let There Be Light
Raising the Curtain on Vladem Contemporary
Super Summer Event Vladem Contemporary Community Block Party Friday, August 26 Santa Fe Railyard and Vladem Contemporary Museum of New Mexico Foundation donors, members and the community are invited to the kick-off celebration for the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Vladem Contemporary in the Santa Fe Railyard. The evening begins with a free concert at the Railyard Water Tower sponsored by the Foundation in partnership with AMP Concerts. The party includes special museum member viewing areas, plus food and drink specials at neighboring bars and restaurants. A dance party at the new Vladem Contemporary tops off a night to remember. It’s all part of the Railyard’s monthly Friday Night Art Walk, so be sure to stop by neighboring museums, galleries and shops, which will be open late. For details on this event and the forthcoming Vladem Contemporary donor celebration, Member Preview and public opening, visit museumfoundation.org.
The oft-stated vision of “one museum, two locations” will soon become reality with the opening of the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Vladem Contemporary. Situated in an architecturally thrilling new building in Santa Fe’s Railyard Arts District, the Vladem Contemporary galleries add nearly 10,000 additional square feet to extend the art museum’s exhibition mission deeper into the community. Designed to showcase the museum’s postwar and contemporary collections, the Vladem Contemporary’s inaugural exhibition, Shadow and Light, sets the stage for the shows to follow, says Merry Scully, the museum’s head of curatorial affairs and curator of contemporary art. “It’s national, it’s international. And there are such great connections and cross-communications. It might be 70 percent from our collection,” she says. The exhibition’s title springs from the particular quality of New Mexico light that has been a draw for artists and photographers for more than a century. Moreover, says Scully, its theme echoes one of the original ideas behind the 1917 founding of the downtown art museum. As the exhibition description puts it, the Vladem Contemporary’s collections and exhibitions will go beyond replication and illustration to “engage the big ideas and experiences of human life.” Big ideas tend to translate well on a larger scale. On that note, the Indigenous Futurism of Cochiti Pueblo artist Virgil Ortiz dominates Shadow and Light. In Leviathan: Plight of the Recon Watchmen, situated within the inaugural exhibition, Ortiz debuts his largest works to date: a new cast of characters in his ongoing Revolt 1680/2180 series that extends the Pueblo Revolt to two dimensions in time. Five-foot busts sporting high-fire glazes, a spectrum of colors and flashy LED lights set Ortiz’s new sculptures as relics in a futuristic, video-enhanced environment. The works, which were created during Ortiz’s 2021 residency at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, embody the avant-garde spirit of the new museum. Elsewhere in Shadow and Light, Scully is excited about the long-awaited opportunity to display works from the permanent collection that fit the theme. “It’s about light as metaphor, light as media, light in contrast to darkness,” she says. The exhibition’s arc begins with the Transcendental Painting Group, and particularly, Florence Miller Pierce, who sought to express enlightenment and transcendence. It then moves to incorporate Light and Space and landbased artists, including an early work by Nancy Holt. Other regional, national and international artists include Larry Bell, Emil Bisttram, Lee Bul, Judy Chicago, Ron Cooper, James Drake, Angela Ellsworth,
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