The Harwood Museum of Art and Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center are presenting "Unearthing Futures / Desenterrando Futuros," a major exhibition exploring adobe as a living practice that connects art, architecture, and ancestral knowledge across the Americas. Running from June 27, 2026, to February 28, 2027, the show features artists Gabriel Chaile, Rafa Esparza, Santino Gonzales, Joanna Keane Lopez, Ronald Rael, and Christine Howard Sandoval, with site-responsive installations that transform the museum's galleries through monumental adobe structures. The exhibition extends beyond the museum through partnerships with historic sites across New Mexico and southern Colorado, forming a region-wide constellation of projects that trace adobe's cultural and generational pathways.
This exhibition matters because it reframes adobe not merely as a historical building material but as a dynamic, living practice that embodies tradition, communal care, and transformation. By centering artists from across the Americas and grounding the work in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado—where earthen building traditions remain integral to daily life—the show challenges colonial boundaries and celebrates the continuity of borderlands heritage. The inclusion of community-rooted guest curators Guadalupe Tafoya and Deborah Lujan further emphasizes the exhibition's commitment to honoring ancestral knowledge and lived sovereignty, making it a significant statement on how art can bridge past and future while addressing contemporary issues of place, identity, and collective responsibility.