Winter Exhibitions

Museums showcase unique works this winter and spring

Staff report

Every museum in Taos is a showcase, every day. Visitors have only to decide how to plan their days. Several of these curators of Northern New Mexico arts and culture also frequently plan special exhibitions showcasing unique perspectives. Some will be gone soon. Plan accordingly.

“The Story of Us”

The Art of Richard Alan Nichols: A Thirty-Year Retrospective

Where: Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

Last day: December 29, 2024

While studying at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Richard Alan Nichols learned about the Taos Society of Artists, which led him to his first visit to Taos in 1990. He was led to paint the sights of the area, and in 1994, he and his wife Deb relocated to Taos. With “The Story of Us,” Nichols is allowing himself to reflect on his life’s work and the impact it has had. “I chose paintings that all represent something special — that reflected my painting life, my emotional life — they all have a story.”

“Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected”

Where: Harwood Museum of Art

Last day: Feb 23, 2025

When Los Angeles-based artist and former part-time Taos resident Luchita Hurtado died in 2020 at the age of 99, few were aware of the remarkable life she lived as an artist and environmental activist. Born in Venezuela in 1920, Hurtado attended classes at the Art Students League New York, then lived in Mexico City, the San Francisco Bay area, and Santa Monica. During the 1970s, Hurtado began spending a significant amount of time in Taos, where she and her third husband, fellow artist Lee Mullican, built their second home.

Hurtado’s work continued to evolve throughout the 1960s and ’70s, leading to contemplative self-portraits known as her “I Am” paintings. This series was followed by a group of surrealist “Body Landscapes” — the human figure assumes the form of mountains and desert sand dunes — and her late-1970s “Sky Skin” series — feathers weightlessly float in bright blue skies. Works from this period were informed by Hurtado’s feminist ideals and involvement with the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists, which hosted Hurtado’s first solo exhibition in 1974.

Up to the last days of her life, Hurtado continued to make work that pushed the boundaries of her practice through numerous drawings and paintings related to nature.

“Channeling Luchita: A Community Response to the Life and Work of Luchita Hurtado”

Where: Millicent Rogers Museum

Last day: Feb 2, 2025

Millicent Rogers Museum (MRM), with the Taos Abstract Artist Collective (TAAC) is displaying “Channeling Luchita: A Community Response to the Life and Work of Luchita Hurtado,” a collaborative exhibition and curatorial response. Curated by Claire Motsinger, Deborah McLean, and TAAC artists Bob Parker and Jill Kamas, this exhibition presents 10 New Mexico artists whose styles and conceptual practices respond to the themes conjured in Hurtado’s artistic body of work: Audra Elizabeth Knutson, Dean Pulver, Josh Tafoya, Lynnette Haozous, Margaret R. Thompson, Maye Torres, Olive Tyrrell, Rick Romancito and Tse Tsan.

MRM’s other winter and spring exhibitions:

• 28th Annual Miniatures Show & Sale, Feb. 8–March 9, 2025. This popular annual event includes hundreds of works, paintings, prints, sculpture, jewelry and more from Taos, Rio Arriba and Colfax counties.
• Taos Pueblo Winter Arts Show, March 15–16 (date subject to change). Free admission to view and buy works by dozens of Taos Pueblo artists. Performances and Pueblo-made food help make this annual event even more wonderful.
• National Pastels Society Show & Sale, March 22–June 1, 2025. This juried exhibit showcases award-winning pastel works from some of the country’s finest pastel artists.

“Forsaken Objects and Untold Stories”

Photographs by Zoë Zimmerman

Where: Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

Last day: March 30, 2025

A little over two years ago, Christy Coleman, executive director at the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House, noticed a box of dust-covered, interesting looking bottles in the basement of the Fechin House. Her discovery culminated in the unique exhibit “Forsaken Objects and Untold Stories” a 42-photographic exhibit of personal items once owned and used by Nicolai Fechin and his wife Alexandra, and photographed by artist Zoë Zimmerman.

“I showed Zoë everything in the basement and I could immediately tell that, like me, she saw something special in the remnants from the Fechins’ lives,” Coleman said.

The boxes were packed with leftovers from the Fechins’ personal lives — discarded tube of Nicolai Fechin’s signature cobalt blue paint and Alexandra Fechin’s bottles of facial cleansers and hand cream.

“Initially it was exciting, like finding something in someone’s attic,” Zimmerman said. “I really thought … it would be good for me to try and take pictures that were just about composition and color and light … I can’t do anything visual unless there is an emotional backstory and I had to make emotional sense of it.”

