About
The importance of the arts as communication, in the past, the present and the future, is pivotal.
This belief is the keystone of our programs, and it is the foundation for our primary goal, which is to expose students to the richness of art through a wide range of new and traditional media. We also seek to develop critical thought in our classes, and the practice and methods for understanding the teaching of the arts and the history of art.
The Department is dedicated to providing the best education possible no matter which degree a student might be pursuing. We are also committed to benefiting UNM, the city of Albuquerque, the state of New Mexico, as well as national, and international communities. To achieve these aims, the Department maintains a world-class faculty that is actively engaged in creative art, art education, and art history.
Art Department News
Confidence in Abstraction: Brandon Zech’s review of Raychael Stine’s “Falls and Springs and Stardust Things”
Brandon Zech of Glasstire: Texas Visual Art recently reviewed Professor of Painting and Drawing Raychael Stine’s exhibition, "Falls and Springs and Stardust Things," in his piece “Chimerical Colors.”
Clarence Cruz Leaves a Lasting Native Pottery Legacy at UNM
Clarence Cruz, who is Tewa from Ohkay Owingeh (formerly San Juan Pueblo), serves as the Professor of Ceramics in the Art Department. He has been a prominent and familiar figure on campus since his student days.
From UNM to Texas: Raychel Stine continues to shine in “Falls and Springs and Stardust Things”
Raychael Stine, Professor of Painting and Drawing, recently created a show titled "Falls and Springs and Stardust Things" at the Cris Worley Fine Arts Gallery in Texas. Stine makes luscious, joyful paintings that integrate a variety of painterly languages and approaches to mark, texture, and levels of visual legibility, allowing for playful slippage between formal and material abstraction.
Department of Art Events
Event Details
Reception: Friday, April 25, 2025, 5:00-7:30 pm Join the free public reception celebrating the opening of the exhibition, Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico, curated
Event Details
Reception: Friday, April 25, 2025, 5:00-7:30 pm
Join the free public reception celebrating the opening of the exhibition, Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico, curated by Ray Hernández-Durán, Ph.D. and Irene Vásquez, Ph.D.
This is an exhibition 7 years in the making that features a group of New Mexican artists who were among the earliest generation of Chicana and Chicano activists in the state. All 6 artists, 3 men and 3 women, were students at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) in Las Vegas in the early 1970s when Chicano scholar Pedro Rodríguez was hired as the inaugural Director of Chicano Studies at NMHU. It was at NMHU that these young men and women became politically active and proceeded to paint murals, produce art, and organize in New Mexico as part of the nascent Chicano civil rights movement that was unfolding nationally. The artworks on display capture a distinctly New Mexican Chicana and Chicano experience that has received little attention in Chicano art history.
Time
April 25, 2025 10:00 pm - February 8, 2026 4:00 pm
Location
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th St SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 ·
03aug(aug 3)10:00 am08feb(feb 8)5:00 pmVoces Del Pueblo Programs & Events
Event Details
Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico, curated by Art History Professor Ray Hernández-Durán, Ph.D., and Irene Vásquez, Ph.D. This is an exhibition 7 years in the
Event Details
Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico, curated by Art History Professor Ray Hernández-Durán, Ph.D., and Irene Vásquez, Ph.D.
This is an exhibition 7 years in the making that features a group of New Mexican artists who were among the earliest generation of Chicana and Chicano activists in the state. All 6 artists, 3 men and 3 women, were students at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) in Las Vegas in the early 1970s when Chicano scholar Pedro Rodríguez was hired as the inaugural Director of Chicano Studies at NMHU. It was at NMHU that these young men and women became politically active and proceeded to paint murals, produce art, and organize in New Mexico as part of the nascent Chicano civil rights movement that was unfolding nationally. The artworks on display capture a distinctly New Mexican Chicana and Chicano experience that has received little attention in Chicano art history.
Free Community Programs & Events. Please register using the link below.
Learn more at nhccnm.org/museum.
