Courtesy/Virgil Ortiz

NMHM News:

New Mexico History Museum’s (NMHM) Indian Market Lecture Series wraps up at 2 p.m. Aug. 5 with Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti) as the final guest.

Like other visiting lecturers in this series, Ortiz features in Honoring Tradition and Innovation, the NMHM exhibition marking the centennial Santa Fe’s Indian Market. 

In “Convergence,” Ortiz will reflect on his relationship with the Market and how it ties together the past, present, and future through age-old methods and materials and a vision of what’s next. “Converging many mediums has taken flight,” he writes, “inviting the audience on a journey into the future and new heights. None of it is my talent; it’s way bigger than me, and I am just a bead in a necklace.”  

Ortiz is a celebrated and prolific artist who fuses his Pueblo culture with sci-fi, fantasy, and apocalyptic themes, yielding thought-provoking and futuristic imagery while shaping the fantastical world he is creating with clay and multimedia art. Ortiz teaches Pueblo history to multiple generations of viewers worldwide, telling the story of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt by introducing a cast of superheroes he has created over the years through a series of works, including jars, busts, and now live actors portraying the characters in the story.  

Don’t miss this blockbuster lecture! 

As a supplement to Honoring Tradition and Innovation, the Indian Market Lecture Series has highlighted specific artists featured in the exhibition and prominent in Indian Market’s history. As an artist melding science fiction, fantasy, Puebloan history, and different mediums, Virgil Ortiz has his eye on the future—and that makes him well suited to send off Honoring Tradition and Innovation.