516 ARTS

Across the Great Divide

This exhibition of Roberta Price’s photographic work in the upstairs gallery is in conjunction with the release of her book Across the Great Divide: A Photo Chronicle of the Counterculture (UNM Press, Fall 2010). It features a photographic archive of hippies, communes, architecture, countercultural luminaries and events in the Southwest in the late 1960s and 70s. The photographs add details to the scene and document the story set out in Price’s memoir Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), a coming of age autobiography/tale set in the Southwest. Her photographs capture the hope, optimism and utopian promise that fueled that period. The curatorial advisor and catalog essayist for this project is Mary Anne Redding, Curator of Photography, Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum. 516 ARTS and the Bethel Center for the Arts are co-sponsoring the national exhibition tour of Roberta’s Price’s work.

Worlds Outside This One

Worlds Outside This One, curated by Erin Elder in the downstairs gallery, features a group of emerging international artists and innovators responding to the legacy of homesteading, squatting, hermitage and fort building. The exhibition addresses the urge for momentary acts of self-determination, creating hand-hewn spaces in the gallery and interactive experiences for visitors, as well as showcasing blueprints, shelters, journals and maps. Looking to those who create ad-hoc communities and makeshift structures through art practice as well as daily life, this exhibition illuminates the productive tension between Do-It-Yourself autonomy and shared notions of Utopia. Many of the featured artists in Worlds Outside This One are also architects, philosophers, entrepreneurs, urban planners, economists and community builders, including 17 individuals and collectives from around the globe.