Category: Faculty Spotlight
College of Fine Arts News
UNM Musicology Celebrates 10 Years
By Melissa Ríos, UNM Musicology Graduate Student & Musicology Research Assistant April 2025 April 17th marked the celebration of a decade of musicology at UNM. To celebrate the occasion, Dr. Heidi Jensen, who was the first graduate of the revamped program in 2015,...
Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico
Professor Ray Hernández-Durán and Dr. Irene Vasquez are leading a groundbreaking project documenting first-generation New Mexican Chicana/o activism. The initiative includes an art exhibition, catalog, events, and an evolving archive, highlighting a pivotal movement in New Mexico’s history. The exhibition debuts April 25, 2025, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Professor Ray Hernández-Durán Joins National Think Tank to Redefine American Art and Identity
Professor Ray Hernandez-Duran with MFA Boston Curators Lucía Abramovich Sánchez and Layla Bermeo at the Lunder Institute for American Art in Maine on October 11, 2024. Professor Ray Hernández-Durán, Associate Department Chair of Art and Professor of Art History. Over...
Amanda Curreri, ‘In Bocca al Lupo,’ Solo Exhibition at Romer Young Gallery San Francisco, CA
Professor Amanda Curreri Romer Young Gallery is pleased to present its seventh solo exhibition with artist Amanda Curreri. “In Bocca al Lupo” features a new series of textile-based artworks with a focus on the talismanic. The exhibition continues Curreri’s ongoing...
Exhibition at the California Museum of Photography: “Shadow Archive”
Opening this week in Riverside, California: Meggan Gould, Shadow Archive Professor Meggan Gould, who teaches photography within the Department of Art at UNM and serves as the Associate Dean of Research, is a contemporary photographer whose work often explores the...
UNM Assistant Professor of Photography claims the PhMuseum 2024 Women Photographers Grant 1st Prize with the project Floating Ocean
Sara Abbaspour. "Untitled (splashing water)." 2024. 26.25 x35 inches. Archival pigment print.Judge Gem Fletcher explained, “Abbaspour’s work charts a transitional moment in Iran’s socio-political landscape through the relationship between spaces and their inhabitants....
KOAT 7 Spotlights Film & Digital Arts Assistant Professor Ramona Emerson
KOAT Channel 7 Journalist and News Anchor, Royale Da recently spotlighted UNM Film & Digital Arts Assistant Professor Ramona Emerson, as part of Native American Heritage month, highlighting Indigenous voices. The feature covers the release of Emerson’s new...
Music Professor Ana Alonso-Minutti Wins Prestigious Publication Award
Associate Professor of Musicology, Ana Alonso-Minutti, has been awarded the prestigious Robert M. Stevenson Award by the American Musicological Society (AMS) for her book “Mario Lavista: Mirrors of Sounds,”(Oxford University Press, 2023). The award ceremony took place...
New Director of UNM ARTSLab
Assistant Professor Stewart Copeland named Director of ARTSLab Harris Smith, Dean of Fine Arts, is pleased to appoint Assistant Professor of Art Stewart Skylar Copeland as Director of ARTSLab. ARTSLab is a transdisciplinary research facility and exhibition space...
Art and Ecology Professor Subhankar Banerjee Receives 45th Ashley Fellow and Globally-Engaged Research Award
Subhankar Banerjee is the Professor of Art & Ecology, as well as a writer, curator, and environmental humanities scholar. His creative, curatorial and scholarly efforts focus on biodiversity and climate crises, and on multispecies kinship, caretaking and justice....
“A View from the Easel” – Explore Jessamyn and Sean’s Artistic Practice
We’re excited to share some wonderful news about two remarkable artists, Art Instructor Jessamyn Lovell, and Department of Art alumnus Sean Hudson, who are currently featured in the Hyperallergic article "A View from the Easel: 244". The article provides a fascinating...
Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick on African American History in Anchorage
In June, Dr. Kirsten Pai Buick, Chair of UNM's Africana Studies Department and Professor of Art History, sanctioned by the Department of the Interior and federal law to integrate African American history into American history, visited Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church...
UNM Department of Music Students, Faculty & Alumni sweep cast of Opera Southwest Production of Carmen in Spanish
Current students, faculty and alumni of The Department of Music at UNM have filled the cast of the upcoming Opera Southwest production of Carmen, one of the most famous operas of all time. The performance will be presented in Spanish, referencing a translation by...
Dr. Melissa Ryan appointed Assistant Professor of Education
The UNM Dept. of Music is excited to announce the appointment of Dr. Melissa Ryan as Assistant Professor of Music Education and the Head of the Music Education Area. Dr. Ryan had the following to say about her new position, "The UNM Department of Music is a truly...
UNM instructor Mary Mattingly represented at the UN
Confluence professor of practice, Mary Mattingly spent time in Geneva at the UN sharing projects @SwaleNYC and #EbbofaSpringTide at @socratespark with ambassadors and delegates from around the world who focused on the migration impacts of climate change! “Every year,...
Christoph Wagner & Paula Corbin Swalin Faculty Features
Christoph Wagner always wanted to play the cello. The new assistant professor of cello at the University of New Mexico, Wagner started playing when he was six. Wagner says he watched his sister play the cello and never doubted that it was the instrument for him. What...
Sculptural Innovation by Welly Fletcher comes to life at ARTSLab
In an exploration of artistry and technology, sculpture faculty Welly Fletcher, delved into a whirlwind of creativity at ARTSLab this fall to make one of her new sculptures that would join her recent solo show “SLANT” at Richard Levy Gallery. The journey began this...
Faculty & Staff Spotlight – Remarkable Work Flooding Out of UNM’s Art Department
"Grounded in Clay," debuted in New York on July 13, 2023. The exhibition gives voice to the Pueblo Pottery Collective, the sixty Native American curators who selected and wrote about works in clay (including UNM Associate Professor of Ceramics, Clarence Cruz) from...
Dr. Hurtado wins the Morelia Composition Competition for Orchestra
Dr. José Luis Hurtado, Prof. of Music Theory and Composition at the UNM Department of Music, won the National Morelia Composition Competition for Orchestra / Concurso de Composición Orquestal de Morelia, in Mexico. The announcement was made on December 15th, 2023,...
Welcome new Assistant Professor of Cello, Christoph Wagner who makes the strings sing
Welcome new Assistant Professor of Cello, Christoph Wagner who makes the strings sing Originally published in the Daily Lobo on August 20, 2023, by Addison Key, Culture Editor at the Daily Lobo ____ Christoph Wagner always wanted to play the cello. Wagner is...
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