Education & Public Programs
Our Purpose
The Education and Public Programs Department transforms lives through life-long engagement with the arts.
Our Programs
- Expand and deepen engagement with the Harwood collection and exhibitions
- Support equitable access to transformative arts experiences
- Connect audiences with diverse practicing artists
- Rely on rigorous, relevant, and intentional curriculum and teaching
- Contribute to a thriving social, emotional, intellectual, and creative life in Northern New Mexico
School Tours
Harwood Education is excited to welcome school groups back into the museum. In this 45-minute guided exploration of the museum, students and teachers may choose the focus of their experience either on the permanent collection or current special exhibition. Add on a 45-minute art making activity to make your visit a 90-minute adventure in the Fern Hogue Education Center. Coming in Spring 2023: STEAM tour focused on the historic architecture at the Harwood.
Guided tours are available Wednesday’s and Thursday’s at 10am or 1pm, beginning September 7, 2022. Self-guided tours are an option during museum hours, Wednesday-Sunday from 11am-5pm. Support materials will be provided to help you get the most from your visit.
Art After School
In partnership with Enos Garcia Community School, Harwood Education cultivates dynamic after school programming focused on cultivating confidence with the creative process and strengthening their social and emotional skills. Young people gain exclusive access to the museum allowing them to engage with art, ask questions, and make connections while providing inspiration for student-centered art making. Each semester culminates with a student curated exhibition of original work.
Teen Programs
Artists ages 13-19 collaborate with Harwood Education to curate programming by teens for teens. Monthly open art labs create space for teens to explore the museum, make art, and cultivate new friendships with teens across Taos. Join us at Frist Fridays, exhibition openings, and other community events!
22Jun11:00 pm5:00 pm2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party
Event Details
You are invited Saturday, June 22 from 11am-5pm for the 2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party. Come celebrate our incredible community with performances, art making, local food vendors
Event Details
You are invited Saturday, June 22 from 11am-5pm for the 2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party. Come celebrate our incredible community with performances, art making, local food vendors and creative activities for all ages. Featuring FREE museum admission all day for EVERYONE.
The Museum’s Ledoux street neighbors, including Barra Vino, Omni Hum, Taos Art Supply, Inger Jirby Gallery, Blumenschein Home and Museum, and The Valley will join us for this festive celebration hosting activities up and down the block. Whether you are visiting Taos for the day or have lived here for generations, this day offers something for everyone to celebrate the creative spirit of Taos.
Check back for the schedule of events and musical lineup for this years celebration!
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Time
(Saturday) 11:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Family Programs
Harwood Education is committed to supporting and engaging families through accessible and engaging art programming. Every Sunday the museum is free to Taos County residents and families are invited to spend quality time enjoying art together. Harwood Join us for family-friendly community events like the annual Lighting Ledoux holiday tradition and Community Day events with interactive art making and activities for all ages.
21Apr1:30 pm3:00 pmFamily Art LabWorkshop
Event Details
Join a Harwood Teaching Artist for an in-depth look at a work of art in the museum followed by a 45-minute art making activity in the
Event Details
Join a Harwood Teaching Artist for an in-depth look at a work of art in the museum followed by a 45-minute art making activity in the Education Studio. This program is open to families or small groups with children and home school groups. Designed for ages 5-12 but all are welcome.
Advanced registration recommended. $5 suggested donation per child.
Please email education@harwoodmuseum.org for more information. Image courtesy of Harwood Museum of Art.
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Time
(Sunday) 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Location
Fern Hogue Mitchell Education Center, Harwood Museum
238 Ledoux Street
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
April 19, 2024 1:30 pmMay 17, 2024 1:30 pmMay 19, 2024 1:30 pm
22Jun11:00 pm5:00 pm2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party
Event Details
You are invited Saturday, June 22 from 11am-5pm for the 2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party. Come celebrate our incredible community with performances, art making, local food vendors
Event Details
You are invited Saturday, June 22 from 11am-5pm for the 2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party. Come celebrate our incredible community with performances, art making, local food vendors and creative activities for all ages. Featuring FREE museum admission all day for EVERYONE.
The Museum’s Ledoux street neighbors, including Barra Vino, Omni Hum, Taos Art Supply, Inger Jirby Gallery, Blumenschein Home and Museum, and The Valley will join us for this festive celebration hosting activities up and down the block. Whether you are visiting Taos for the day or have lived here for generations, this day offers something for everyone to celebrate the creative spirit of Taos.
Check back for the schedule of events and musical lineup for this years celebration!
more
Time
(Saturday) 11:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Adult Programs
Harwood Education and Public Programs curates a variety of adult education opportunities including tours, lecture series, gallery talks, films, concerts, and art-making workshops. Become a Member and enjoy a 20% discount on all programming.
