New Film & Digital Arts scholarship at UNM
The Department of Film & Digital Arts within the College of Fine Arts at The University of New Mexico announces the first scholarship specifically for the Department, created to support Indigenous Native Students, and a new course titled Indigenous People on Screen.
Tara Gatewood, former host of Native America Calling, and instructor of the new course, Indigenous People on Screen.
Indigenous People on Screen will be taught by Tara Gatewood, the former host of Native America Calling. Gatewood is an award-winning, veteran journalist and an enrolled citizen of the Pueblo of Isleta/Diné. Additionally, she is the director of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and Transgender People and hosts of Indigenous Foundation, a music and public affairs program heard on Santa Fe New Mexico’s KSFR 101.1 FM.
In addition, Gatewood is a community curator/co-curator Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, a rare exhibition curated by the Native American communities it represents, sponsored by the Pueblo Pottery Collective. Grounded in Clay was recently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
This year’s scholarships and the new course were funded by a generous gift from UNM alumna Katrina Parks, who said, “The Bertha Drabkin Goodwin Leviton Foundation is excited to support this scholarship in honor of its founder, my great aunt Bertha, who was an educator, and my grandmother Gladys, who worked as a nurse on the Navajo Reservation. One of Gladys’ areas of focus was eye health, and so we are extending the idea of vision beyond the physical to support American Indian film and digital art makers’ visions.”
Those wishing to learn more about the UNM College of Fine Arts and the Department of Film and Digital Arts, please visit the website. Those wishing to contribute tax-deductible gifts to this scholarship fund may contact Shelly Smith, director of Development, UNM Fine Arts at shelly.smith@unmfund.org.
New Film & Digital Arts scholarship at UNM
TO LEARN MORE about Department of Film & Digital Arts scholarships, please visit
https://film.unm.edu/current-students/scholarships/
Meet Our New Art Faculty
We’re thrilled to welcome three extraordinary artists and educators to the Department of Art!
Rambod Vala is a multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and educator whose work spans graphic and moving images. His practice integrates video, installation, typography, storytelling, and layered narrative structures interweaving realism and fantasy, politics and romance, skepticism and belief.
Experimental Art & Technology Faculty Shine in “Signal and Trace” Exhibition
“Signal & Trace” highlights artworks at the intersection of human experience and technological mediation, engaging with systems of surveillance, autonomy, memory, and identity.
MFA Student Luc Biscan-White and alum Miguel Lastra at SOMA Summer 2025
MFA student Luc Biscan-White and alum Miguel Lastra were selected to attend SOMA Summer 2025, an intensive program for artists in Mexico City.