In the Heart of Well Country:
Santoriums in New Mexico
Presented by the John Gaw Meem Archives of Southwestern Architecture, this exhibition explores aspects of the history of tuberculosis sanatoriums in late 19th and early 20th century New Mexico. On display through May 30, 2008 in the west wing of Zimmerman Library.
Indigenous Dress and Sacred Text:
The Art of Carlos Merida
This exhibition comprises 36 prints, color serigraphs and lithographs, selected from six print portfolios produced during the 1940s by Carlos Merida, a preeminent painter, printmaker and muralist of 20th century Mexico. Early artworks within Merida’s body of work attest to his contribution as one of the initiators of the indigenous movement in Mexico—a re-valuation of living nature culture as the foundation of Mexican national identity—which gained momentum just prior to the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920.
In five of his portfolios, “Carnival in Mexico” (1940), “Mexican Costume” (1941), “Dances of Mexico” (1941, “Trajes Regionales Mexicanos” (1945) and “Trajes Indigenas de Guatemala” (1949), Merida renders regional native dress and dance costumes from Mexico and Guatemala in a way that is both documentary and decorative. Additionally, Merida draws inspiration from the ancient religious beliefs of the Quiche-Maya in the sixth portfolio, “Estampas del Popol Vuh” (1943).
Merida was born in Guatemala in 1891 of a Maya-Quiche father and a Spanish mother. He died in Mexico City in 1984. Early on he showed promise as a pianist but when he began to lose his hearing as a teen-ager his father encouraged him to take up painting. He studied in both Europe and New York City with a number of Mexico’s greatest 20th century artists, including Amadeo Modigliana, Diego Rivera and Alfredo Best Maugard. He moved to Mexico City in 1919 where he later served as the director of the National Dance School from 1932-35.
The exhibition will be showing in the Center for Southwest Research gallery in Zimmerman Library through May 16. UNM Center for Regional Studies Research Scholar Teresa Eckmann is curator. For questions about the exhibit, she may be reached at (505) 277-1010 or by E-mail at eckmann@unm.edu
The University of New Mexico Center for Regional Studies, the Center for Southwest Research, the Division of Iberian and Latin American Resources, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology are all sponsors of the exhibition, which is free and open to the public. The exhibition is open during all regular library hours.