06Apr6:00 pm7:00 pmFor Zitkála-Šá Performance: Autumn Chacon
Event Details
Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the
Event Details
Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Autumn Chacon (Diné and Chicana) will perform a one-of-a-kind, in-gallery concert of the piece composed for her by Raven Chacon as part of his For Zitkála-Ša series, as well as her own work. As a conceptual, installation, and performance artist, Autumn Chacon often explores Indigenous futurisms where technology has a sacred relevance, highlighting her skills as a self-taught electronics engineer.
Raven Chacon created For Zitkála-Ša, a series of lithographs of musical arrangements dedicated to contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, and sound art. Chacon envisioned the scores as portraits of the women and how they navigate the twenty-first century. The title of the series refers to the Yankton Dakota composer and musician Zitkála-Šá, who lived from 1876 to 1938.
About Autumn Chacon
Autumn Chacon is a Diné/Chicana activist and conceptual artist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose work exhibits in the form of audio installation, electronic installation and performance art. Chacon was first exposed to activism and radical movements by her parents who were involved in both the American Indian and Chicano movements of the 1960s and ‘70s and their social and environmental justice values are present in the themes and causes of Autumn’s work. Autumn’s own activism work has been in pursuit of communication and media justice, environmental justice and economic justice. Much of her skill set including electronic engineering to community organizing has come from labor and workforce experience from working in public access TV to the securing of three FCC licenced Community Radio stations including one in the Navajo Nation bordertown of Gallup NM, before the age of 30. Chacon also has years of congressional lobbying to secure these rights for marginalized populations in between, and a stint in Norway and Switzerland meeting with the largest banks in the world in a successful effort to divest 3.8 billion dollars from the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Autumn’s artist Curriculum Vitae reflects the same work but as an abstract, conceptual, installation, and performance artist. The majority of her pieces have been curated and exhibited among First Nations communities in Canada in cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Brandon, and Calgary as well as her own region, traditional territory and broader United States including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Flagstaff, Maine, Philadelphia Los Angeles and New York. Autumn is known for making broadcast installations and “interference” pieces meant to question federal regulations and our own relationship with regulated spaces. Her performance pieces are a peak into which Autumn draws most inspiration from among her own friends, family and fellow artists, collaborating and often writing pieces specifically for those individuals to perform. Meanwhile Autumn’s current activism work has to do with equitable and autonomous internet access and social network development towards Indigenous Technological Liberation..
Many of Autumn’s traditional teachings as a Diné woman are reflected in art/activism praxis. Her communication tools are borne from our most basic teachings around language, speech and the act of speaking out loud; and the continuation of knowledge through technology is the involvement with many natural sciences and their ability to affect the world around us. With no lack of stories to be told Chacon strives to engage through new media technologies even if her stories are very old.
About the Exhibition
Raven Chacon: Three Songs brings together three of Raven Chacon’s projects that pay tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work. In the series For Zitkála-Šá (2018), Chacon created musical arrangements dedicated to different contemporary Indigenous, First Nations, or Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, or sound art. The video installation Three Songs (2021) features Indigenous women singing as they reoccupy sites of historic massacres, displacement, or relocation of tribal people. The final work, Silent Choir (2016-2017), is a field recording Chacon made while taking part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which captures the silent protest of 600 water protectors facing police and security forces. When presented in unison, these works resound the suppressed histories and present-day stories of Native resistance in the face of systemic power.
Raven Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) composer, performer, and installation artist born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Kennedy Center, and the Whitney Museum, among others. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
For Zitkála-Šá Performances:
Feb 24: Kona Mirabal + Masa Rain Mirabal
Apr 6: Autumn Chacon
May 4: Laura Ortman
Jun 7: Marisa DeMarco (performing For Carmina Escobar)
Support for the For Zitkála-Šá Concert Series is provided by the Richard B. Siegel Foundation.
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Time
(Saturday) 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
10Apr11:00 am12:00 pmArtstreams: Meet Us at the MuseumAccess Program
Event Details
In collaboration with the Harwood Museum and Artstreams: From the Well of Memory,
Event Details
In collaboration with the Harwood Museum and Artstreams: From the Well of Memory, Meet us at the Museum harnesses the power of art and provides access to the museum for individuals with memory impairment and their caregiver. Explore a new work of art each month at the Harwood while engaging in meaningful conversations that build communication skills, stimulate social engagement, and deepen connections through art.
To register, please contact Kathleen Burg M.A.: 575-770-9874 or ktburg@newmex.com and www.artstreamstaos.com
Artstreams: From the Well of Memory has been in the forefront of creating programs for Taos Alzheimer’s family caregivers since 2008. Image courtesy of Kathleen Burg.
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Time
(Wednesday) 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location
Harwood Museum of Art
238 Ledoux Street
27Apr7:00 pm8:30 pmTaos Poetry in Motion
Event Details
This exciting screening event will feature the premiere of a new film by 2022-2023 Taos Poet Laureate, Joshua K. Concha. This short film comprised of 14 poets reading work that acknowledge
Event Details
This exciting screening event will feature the premiere of a new film by 2022-2023 Taos Poet Laureate, Joshua K. Concha.
