Western New Mexico University Museum and the Francis McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art will be the joint venues for Neo-Mimbreño 2014, a Silver City Clay Festival exhibition, on Saturday, August 2. Neo-Mimbreño 2014 is a juried fine art exhibition of contemporary works influenced or inspired by designs of the ancient Mimbres potters of the Southwest. Artists entering the exhibition were encouraged to creatively reinterpret, personalize, or carry the Mimbreño vision into new formats and media.
“Exhibiting Neo-Mimbreño 2014 at these two campus venues highlights the link between the past and the present; the prehistoric culture inspiring the artists featured in the University Museum’s permanent exhibition of Mimbres pottery and culture and the contemporary art created by the artists that personalizes the Mimbreño vision in new formats and media,” said Dr. Cynthia Ann Bettison, WNMU Museum Director.
Silver City artists Diana Ingalls Leyba and Susan Berry are the exhibition curators. A Curators’ Corner showcasing the individual curators’ creative reinterpretation of prehistoric Mimbres culture and artifacts will be included at the WNMU Museum.
The Neo-Mimbreño 2014 juror is Dr. Patricia Crown, a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1981. Prior to her appointment to the faculty at UNM in 1993, she held teaching positions at Southern Methodist University and Arizona State University. Dr. Crown was awarded the Excellence in Ceramic Research Award in 1994 by the Society for American Archaeology, and the Gordon Willey Award in 1998, jointly with Suzanne K. Fish, by the American Anthropological Association. This spring she received a prestigious appointment to the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Crown has conducted field investigations in the Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and Hohokam areas of the American Southwest; she recently directed the analysis of artifacts from the trash mounds at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. One result of this research was the recent identification of the first prehispanic cacao (chocolate) north of the Mexican border in ceramics from Chaco Canyon. Her other research includes children in prehistory and learning to make pottery and definitive book on Salado ceramics.
A special addition to this year’s Clay Festival exhibitions is a presentation of the work of WNMU Professor Emeritus, Claude W. Smith III. The Claude W. Smith III exhibition will open at McCray Gallery on Saturday, August 2, 2014 concurrently with the Neo-Mimbreño 2014 exhibition from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Neo-Mimbreño 2014 awards will be presented at Western New Mexico University Museum at 4:15 p.m.
Neo-Mimbreño 2014 will run from August 2 through August 30, 2014, and is made possible in part by contributions from the New Mexico Humanities Council, Western New Mexico University Museum, the Town of Silver City, and Western New Mexico University. Western New Mexico University Museum is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and closed University holidays.
For more information about WNMU Museum events, current exhibitions, and closures please visit www.wnmumuseum.org. McCray Gallery hours of operation are Monday through Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and will be open during Clay Festival weekend, August 2-3, 2014. Admission is free to both WNMU Museum and McCray Gallery.