Coleman matched Fechin’s portraits and Zimmerman’s photographs — a portrait of Alexandra with a photograph of her lipstick — and the rare, respectful and emotion-provoking exhibit is on display throughout both floors of the Fechin House.

“Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero”

Where: Harwood Museum of Art

Last day: June 1, 2025

Nicholas Herrera, known as the saint maker of El Rito, has carved out a life that straddles the sacred and the profane.

“I’ve been a santero since when I was a young kid,” Herrera told Laura Martin Baseman during a “Voices of Taos” podcast interview. “One of my great uncles was Santero de la Muerte [José Inéz Herrera].”

Herrera said he was inspired when he saw photos of his uncle’s works at the Denver Art Museum. “Right away, I was like: Man, now I know why I’d like to carve. I think it’s in my blood. Yeah. And so I started carving. … I learned mostly on my own. I cut my fingers a lot, but … I was always carving.”

Rebellious and reckless, Herrera’s life seemed destined for destruction. All that changed in 1990: At the age of 26, a serious car accident left Herrera in a coma, teetering on the edge of life and death. He experienced a vision of a death figure, a carved specter created by his great-uncle José Inés Herrera, standing at the end of a tunnel of light. When he awoke, the transformation began. Herrera felt compelled to leave behind the chaos of his past and dedicate himself to his craft.

As a modern santero, Herrera creates bultos (carved wooden figures), retablos (painted wooden panels), and large-scale mixed media works, each one a chapter in the rich, and often challenging, narrative of his life.

“Charles Ross: Mansions of the Zodiac”

Where: Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

March 15–Sept. 7, 2025

“Charles Ross: Mansions of the Zodiac” is a planned exhibition of Ross’s artwork, inspired by sunlight, starlight, time, and planetary motion. Ross emerged in the 1960s and is considered one of the preeminent figures of land art. This exhibition is opening as Ross nears the completion of his earth/sky work,” Star Axis,” a monumental architectonic sculpture, and naked eye observatory located on the eastern plains of New Mexico. It will give us a glance at his art and art making in New Mexico, a place that is elemental to his life and work.

Taos Historic Museums

Harwood Museum of Art

Harwood Museum is considered the second-oldest art museum in the state and houses an impressive array of Spanish Colonial and Hispanic relics as well as works from the many waves of artists who have found their muse in the Taos Valley.

238 Ledoux St, Taos | 575-758-9826

harwoodmuseum.org

E.L Blumenschein Home & Museum

Next door, the E.L Blumenschein Home & Museum is a living museum and shrine to Ernest and Mary Blumenschein’s legacy.

222 Ledoux St, Taos | 575-758-0505

taoshistoricmuseums.org

Hacienda de los Martinez, a living museum on the outskirts of town, is a Spanish Colonial-style fortress-like home (now on the National Register of Historic Places) that became an important center of commerce for traders.

Hacienda de los Martinez

708 Hacienda Road, Taos | 575-758-1000

taoshistoricmuseums.org

Kit Carson House & Museum

Kit Carson House near the plaza is a prime example of vernacular New Mexico adobe architecture that gives us a better understanding of how people lived in the 19th century. Restoration, at an estimated cost of $3 million, will stabilize and rehabilitate this 200-year-old historic adobe structure.

113 Kit Carson Road, Taos | 575-758-4945

kitcarsonhouse.org

Couse-Sharp Historic Site

Couse-Sharp Historic Site features the former homes and studios of E. I. Couse and J. H. Sharp, two of the American-born, European-trained artists who formed the Taos Society of Artists in 1915.

146 Kit Carson Road, Taos | 575-751-0369

couse-sharp.org

Governor Bent House & Museum

Governor Charles Bent House & Museum, across from the John Dunn Shops, provides a small glimpse into a violent chapter in Taos’ history.

117A Bent St Taos

taos.org/places/governor-bents-house-and-museum

Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

The Fechin House that now houses Taos Art Museum was once home to the Russian artist Nicolai Fechin. Today, the beautifully restored adobe building is a museum dedicated to Fechin’s life and work. The museum’s collection includes Fechin’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures, as well as works by other Taos artists.

227 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos | 575-758-2690

taosartmuseum.org

Millicent Rogers Museum

Millicent Rogers Museum houses an impressive and priceless collection of Native American art and jewelry, Hispanic textiles, and Spanish colonial art.

1504 Millicent Rogers Road, El Prado | 575-758-2462

millicentrogers.org