Time
August 3, 2025 10:00 am - February 8, 2026 5:00 pm
15aug8:00 pm15nov5:00 pmI Am Just a Visitor by Sean Hudson and Deborah Stein
Event Details
Opening Reception: August 15, 2025, 5:00-7:00 pm Hello UNM Fam! This is your invite to the opening reception of “I AM JUST a VISITOR” a two person show (myself and Deborah
Event Details
Opening Reception: August 15, 2025, 5:00-7:00 pm
Hello UNM Fam! This is your invite to the opening reception of “I AM JUST a VISITOR” a two person show (myself and Deborah Stein) of new watercolors. Together, we explore themes of impermanence, strangeness, and wonder. Our works on paper range from off-kilter flora and dramatic landscapes to poetic dreamscapes, reflecting a shared reverence for nature and geological time. Rooted in ideas of place and home, our paintings invite viewers to slow down and consider themselves as visitors in the world, in the landscape, and in one’s own life.
Time
August 15, 2025 8:00 pm - November 15, 2025 5:00 pm
19sep(sep 19)5:30 pm07mar(mar 7)7:30 pmNecessary Futures
Event Details
The UAM is proud to present Necessary Futures. This exhibition features three New Mexico-based artists—sheri crider, Haley Greenfeather English, and Szu-Han Ho—whose work shares the strategic use of color, irony,
Event Details
The UAM is proud to present Necessary Futures. This exhibition features three New Mexico-based artists—sheri crider, Haley Greenfeather English, and Szu-Han Ho—whose work shares the strategic use of color, irony, joy, and hope as proposals for confronting and subverting the ongoing impacts of mass incarceration, racial capitalism, and colonialism. This exhibition presents a broad spectrum of art-making approaches, public projects, and community-driven collaborations, spotlighting coalitions committed to social change. Collectively, the artists in this exhibition propose art as both a space of reflection and a call to action. Beyond their studio practices, each artist actively engages with community partners, spotlighting organizations working on the frontlines of social justice in the Southwest.
This exhibition, which also presents work by hazel batrezchavez, daniela del mar, Juan Ortiz, and the fronteristxs collective, is part of a series of statewide exhibitions amplifying the voices and narratives of marginalized communities within the movement for criminal justice reform. The project is anchored in Albuquerque and Las Cruces, New Mexico—with additional activations in rural towns that are sites directly impacted by mass incarceration.
Please join us for the opening reception on September 19, 2025 from 5:30-7:30 pm. Visit our website for more information on upcoming programming. Necessary Futures will be on display from September 19, 2025, to March 7, 2026.
Time
September 19, 2025 5:30 pm - March 7, 2026 7:30 pm
24oct(oct 24)10:00 am21nov(nov 21)5:00 pmDead Reckoning by Emeritus Professor Michael David Cook
Event Details
Opening reception: Friday, October 24, 2025, 5:00-7:00 PM Dead Reckoning, Paintings 2016-2025 Anima(s) River of Souls are paintings informed by the geographic, geologic, atmospheric, cultural and directional color of New Mexico. Dead
Event Details
Opening reception: Friday, October 24, 2025, 5:00-7:00 PM
Dead Reckoning, Paintings 2016-2025
Anima(s) River of Souls are paintings informed by the geographic, geologic, atmospheric, cultural and directional color of New Mexico. Dead Reckoning, the title of this exhibition, comes from the nautical term “dead reckoning”, which is a navigational method employed by a navigator that would start at a known or assumed position (in Polynesia these are islands) and then calculate speed, time and direction of travel to understand one’s current position. The Rhumb works are inspired by European maps from the age of discovery (the 15th century to the late 18th centuries) employing a totally different methodology for navigation. They are the companions to the body of work titled Dead Reckoning. The Itch! paintings, are metaphors, addressing such complexities as health, both physical and mental while navigating through periods of one’s life. They are straight from the “Id” and are another form of mapping or way finding. The paintings are informed by what the artist understands as his needs, wants, desires, and impulses as he navigates through the world.
These paintings challenge how we see by employing figurative abstraction to partially obfuscate and shield from view certain information, forcing the viewer to look at the imagery below, to go beyond the optical effects, making our minds and memories do the work of filling in missing thoughts. The painting technique combined with the artist creating images from the daily news while watching TV, provokes imagery from the “Id” and provides a deeper conceptual underpinning for the work beyond the visual and optical effects of the paintings.
