Albuquerque Museum of Art and History Hosts 'Biennial Southwest '

Tuesday, 07 November 2006 10:34

Albuquerque, NM - It is the first exhibition of its kind.  Biennial Southwest at The Albuquerque Museum presents a wide range of contemporary art currently being produced in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.  Biennial Southwest is the first juried contemporary art exhibition of this caliber to be presented at The Albuquerque Museum.  Artists will compete for cash awards totaling $8500 in a variety of categories and their art will remain on display at the museum through January 7, 2007.

Neal Benezra, Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, will serve as juror for the first Biennial Southwest.  Prior to his appointment at SFMOMA Benezra held the positions of Deputy Director and the Frances and Thomas Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Before that he spent eight years at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Benezra received his doctorate and master degrees in art history from Stanford University in addition to a master's degree in art history from the University of California at Davis.

During Benezra's tenure in the museum field he has organized a variety of critically acclaimed exhibitions, including retrospectives of Edward Ruscha (with Kerry Brougher), Bruce Nauman (with Kathy Halbreich), Martin Puryear, and Robert Arneson.  He co-organized with Olga Viso Regarding Beauty: A View of the Late Twentieth Century and Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s.

Douglas Fairfield, Ph.D., Curator of Art at The Albuquerque Museum, sees this exhibition as a changing force in the way contemporary art is perceived in New Mexico.