The New Mexico Museum of Art on September 23 will open Vladem Contemporary, a $20 million contemporary art outpost located in a renovated 1930s warehouse in Santa Fe’s Railyard District. The Vladem will exclusively feature art from the 1980s onward, much of it by living artists, with its expansive home allowing for a focus on large-scale installations, multimedia projects, and performance-based works. The new institution will launch with the exhibition “Shadow and Light,” which will feature loans as well as works from the New Mexico Museum of Art’s collection, all investigating the idea of the state’s light as a historical inspiration for artists of past and present generations arriving there, including members of the Light and Space movement.
Comprising 38,000 square feet, the new museum will include 10,000 square feet of gallery space as well as a studio for art residencies and space devoted to educational activities. The remainder of the building will be used for storage, of which its parent institution, housed in a 1917 Pueblo Revival building near the capital city’s downtown plaza, is in desperate need. Of note, a portion of the storage space will be visible, allowing visitors to apprehend the conservation process through a glass wall. One of the museum’s two entrances will feature an overhead light installation, Astral Array, 2023, by Albuquerque-born artist Leo Villareal.
Situated at the opposite end of the Railyard District from contemporary art space SITE Santa Fe, Vladem Contemporary is named for arts patrons Robert and Ellen Vladem, who contributed $4 million toward its construction. The remainder of the funding for the project came from other private donors, who contributed about $8.5 million, and from the state of New Mexico, which provided more than $6 million.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
