Arts

Moving Ever Forward

With a new role and a new exhibition, the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Christian Waguespack eyes the present and future

By the time Lone Piñon had warmed up at the recent opening for the New Mexico Museum of Art’s With the Grain exhibit, the crowd was feeling it. Shouts went up among the throngs while food and drink circulated in the courtyard just outside. It’s not particularly common for the museum to host a Saturday evening opening, but free from the shackles of the post-work week exhaustion, a party broke out. Even the earlier snow of day couldn’t deter the well-attended event—a love letter to the wood carvers of New Mexico as curated by the museum’s 20th century art expert, Christian Waguespack—and someplace between the Norteño string music, the emerging sunlight and the impressively large number of pieces on display, we found magic.

The new show features works from the New Mexico Museum of Art collection, plus loaner pieces from institutions such as the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art and the Museum of International Folk Art. It feels downright sprawling, and viewers can phase between items by historically significant artists like Patrocinio Barela (1900-1964), living treasures like Luis Tapia and legends like Sabinita López Ortiz. The styles and techniques on display are myriad and mind-boggling, but the one thing each piece seems to have in common is a reverence for the wood, sometimes but not always found, and its natural shapes and gnarls.

“This exhibition came from all sorts of different antecedents,” Waguespack explains a few days after the opening. “One of them was just me wanting to do more work on getting the history of sculpture in New Mexico into the canon of what we all know and talk about. New Mexico contributed something completely unique and valuable to that to the narrative of American modern sculpture. "

New Mexico’s contributions to arts and Americana certainly do seem to go overlooked. We’re not the size or scope of New York City or Los Angeles, sure, but the artists from our state have proven time and time again they can keep up, they can set the tone. Our local art—past and in-progress—continues to be one of the most exciting things about the state, and Waguespack’s new show proves at least part of that point while re-contextualizing carving and wood with the proper respect.

“It’s already a little bit of an underserved medium, and in particular, sculptural works made by people of color in New Mexico have been made a part of a different historical narrative, so it was important for me for this exhibition to happen with our museum,” he explains. “So people [can begin] to see this work as modern contemporary art—not modern contemporary art with a caveat.”

Or, as Museum of Spanish Colonial Art curator Jana Gottshalk, who Waguespack says was part of the initial idea for the show when she briefly worked for the New Mexico Museum of Art, tells SFR, “We have such a great collection, so I’ll jump at the chance to get it on view.”

With the Grain’s opening also coincides with Waguespack’s new role at the museum, that of head of curatorial affairs—the big job. Waguespack takes the new position after longtime curator Merry Scully moved on to the director position at Cal State’s Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art in San Bernardino, California, last August. A son of Louisiana who came to New Mexico for degrees in curation and museum studies from the University of New Mexico and never left, Waguespack has been with the museum since 2017 and will stay on as the curator of 20th century art (he teaches museum studies at UNM, too). In a word, Waguespack is all about collaboration, and as the Vladem Contemporary satellite wing of the New Mexico Museum of Art nears completion on Guadalupe Street, he says, the future could be a lot of things, all of them promising.

This includes a search for a curator of contemporary art, currently in progress, as well as upcoming shows from photo curator Katherine Ware (a longtime SFR favorite). There still is no set date for Vladem’s opening, but the opening event is slated to feature works by some fairly huge names, including Erika Wannemacher, Agnes Martin and Cochiti multidisciplinary master Virgil Ortiz. That doesn’t mean the space won’t see traveling exhibitions, according to Waguespack, who says there will also be a ton of free programming; street art near Vladem Contemporary; classes and other educational opportunities and lots more. It’s in-process. Be patient.

“It’ll be the same as we’ve always done, and there will always be a little bit of flexibility, but broad strokes, I’ll be working primarily with creating the exhibitions for the Plaza building and the curator of contemporary art will be responsible for creating a lot of the exhibitions for the Vladem,” he continues. “We recognize that we are one museum, and as the head of curatorial affairs, I’m responsible for working to guide that vision as a whole.”

If With the Grain is any indication, we’re in good hands.

With the Grain runs through Sept. 4.



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