Michael David Cook’s work have been exhibited in such venues as The New Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago; Albuquerque Museum; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe; Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art Chicago; University Art Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson, Museum of Fine Arts; The Museum School Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe as well as commercial galleries. Exhibitions have received critical attention in The New York Times; Art News; The New Art Examiner; The San Francisco Chronicle and THE Magazine among others. His work is in a number of public and private collections. He has been the recipient of awards such as Illinois Arts Council Individual Visual Artist Fellowship, Outstanding Teacher of the Year at UNM and a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Fellowship.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog. Gebert Contemporary specializes in contemporary painting, sculpture and photography from an international group of artists. While most of the gallery artists are mid-career and established, we also exhibit a small number of emerging artists. Exhibited artists come from, Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States. Gebert Contemporary is located at 558 Canyon Road, which shares a compound with our affiliate gallery Chiaroscuro.
Time
October 24, 2025 10:00 am - November 21, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
Gebert Contemporary
558 Canyon Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501
30oct(oct 30)8:00 am07nov(nov 7)5:00 pmDispersed Awareness
Event Details
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 30, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm Artworks and Installations from artists enrolled in Fall 2025 Material Studies: Installation course
Event Details
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 30, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm
Artworks and Installations from artists enrolled in Fall 2025 Material Studies: Installation course
Time
October 30, 2025 8:00 am - November 7, 2025 5:00 pm
Location
John Sommers Gallery
MSC 04 2560, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
01nov6:00 pm20dec(dec 20)6:00 pmPresent by KB Jones
Event Details
MFA alum from Painting and Drawing, KB Jones, will be exhibiting a small solo show in New York City.
Event Details
MFA alum from Painting and Drawing, KB Jones, will be exhibiting a small solo show in New York City.
Time
November 1, 2025 6:00 pm - December 20, 2025 6:00 pm
06nov3:00 pm7:00 pmEscape into Elsewhere
Event Details
Escape Into Elsewhere is a mixed media exhibition by artist Sarah Hart of Hart Print Shop. Through a fusion of printing, painting and layered materials, this exhibition slips between worlds
Event Details
Escape Into Elsewhere is a mixed media exhibition by artist Sarah Hart of Hart Print Shop. Through a fusion of printing, painting and layered materials, this exhibition slips between worlds — the real and the imagined. Drawing inspiration from the whimsical world that fueled her imagination, Sarah explores the restorative power of creative play. The work offers a gentle reprieve from the weight of everyday — a reminder that imagination itself can be a form of freedom. “In escape, I find restoration. In restoration, power. ”
Time
November 6, 2025 3:00 pm - 7:00 pm
10nov(nov 10)9:00 am21(nov 21)6:00 pmAt First Site
Event Details
First Year MFA Artist Talks Closing Reception: Friday November 21, 2025, 3:00-5:00 pm
Event Details
First Year MFA Artist Talks
Closing Reception: Friday November 21, 2025, 3:00-5:00 pm
Time
November 10, 2025 9:00 am - November 21, 2025 6:00 pm
Location
John Sommers Gallery
MSC 04 2560, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
14nov(nov 14)5:00 pm23(nov 23)7:00 pmSCRAP by Karina Hashim Faulstich
Event Details
Karina Hashim Faulstich MFA Thesis Exhibition Opening Reception: November 14, 2025, 5:00-8:00 pm Closing Reception: November 23. 2025, 5:00-7:00 pm Gallery Hours: Sun-Fri 4:00-6:00 pm, Sat 10:00-6:00 pm
Event Details
Karina Hashim Faulstich MFA Thesis Exhibition
Opening Reception: November 14, 2025, 5:00-8:00 pm
Closing Reception: November 23. 2025, 5:00-7:00 pm
Gallery Hours: Sun-Fri 4:00-6:00 pm, Sat 10:00-6:00 pm
Time
November 14, 2025 5:00 pm - November 23, 2025 7:00 pm
Location
6th Street Studio
1029 6th St NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102


