Events

First Friday’s are back February 7, 2025. Join us from 4pm to 7pm the first Friday of every month for pay-what-you-wish extended hours at the museum.

This First Friday will offer the final, after-hours opportunity to view Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected up through February 23. Enjoy Luchita’s Sewing Station with Price Valentine and screenings of Joie Estrella Horwitz’ s beautiful film Green Turns Brown, a sensory eulogy to the late artist Luchita Hurtado.

Green Turns Brown (2021) | Super 8, color, sound, 6 min

Green Turns Brown is a sensory eulogy to the late artist Luchita Hurtado. Shot several months before the artist’s passing, the Super 8 film explores her oscillation between visibility and invisibility as a female painter mirrored in her observations on mortality and its connection to the duality she found in the natural world.

About Luchita Hurtado

Born in Maiquetía, Venezuela, in 1920, Luchita Hurtado committed almost eighty years of her art practice to the research of universality and transcendence. Expanding her creative vocabulary through a coalescence of abstraction, mysticism, corporality, and landscape, the breadth of her work with unconventional techniques, materials, and styles testifies to the multicultural and experiential environments that molded her life and career. In 1928, Hurtado immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, where she studied at the Art Students League. She moved to Mexico City in the late 1940s, then to San Francisco Bay in the following decade. She finally settled in Santa Monica, California. Beginning in the 1970s, Hurtado and husband Lee Mullican made frequent trips to Taos, New Mexico on their way to visit Mullican’s family in Oklahoma; and eventually built a second home in the village of Arroyo Seco. The life-changing impact of the artist’s time in New Mexico and persisting devotion to the enchantment of Taos are explored in Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected.

Image: Fall Community Day, “Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected,” July 27, 2024—February23, 2025, Harwood Museum of Art. Photo: Shayla Blatchford Photography

Join Artist Nicholas Herrera and Curator Nicole Dial-Kay for this special tour of his current exhibition Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero.

Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero is a glimpse into the life and works of master santero Nicholas Herrera. Herrera, born and raised in El Rito, New Mexico, is a folk artist whose family was among the earliest settlers in the region. Claiming Spanish, Native American, and Mexican ancestry, Herrera identifies as mestizo and descends from farmers and outlaws, landowners and soldiers, craftsmen and artists. He grew up around the Spanish traditions of Northern New Mexico and came of age with a fast-paced lifestyle that resulted in a serious car accident at the age of 26. After awakening in the hospital and recovering from a coma, Herrera felt called to become a saint maker.

As a modern santero, Herrera creates bultos, retablos, and large-scale mixed media works, many of which detail rich and often challenging chapters in his storied life. Through varied mediums, this exhibition surveys Herrera’s personal identity, family history, relationship to place, and political ideology. Still a “village artist,” Herrera continues to reside, regenerate, and create on the land of his family.

Harwood Museum of Art is proud to exhibit the first solo museum exhibition of Nicholas Herrera, which was recently profiled in the New York Times.

Image courtesy of Beth Wald.

This program is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

Explore the museum with a Harwood Teaching Artist and create art inspired by Luchita Hurtado. This is one of the last chances to see the exhibition “Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected.” 

This program is open to families or small groups with children and home school groups. Designed for ages 5-12 but all are welcome. Advanced registration recommended. $5 suggested donation per child. Includes free museum admission. 

Please email education@harwoodmuseum.org for more information. Image courtesy of Harwood Museum of Art.

Explore the museum with a Harwood Teaching Artist and create art inspired by Luchita Hurtado. This is one of the last chances to see the exhibition “Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected.” 

This program is open to families or small groups with children and home school groups. Designed for ages 5-12 but all are welcome.

Advanced registration recommended. $5 suggested donation per child. Includes free museum admission. 

Please email education@harwoodmuseum.org for more information. Image courtesy of Harwood Museum of Art.