Who: Adobe Gallery
What: Albuquerque artist Carl Von Hassler
When: June 19th - July 18th
Where: Adobe Gallery, 221 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM
Contact: (505) 955.0550, www.adobegallery.com

Adobe Gallery will feature an exhibit of paintings by Albuquerque artist Carl Von Hassler (1887-1969), at the gallery location of 221 Canyon Road, Santa Fe.

He was best known for his traditional realistic landscapes of New Mexico and his Indian portraits. He spent almost half of his 47 years here developing a new painting technique that caused a stir in art circles.

The exhibit opens on Friday, June 19th, with a reception from 4 to 7 pm, and continues through July 18th. Questions may be referred to info@adobegallery.com or call (505) 955-0550. Gallery hours are 10am to 5pm Monday—Saturday.

For more New Mexico information visit www.new-mexico-visitor.com

Who: Museum of International Folk Art
What: A Century of Masters: The NEA National Heritage Fellows of New Mexico
When: July 19, 2009 - May 1, 2010
Where: The Museum of International Folk Art is located on Museum Hill™, Camino Lejo off Old Santa Fe Trail
Contact: (505) 476-1200, www.internationalfolkart.org

Each year, the National Endowment for the Arts honors folk artists, storytellers, performers, and musicians throughout the United States for their contributions to traditional art forms. The National Heritage Fellows demonstrate artistic excellence and a commitment to their art forms through their processes, techniques, and transmission of the knowledge to others that strengthens and enriches their communities.

New Mexico residents are well-represented in this distinguished group of talented artists, especially given the size of the state’s population. The Museum of International Folk Art holds examples of the works of all the Fellows from New Mexico in its collections, from weavings, colcha embroidery and silversmithing, to pottery, tinwork, straw appliqué, hide painting, retablos, and woodcarving.

“The quality and range of artworks created by New Mexico’s National Heritage Fellows is impressive.  The exhibit will stand as testimony to the dedication and skill of these talented artists;” said Dr. Joyce Ice, former Director of the Museum of International Folk Art.

A Century of Masters opens July 19, 2009 and is scheduled to close May 1, 2010; and celebrates the Museum of New Mexico’s 100th.

For more New Mexico information visit www.new-mexico-visitor.com

Who: New Mexico Museum of Art
What: American Impressionism: Paintings From The Phillips Collection
When: June 5 - September 13, 2009
Where: New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe’s Plaza at 107 West Palace Avenue
Contact: (505) 476-5072, www.nmartmuseum.org

Works by Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, Augustus Vincent Tack, and John Henry Twachtman, are among other American Masters who compose some of this exhibition’s highlights. These artists’ works were among the earliest acquisitions of The Phillips Collection, established in 1921 as America’s first museum of modern art. The exhibition opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art on June 5, 2009 and runs through September 13, 2009.

The artists represented in this exhibition were among the first generation of American painters to absorb the technique, brighter palette, and subject matter of impressionism from their French counterparts. These artists, considered rebellious in their time, painted atmospheric landscapes, park, and beach scenes, urban views, and charming interiors, with particular interest in optical effects, light, and the different seasons.

American Impressionism was a painting style imported into this country after the 1880s by artists who studied in France and by American collectors who developed a taste for this new style of painting. American Impressionists tended to retain more academic influences such as structure and realism in their work than the French; however both favored bucolic outdoor scenes with light being the real subject matter. American Impressionists also differed from their French counterparts by imbuing their work with larger ideas related to the emotional and spiritual character of the landscape.

The sixty-five works represented in this exhibition range from some of American Impressionism’s earliest practitioners such as George Inness in the late 1880s to the nearly the end of the movement with work by Robert Spencer in 1931 and from artists both better-known to those less so.

A change in the times and the tastes of collectors may have marked the end of Impressionism as a formal movement in America, but its loose brushwork, two-dimensional surface painting defined by pattern and the treatment of paint, and its bright colors opened the doors to modern art.

For more New Mexico information visit www.new-mexico-visitor.com