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Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
Winter Celebrations
November 30, 2019 - January 5, 2020
Spring River Gallery
Opening in conjunction with our Holiday Open House
Saturday, December 7, 4-6pm
Traditionally, the dark and cold of winter meant that people would more often stay inside their homes, spending less time with friends and eating whatever would keep during the season when little grows.
Wanting to counteract this trend, people all over the world have set a number of important holidays in the winter to encourage socializing and feasting. Hanukkah and Christmas both celebrate miracles, while Eid-alAdha and Diwali mark the anniversary of important events in Islamic and Hindu history respectively. Kwanzaa is a celebration of African American culture, and the Winter Solstice and New Year’s Eve are about renewal and the cycles of time.
This December, we will be enjoying all of the winter celebrations with a selection of works from our permanent collection.
Cedra Wood
Roswell Artist in-Residence
November 23, 2019 - January 12, 2020
Marshall and Winston Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday, November 22
5:30pm: Lecture
6-7pm: Reception
Roswell Artist-In-Residence Cedra Wood has long been in the grip of an obsession: the eerie, visceral, and unsettling tales found in ancient Scottish and English ballads. For her exhibition at RMAC, she presents paintings inspired by this fixation. Ranging from darkly funny to moody and morbid, the miniature works depict transmuted snakes, prophetic selkies, wax babies, and other elements meant to evoke an eldritch time and place—a lyrical and symbolic otherworld that has been perpetuated by word of mouth for centuries. Read More
Axle Contemporary
E Pluribus Unum: New Mexico Southeast
November 16, 2019 - April 12, 2020
Entry Gallery
Opening with gallery talk by the artists in conjunction with the RMAC Holiday Open House
December, 7, 2019 | 4-6 pm
A Line in the Sand
A regional collaboration with 516ARTS
November 9, 2019 - May 24, 2020
Hunter Gallery
Opening Reception:
Friday, November 8 | 5-7pm
The political boundary between the United States and Mexico has an unstable history, with both the location and the importance of the border shifting across this remote region over time. If not for the geographers, surveyors, and scientists sent to map the border, the secretive animals of the mountains, deserts, and rivers might have evaded notice for a long time. Instead, over the course of the 1800s many expeditions passed through this region, collecting and illustrating the animals they discovered. Co-curated by biologists Tracy Diver and Alexis Harrison, this exhibition explores the stories of some of these animals, from the observations of early explorers to contemporary artistic representations of these same species, with notes on the current state of scientific knowledge about each, and thoughts on how the changing nature of the border may affect the wildlife living along it.
This event is part of the Species in Peril Along the Rio Grande regional collaboration. For more information visit 516ARTS
Sharbani Das Gupta
In/Sight
October 26, 2019 - April 5, 2020
Donald B. Anderson Gallery
Opening Reception:
Friday, October 25 | 5-7pm
Splitting her time between India and the United States, Sharbani Das Gupta uses the perspective she gains from her travels to create immersive environments that give viewers the opportunity to enter an alternative kind of space. Das Gupta has a keen awareness of the human impact on the planet, and she often explores the ecological and social residues of political upheaval. Her allegorical rather than confrontational approach opens a space for empathy and understanding while still emphasizing the need for action. She uses her work to draw attention to the not-so-hidden but often disregarded links between ourselves and the worlds we inhabit and impact. Read More
Erica Bailey
Roswell Artist in-Residence
September 21- November 10, 2019
Marshall and Winston Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday, September 20
5:30pm: Lecture
6-7pm: Reception
Erica Bailey explores perceptions of time and space through installations that combine dioramas and video. She frequently turns to vernacular architecture for subject matter, seeing it as a primary means by which we delimit space and order our understanding of it. Her work exhibits a fascination with spatial binaries such as inside/ outside, close/remote, and often references events that unfold over unfathomable expanses of time and distance or realities beyond our natural means of perception. Her new installation for RMAC will include four dioramas set in the prehistoric past, the recent past, the present, and the distant future, affording a quasi time travel and expressing a longing to understand the significance of individual experience within the scale of humankind and beyond.
Read More.
