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 The Albuquerque Museum has mounted a big show about the history of New Mexico's portion of the famous highway.  It is nicely put together, though for me all a bit overly familiar.  For Margaret it evoked memories of a cross-country road trip with her family in the 1950s.

Viewpoint

 I have walked by this piece in the museum sculpture garden many times,  but only realized recently that it accurately depicts a cowboy standing beside Donald Trump.

 I may have to explore this theme. further with AI.

Memory

I have made several visits to the current exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum, Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945. Thursday's visit was with my daughter from Portland and her spouse.  It is quite an extraordinary show, with many very well known artists from that fraught period of the history of Germany and the World.  Many of the paintings and sculptures had been displayed in a large 1930s exhibit of works the Nazis called Degenerate Art.  As we left the gallery I recounted my experience of viewing the exhibition for the first time a few weeks earlier.

I was pleased on that first visit to find examples of the work of Paul Klee.

Ships Departing by Paul Klee

Klee had been a favorite from the time I was a child.  I was very taken by his use of color in his abstract compositions.  I particularly remembered a picture of his depicting a reclining nude in a rainforest setting.  

When I got home I searched the Web for that particular picture I remembered with such fondness. It came as quite a surprise that no such painting by Klee seems to exist. Looking around at the work of other artists of the same period I decided that what I thought I remembered as a work by Klee was probably The Dream, painted in 1910 by Henri Rousseau.

So, a very long-held and cherished memory was a very poor representation of reality.  It got me thinking about what memories consist of, how they are stored and recalled, and what unreliable records they often are.  One of the things that distinguishes this particular memory is that it was possible for me to test its accuracy.  Many -- perhaps most -- memories are not so easily verified or refuted. 

"Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies." - Julio Cortázar

Sunday at the Museum

 

At the Museum

 Two big exhibits at either end of the Albuquerque Museum.

Light, Space, and the Shape of Time

April 5 - July 20, 2025

 

Plastic, glass and neon with a '60s vibe.  I am not very moved by these kinds of large, abstract sculpture installations.  The show did not live up to its rather pretentious title.  I thought the most interesting and fun piece was the one featured at the entrance to the gift shop.

 

Focus on Youth

May 3 – June 1, 2025

A big photography show by Albuquerque public school students with lots of polished, inspiring work that is as good or better than what can be found in art gallerys around town.

 

Trevor Martinez, Guitar Highlights, Sandia High School, Grade 12

Photo Murals

 Chip Thomas murals at the Albuquerque Museum

Watch his larger than life story in a PBS video.

 Or, watch the talk Chip gave at the University of Colorado at Boulder about his time as a doctor in the Navajo Nation and the development of his photo mural project.

Museums

 I have made a lot of pictures over the years in and around museums.  Most in Albuquerque have been with my film cameras at the Albuquerque Art Museum.  Lately, I have been using the unique potential of my phone camera to make panoramic and ultra-wide-angle shots.

The museum does a lot of large wall-mounted photographic images, both inside and outside.  The current big murals in the lobby are part of a collaboration by visiting artists, Sabrina Mathues Manygoats and Chip Thomas in an exhibit about the effects of uranium mining in New Mexico.

At the Museum

 A few images from the current exhibition, 

Coast to Coast to Coast: Indigenous Art from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Taksam (woodbug) - Beau Dick

Eagle Spirit - Simon Dick

Transformation Mask - Art Thompson

Chief of the Undersea Kingdom - Johnny Davis

Chief of the Undersea Kingdom - Charlie George Sr.

Crooked Beak of Heaven  - Henry Speck Jr.

Rethinking the Value of Art

The Albuquerque Art Museum has brought another fine exhibition to town: Coast to Coast to Coast: Indigenous Art from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. What most caught my interest in the show was the selection of traditional art from the Northwest Coast.  After a quick walk-through my first thought was to wonder at how I had grown up in Seattle and undergone sixteen years of "education" there without achieving a better understanding and appreciation of the area's indigenous art.  There are some obvious personal and social reasons, I think, but a large part of the educational deficit was the absence of native voices in the process.  What brought home that idea was the opening presentation by two Canadian indigenous experts on the subject of the show.

I had developed an interest in anthropology during my time at the University of Washington, but somehow it was not channeled into the local access that was available to native cultures.  Instead, I wandered off to explore a bit of the Northwest Amazon which my months there only gained me a superficial view of the possibilities of learning about traditional societies.

Most of the art  discussed by the presenters was recent work by Canadian indigenous artists.  I have never been very interested in museum-directed work of that kind, but the discussion did point to the importance  of the underlying motivations and history.  The brief comments on the role of art in the traditional cultures of the Pacific Northwest, however, really sparked my interest in the subject.

I was particularly taken by the explanation by Bonnie Devine about the Potlatch as a key element of a sustainable economy.  Of course, that subject was touched on in my college classes, but I only remember it being presented as kind of an aberrant curiosity.  Devine's few words on the topic made the tradition of giving away precious art objects seem perfectly rational and practical.  Thinking the next day about that viewpoint brought me to the idea that a modern day analogy might be the history of the Free Software Movement.

So, I am looking forward now to several more visits to the current exhibition at the Art Museum and to spending some time exploring the available literature on the subject.