A recently-opened exhibit at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos has been met with criticism and backlash from a local Albuquerque artist.
The exhibit titled, “The Unknown Santeros,” highlights santeros, or artists who created depictions of saints also known as santos, whose works date back to the time of early Spanish settlers. Santos were made by using wood and natural pigments that allowed communities to practice Catholicism in a challenging and isolating new land.
The exhibit “pays tribute to those anonymous artists who were once named and known by their local communities,” as stated on a sign at the exhibit’s entrance.
But Brandon Maldonado, an Albuquerque-based artist, says Harwood missed the mark and that the museum failed to do the work to identify the santeros in question. Museum officials say they heard Maldonado’s concerns and have a plan to address them, but that they still don’t think the artists are identifiable.
Maldonado tells The Paper. that he doesn’t think the museum did enough work to credit the santeros and that he was able to track down the names of many of them.
“It wasn’t about me at all,” he says. “It was about standing up for the ancestors.”
Maldonado says he brought his concerns to the museum’s attention in November 2022 and offered to help them identify the pieces. He says he went back to the museum a year later to pick up one of his pieces he had displayed in another exhibit and noticed nothing had changed.
Maldonado soon took his concerns to social media and the museum responded with a public statement saying officials acknowledged Maldonado’s concerns but that they didn’t see things the same way.
“With consultation from key Hispano historians and contemporary santeros, we felt that showcasing the unattributed works was valid and overdue. After review by several experts, we determined that all works on view have unconfirmed attributions,” the statement read.
Museum Director Juniper Leherissy tells The Paper. that the museum plans to convene a panel to consider the feedback of the exhibit, but that there’s no specific timeline.
“It takes time to actually convene a panel of experts,” she says. “We are moving it up as a priority.”
For now, it seems the exhibit will remain as is and Maldonado will continue to push back.
“Brushing me off as some unimportant artist puts me not too far off from the company of these ‘Unidentified Artists’ so I guess at least I’m in good company.” Maldonado wrote on Facebook in February.