Decades: 1930s and 1940s
August 24, 2019- February 9, 2020
Marshall and Winston Gallery
The art that is produced in any given era gives later audiences a small glimpse of what it was like to live in that time period. That is the idea behind the Decades series of exhibitions that will be featured at RMAC over the next four years. We begin with the 1930s and 1940s, partly because the Museum was founded in 1937, and partly because of our rich holdings from these decades. Read More
Coloring Inside the Lines
June 22- October 27, 2019
Hunter Gallery
Many people will look at an artwork that features just a few solid blocks of color, and say the same thing: “anyone could have painted this – what makes it art?” There are many answers to that question, and this exhibition will explore some of the reasons why artists might choose to make what are known as color field paintings. Read More.
Alien Forms
April 20-October 27, 2019
Entry Gallery
This spring, Curator Aubrey Hobart is throwing open the vaults to display some of the most unusual and rarely-seen works of art in RMAC’s collection. Alien Forms is a celebration of all things weird and wonderful in the world of art, from a tall, spindly textile sculpture by RAiR artist Rebecca Davis to the organic swirls of Emil Bisttram, and a goofy parody of modern art by Gustave Baumann. Images of enormous insects or a dozen screaming faces may be disconcerting to some, but the details of their production reveal new insights about the role that art is supposed to play in our society. Read More.
The Virtue of Ownership
April 7 - November 24, 2019
Spring River Gallery
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 7, 2-5 pm
Panel Discussion at 2 pm followed by music and refreshments
Closing Reception and Panel Discussion: The Impact of De Jure Segregated Schooling in Southern New Mexico
Saturday, September 7, 2 - 5pm
The African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico, in partnership with the Roswell Museum and Art Center, is presenting a series of exhibition panels that examine the journey of African Americans in southern New Mexico.
The history of New Mexico is a complex blending of many cultures, but the contributions made by African Americans are often overlooked. This traveling exhibit from the African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico reminds us that African American people have been in these lands just as long as white settlers... Read more
Made in New Mexico
December 1, 2018 - long term display
Patricia Gaylord Anderson Gallery
New Mexico is home to a lot of great things, from important historical sites and diverse state parks to roasted green and red chilies. It’s also a land rich with artistic traditions, and continues to be an inspiration to artists today. Native artists and craftsmen have been working here for centuries, while artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley have traveled here seeking new ideas for their work. Today New Mexico continues to attract artists from around the world, whether they seek the mountains of Santa Fe or the unique community of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Art has always been one of New Mexico’s strongest assets, and will undoubtedly continue to be one of its defining features in the twenty-first century. Read more
New Mexico: 20th Century Visions
Long Term Display
Donald B. Anderson Gallery
New Mexico is a place with so much to offer. From our stunning landscapes, unique architecture, and ranching culture, to our Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo heritage, the artists in this exhibition all worked in a grand scale to immerse the viewer in the state’s wide open spaces. Whether incorporating indigenous plants into their artwork or combining old and new traditions, these artists are showcasing the best of the Land of Enchantment.
Robert H. Goddard: The Father of Modern Rocketry
On Permanent Display
Goddard Gallery and Workshop Recreation
Goddard Gallery and Workshop Recreation
In 1898, a teenage Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882-1945), captivated by the realism of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, “…imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.” He began enthusiastically filling notebooks with ideas for getting off the planet. As a graduate student in physics at Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts, his hometown, he conducted simple tests with gun powder that suggested it was indeed possible to construct a rocket for space travel. Read more
Hurd & Wyeth: Picturing the Hondo Valley
On Permanent Display
Founders Gallery
The Roswell Museum and Art Center is home to the largest public collection of works by Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth, painters who have both become synonymous with the landscape and culture of southeastern New Mexico. Peter Hurd (1904-1984) was raised in Roswell where his father worked a small ranch southwest of town. Much of his youth was spent astride a horse, and he was known for his equestrian abilities. Roaming the countryside as a youth on horseback earned Hurd an intimate understanding of the hills, prairies, and arroyos that configured the surrounding landscape. Read more
West of Beyond: The Rogers and Mary Ellen Aston Collection of the American West
On Permanent Display
Aston Galleries
Donated by Rogers Aston, The Aston Collection of the American West is one of the most popular and historically significant aspects of the Roswell Museum and Art Center’s holdings. An independent oil producer, rancher, sculptor, and philanthropist, Aston developed a keen interest in the West during time spent on his family’s various ranches. Read more