SITE Santa Fe and Museum of Fine Arts (original) (raw)

SITE Santa Fe

Santa Fe, NM

505-989-1199

http://www.sitesantafe.org

SITE Santa Fe and Museum of Fine Arts

Collaboration: Santa Fe, already one of the world's leading cultural destinations, will enter a new era this summer with the opening of The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, expanded contemporary arts programming at SITE Santa Fe, and special exhibitions and capital projects at the Museum of New Mexico. These initiatives, resulting from increased investment in Santa Fe's cultural resources by the community's leading arts patrons and by innovative collaborations between institutions on programming and promotional activities, are expected to further heighten Santa Fe's cultural profile and generate substantial educational and economic benefits for the city and its residents.

Senator Pete Domenici comments: "We are extremely enthusiastic about the extraordinary growth of our cultural community. Building on Santa Fe's longstanding tradition of artistic innovation and excellence, The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, SITE Santa Fe, and the Museum of New Mexico are launching us into a new phase that will secure the city's position as a major cultural destination into the 21st century. We are on the verge of a great moment for New Mexico, as these and other leading visual and performing arts organizations add to the quality of life in our state and fuel our economy through increased tourism, business growth, and out-of-state investment."

Peter Hassrick, the Director of the O'Keeffe Museum, adds, "It is such a rarity to work in a community where institutions, established and new, readily collaborate on innovative programs and interdisciplinary activity. Here in Santa Fe, it is clear that the excellence of each institution is a reflection of the strength of the entire cultural community. As the newest member of Santa Fe's arts scene, we plan to contribute to that strength by presenting the art of O'Keeffe to regional, national, and international audiences and to help attract visitors to our city in order to experience all of our rich cultural resources."

SITE Santa Fe Second Biennial Exhibition: The title of the exhibition for 1997 will be_TRUCE: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusions_, and will run from July 18 to October 12, 1997. SITE Santa Fe is the leading space for the presentation of contemporary art in the Southwest and since its opening and inaugural biennial in 1995, SITE Santa Fe has presented 11 art exhibitions complemented by extensive educational programs for local residents and Santa Fe visitors. SITE Santa Fe's second biennial exhibition, TRUCE: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusions, presents the work of 27 contemporary artists from 20 countries who use their diverse cultural experiences to create art that speaks to an increasingly global society. It is curated by Francesco Bonami, current U.S. editor of Flash Art International and curator of Aperto '93: The Mere Interchange at the 1993 Venice Bienniale.

The conceptual framework of the 1997 biennial has been developed as a project tailored not for a group of artists who share a similar language or style, but as a vision of a group of individuals who try to define and address society's diverse nature through contemporary art. Each work relates to the other not by its medium, but rather by the different analytic processes used in its creation.

The biennial's diverse public programs include performances, music, and films by participating artists as well as a symposium and lectures by noted art historians, curators and cultural critics such as Jerry Saltz, freelance writer and curator; Louise Neri, senior editor at Parkett magazine and co-curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art's 1997 biennial; Thomas L. Friedman, Pulitzer prize winning New York Times correspondent and author of From Beirut to Jerusalem; and Robert Kaplan, author of The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century and a contributing editor to Atlantic Monthly. In addition, a comprehensive exhibition catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

This year, in addition to its regular programming, SITE Santa Fe will be the sponsoring organization for the exhibition of Robert Colescott's paintings at the American Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Bienniale.

Museum of Fine Arts: The museumcelebrates its 80th Anniversary with Special Exhibition O'Keeffe's New Mexico, July 17 - October 6, 1997 The Museum of New Mexico's Museum of Fine Arts celebrates the beginning of its ninth decade with the presentation of 80th Anniversary Exhibition: O'Keeffe's New Mexico, the first major exhibition placing Georgia O'Keeffe's work in the context of New Mexico's complex cultural history.

Featuring 125 works from the museum's collection, the exhibition will trace Native American, Hispanic, and European-American artistic traditions in New Mexico from 1880 to the present in order to examine the allure of New Mexico and the iconization of the Southwest. It will reveal how the complicated cultural blend that attracted O'Keeffe and her circle of Modernist colleagues to New Mexico became inseparable from their artistic creations.

The exhibition, which both complements and coincides with the opening of the new Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, will be divided into discrete sections including "Surveying Native Cultures, 1882-1900," "Taos and Santa Fe Artists 1898-1927," "Native Artists," "The Southwesternist View," "Responding to Tourism," and "The O'Keeffe Circle and Other Modernists." A final section will explore the post-war period to the present with work ranging from 1950s photographs of Los Alamos and post-modern views of Pueblo life to works by transplanted New Mexicans like Agnes Martin and Bruce Nauman. In celebration of its 80th anniversary and as a salute to the opening of the new Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts is open free to the public on July 17, 1997.

Read more about **SITE Santa Fe **in Resource Library Magazine

Search for more articles and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists for biographical information on historic artists.

This page was originally published in 1997 in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information.