This community-curated exhibition explores mythic, authentic, and nuanced cultural items, experiences, and artistic practices in conversation with Tucson’s history. Using TMA’s collection along with select loans from the Tia Collection in Santa Fe, the exhibition will offer new understandings of art of the American West, its significance to the past and present, and a broadening of social contexts and traditional conventions. With the inclusion of works of art created between the 1870s and 2024, this exhibition positions the major theme of defiance and reimagination as a necessity for survival and method for transforming and expanding the canon of art of the American West. Throughout the galleries visitors will also encounter a secondary theme of erasure and technology which questions ideas of progress and manifest destiny.
Divergence of Legacy: Art of the American West in the 21st Century has been developed through a community-based curatorial framework. We are grateful to the expertise, guidance, and trust of our community curators: Elizabeth Denneau, Dwayne Manuel, Ruben Urrea Moreno, Harrison Preston, Yu Yu Shiratori, Feng-Feng Yeh, and Alisha Vasquez and Rikki Riojas with the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum.
