Acting Director Nancy Steedman
ART News:
SANTA FE — The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian has named Museum Search and Reference Executive Searching (MSR) as the firm to direct the Wheelwright Museum Executive Director search.
Together, MS&R brings more than two centuries of experience in the museum field and executive search, including museum directors and curators. Their work sits at the intersection of institutional leadership, community accountability, and cultural stewardship. MS&R will work closely with the Wheelwright Selection Committee as well as listen carefully to members of the entire community. MS&R has an excellent track record of identifying and placing candidates who stay in position and contribute positively to their communities. MS&R begins its work as of May 1.
From May 1, 2026, the Wheelwright Museum will be in the secure hands of Acting Director Nancy Steedman, as the search for a new Executive Director gains momentum.
Steedman joined the Wheelwright Museum as Chief Financial and Operating Officer in May 2024. Since this time she has been an essential part of the leadership team; creating assurance for Trustees as regards finance and budgeting, overseeing contracts, creating efficiencies and new financial models ensuring the Wheelwright Museum is on a secure footing, and working on building projects with Henrietta Lidchi, the current executive director. They both worked together to bring these long-planned building improvements to completion in 2025.
During 2026 and 2027, Steedman will take charge of the Mittler Gallery development as Will Riding In develops the curatorial vision for the display of Cochiti figurative art. We are looking forward to seeing this open-up our lower level in time for the Wheelwright Museum’s ninetieth anniversary.
Steedman came to the museum with a career in both the private and non-profit sector. Nancy started out as a Financial Management Consultant in the Oilfield sector and worked for many years as a community organizer and on non-profit Boards. Steedman re-entered the workforce after her family had grown, bringing her financial expertise and passion to several impactful non-profits in Colorado and New Mexico, including Florence Crittenton Services and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Foundation and Chamber Music Festival. Nancy has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Carleton College and Master’s in Business Administration from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.
“Nancy brings a wonderful combination of skills and talents as the Interim Executive Director,” says Ron Ferguson, chairperson of the Wheelwright Board of Trustees. “Nancy knows all the dimensions of the museum from the business side, fundraising, and operations to the workings of a non-profit arts organization. Her personality and style energize the museum staff and the Museum exhibitions and programs to celebrate and promote the Museum’s mission.”
Exhibits at the Museum
Emmi Whitehorse, Intimate Landscapes (Klah/Slater Gallery) Part I Through June 13, 2026. Part II June 18 – Oct. 3, 2026.
With support from the Walker Youngbird Foundation
Emmi Whitehorse: Intimate Landscapes is an atmospheric portrait of an artist whose voice and vision are increasingly vital to both national and international art discourse. The exhibition unfolds over two parts in a retrospective format, featuring 40 works: Part I: Light and Space (1980–2000s) and Part II: Line and Form (1990–2020s). This dual structure invites viewers to trace this compelling biography through color and time, which chronicles Whitehorse’s artistic evolution from 1980 through 2026.
Each rotation in the Klah Gallery features 20 works, drawn from the Wheelwright Museum’s permanent collection and enriched by loans from Emmi Whitehorse Studio and select private collections. Part II will include a new painting created especially for the show. The works in the Slater Gallery were gifted to the Wheelwright Museum by Whitehorse in 1999, representing one of her earliest series from 1980.
A newly commissioned film, made by Diné filmmaker Kelso Meyer with support from the Walker Youngbird Foundation provides insight into Whitehorse’ biography and process. The exhibit has an accompanying publication with contributions from Whitehorse; Henrietta Lidchi, Wheelwright Museum Executive Director; Hadley Jensen, the exhibition’s curator; and Diné art historian Kathleen Ash-Milby.
Silver Honors Stone: The Work of Julian Lovato (Schultz gallery) through Oct.17, 2026.
Silver Honors Stone is the first solo show dedicated to jeweler Julian Lovato (Santo Domingo, 1925-2018), his career and influence on Native American jewelry. Benefitting from the generosity of private lenders, and institutional loans from the Heard Museum, the exhibition features more than 90 works. Lovato had a long and prolific career, creating works of composed beauty known for their raised dimensional design.
Lovato’s career maps the ways in which the Native American jewelry field flexed and changed over the course of the twentieth century. In his teens, Lovato worked for Maisel’s in Albuquerque, then after serving in Japan, he moved to the Thunderbird Shop in Santa Fe. Then he moved to Packards in the mid-1960s before setting up his own studio in Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo. By the 1970s, he had set up his own studio in Kewa Pueblo, working closely with his wife Marie O. Lovato. As a jeweler, Lovato crossed paths with other Indigenous jewelers who forged independent careers as designer makers, such as Lewis Lomay (Hopi, 1913-1996) and Joe H. Quintana (Cochiti Pueblo, 1915-1991). Lovato’s family remembers him as passionate about jewelry creation, making pieces for the family in his workshop. Silver Honors Stone aims to shine a light on Lovato and his contemporaries, showing relationships, styles, and influences; honoring them as jewelers of significance whose legacy can be seen in contemporary work today. A lead gift to support the exhibition has been given by Stephen Schultz.
The exhibit has an accompanying publication edited by the curators Henrietta Lidchi, Wheelwright Museum Executive Director and Deborah C. Slaney, Wheelwright Museum Research Assistant; jewelers Yazzie Johnson (Navajo); with essays by Gail Bird (Laguna Pueblo and Santo Domingo Pueblo) and Angie Reano Owen (Santo Domingo Pueblo); contributions by family members Julia Abeyta (Santo Domingo Pueblo and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo) and Christie Abeyta (Santa Clara Pueblo, Santo Domingo Pueblo, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, and Isleta Pueblo) with additional contributions by Diana Pardue, Chief Curator at the Heard Museum, and Stephen Schultz.
Outburst: Native American Art After Vietnam (Schultz/Klah/Slater galleries) Oct. 30, 2026 – April 2027.
Outburst will feature over sixty works exploring activism, creativity, and the effects of military service on Native American artists and their creative output. This ambitious thematic show looks at the impact of Vietnam and the 1970s on the course of individual careers and Native American art. Drawing from the Wheelwright Museum’s permanent collection as well as other public and private collections, Outburst will weave a narrative that encapsulates the ferment and complexity that were the consequences of this conflict.
This exhibit explores the diverse works created by veteran artists fifty years after the end of the war, honor their service, and reflect on this creative upheaval which continues to exert significant influence on the trajectory of Native Art today. Lenders include Choctaw Cultural Center, C.N. Gorman Museum, Institute of American Indian Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, National Museum of the American Indian, National Parks Service and Tia Collection, as well as private lenders. The exhibit is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Terra Foundation for American Art.
About the Wheelwright Museum
The Wheelwright Museum is New Mexico’s oldest independent non-profit museum. Founded in 1937 by Mary Wheelwright and Diné singer Hastiin Klah, open to the public since 1938, the Wheelwright presents exhibitions of contemporary and iconic Native American art. The Wheelwright is home to the Jim and Lauris Phillips Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry, which features a permanent display of over 700 works of jewelry from the Southwest. For more than eight decades the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian has honored Native voices through art. 704 Camino Lejo Santa Fe, NM 87505 wheelwright.org.