Rael San Fratello
Teeter-totter wall, US-Mexico border: children and adults from both countries played together on pink seesaws straddling the steel border fence separating El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico. 2019
On view summer 2022
About the
Albuquerque Museum
Visiting Artist Program
Since 2011, the Visiting Artist program at Albuquerque Museum has featured contemporary artists with a connection to New Mexico. The annual program provides an invited artist the opportunity to reimagine and activate the museum’s lobby, which is the first space visitors encounter upon entering the museum. The program includes the display of the artist’s work for one year, public engagement, and artist talks. The program aims to provide a bridge between the artistic practice of the visiting artist and the experience of contemporary art by the public.
The Visiting Artist program considers artists with compelling conceptual creativity. The large scale space of the museum lobby has inspired several artists to create site-specific installations. Artists, however, are given the freedom to determine how they want to interact with the space.
2011: Gronk
2012: Catalina Delgado Trunk
2013: Larry Bob Phillips
2014: Ernest Doty
2015: Lea Anderson
2016: Virgil Ortiz
2017: Paul Sarkisian
2019: Karl Hofmann
2020: Nicola López
2021: Cannupa Hanska Luger
COMING SOON TO ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM
“We are a studio that disrupts the conventions of architecture by tackling topics not typically of interest to architects. We start galleries in the middle of nowhere. We talk to homeless people. We stack straw bales. We play in the mud. We start corporations. We imagine a better border. We question green. We love fluorescents and brown. We write. We educate. We learn. We often lose, but it doesn’t stop us from trying. We believe that the turtle wins the race. We believe old things can be new again. We hope that the new things we make will someday be old. Another company’s trash is sometimes our treasure. We believe there is nothing wrong with making money. We do free work (and lots of it). We print buildings. We love dust. We believe that when there is architecture there should also be food. We believe salt has a place in architecture. We are obsessed by materials. We try to proceed and be bold. We think that, when it comes to design, there is nothing wrong with lying and accentuating. We love making in California and we love Oakland. We have future-forward aspirations. We have rural gesticulations and intonations. We know you’ve never heard of our favorite architects. We know you’ve probably never heard of us. We are willing to deny any of this if it isn’t any fun." — from their website.
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello
The Albuquerque Museum Visiting Artist Program is supported in part by a grant from the Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.