Three New Mexico Carvers

Join Christian Waguespack, Curator of 20th Century Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, for a look at the life and work of three sculptors featured in the Harwood’s current exhibition, New Beginnings: An American Story of Romantics and Modernists in the West, Patrociño Barela, Eugenie Shonnard, and Agnes Sims. This talk will offer a comparative overview of their artistic practice and approach to materials, the vastly different roads that brought them to New Mexico, and the way the distancing culture and history of this place shaped their work.

Waguespack has served as Curator of 20th Century Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art for the past five and a half years. In 2019, he curated Carved & Cast: 20th Century New Mexican Sculpture, an exhibition exploring regional sculptural styles specific to the Southwest, centering the medium in its own conversation about innovation and craft. He has lectured on Eugenie Shonnard for the Denver Art Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the National New Deal Preservation Association. He is currently organizing, With the Grain, an exhibition on twentieth century Hispano wood carving in Northern New Mexico. Rooted heavily in the work and legacy of Patrociño Barela, this exhibition will open next year.