This short film comprised of 14 poets reading work that acknowledge the role of Taos in the counter-culture movements of the 1960’s-70’s. Themes of unity, peace, love, and community were paramount in the selection process of poems for the project. Each poem will be accompanied by a work of art from a local visual artist. The activist movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s were integral to advancing the interests of underserved communities of this nation and, Taos, with Taos Pueblo as its ancient cultural foundation, was greatly impacted by the resulting Indian Civil Rights Act of 1965. The return of Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo in 1970 was indicative of the power of these movements and set a national precedent. It is vital that the spirit of these movements continues today and a poetry film project promoting these ideals will be a continuation of the blessings that the counter-culture movements inspired. While the film will be geared towards uplifting elements, it will also include content that relates to the more challenging issues that are still relevant today in order to give a balanced perspective.
The film screening will be followed by a Q&A and reception.
Featured Poets include:
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Time
(Saturday) 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
04May6:00 pm7:00 pmFor Zitkála-Šá Performance: Laura Ortman
Event Details
Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), will perform a one-of-a-kind,
Event Details
Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), will perform a one-of-a-kind, in-gallery concert of the piece created composed for her by Chacon as well as her own work.
Raven Chacon created For Zitkála-Ša, a series of lithographs of musical arrangements dedicated to contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, and sound art. Chacon envisioned the scores as portraits of the women and how they navigate the twenty-first century. The title of the series refers to the Yankton Dakota composer and musician Zitkála-Šá, who lived from 1876 to 1938.
About Laura Ortman
A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Martha Colburn, New Red Order, and as part of the trio, In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, The Stone residency, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008, She founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast.
Ortman is the recipient of the 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts Fellowship, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists, 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, 2016 Art Matters Grant, 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency, 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency, and 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room. Ortman was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
About the Exhibition
Raven Chacon: Three Songs brings together three of Raven Chacon’s projects that pay tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work. In the series For Zitkála-Šá (2018), Chacon created musical arrangements dedicated to different contemporary Indigenous, First Nations, or Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, or sound art. The video installation Three Songs (2021) features Indigenous women singing as they reoccupy sites of historic massacres, displacement, or relocation of tribal people. The final work, Silent Choir (2016-2017), is a field recording Chacon made while taking part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which captures the silent protest of 600 water protectors facing police and security forces. When presented in unison, these works resound the suppressed histories and present-day stories of Native resistance in the face of systemic power.
Raven Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) composer, performer, and installation artist born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Kennedy Center, and the Whitney Museum, among others. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
For Zitkála-Šá Performances:
Feb 24: Kona Mirabal + Masa Rain Mirabal
Apr 6: Autumn Chacon
May 4: Laura Ortman
Jun 7: Marisa DeMarco (performing For Carmina Escobar)
Support for the For Zitkála-Šá Concert Series is provided by the Richard B. Siegel Foundation
more
Time
(Saturday) 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
08May(May 8)11:00 am09(May 9)12:00 pmArtstreams: Meet Us at the MuseumAccess Program
Event Details
In collaboration with the Harwood Museum and Artstreams: From the Well of Memory,
Event Details
In collaboration with the Harwood Museum and Artstreams: From the Well of Memory, Meet us at the Museum harnesses the power of art and provides access to the museum for individuals with memory impairment and their caregiver. Explore a new work of art each month at the Harwood while engaging in meaningful conversations that build communication skills, stimulate social engagement, and deepen connections through art.
To register, please contact Kathleen Burg M.A.: 575-770-9874 or ktburg@newmex.com and www.artstreamstaos.com
Artstreams: From the Well of Memory has been in the forefront of creating programs for Taos Alzheimer’s family caregivers since 2008. Image courtesy of Kathleen Burg.
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Time
8 (Wednesday) 11:00 am - 9 (Thursday) 12:00 pm
Location
Harwood Museum of Art
238 Ledoux Street
07Jun7:30 pm8:30 pmFor Zitkála-Šá Performance: Marisa Demarco
Event Details
Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Marisa Demarco will perform
Event Details
Experience Raven Chacon’s visual compositions from the For Zitkála-Ša (2018) series through live performance. Marisa Demarco will perform a one-of-a-kind, in-gallery concert. This ticketed performance will include the score For Carmina Escobar, as well as her own work.
Raven Chacon created For Zitkála-Ša, a series of lithographs of musical arrangements dedicated to contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, and sound art. Chacon envisioned the scores as portraits of the women and how they navigate the twenty-first century. The title of the series refers to the Yankton Dakota composer and musician Zitkála-Šá, who lived from 1876 to 1938.
About Marisa Demarco
A lifelong musician and performer, Marisa Demarco surfaces and interrogates contemporary truths through worn sculpture, installation, music composition and journalism. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she’s the founder of Gatas y Vatas festival for boundary-pushing performance and Milch de la Máquina, a women’s performance art crew. She’s also a leader with Death Convention Singers, the largest noise collective in the Southwest. Her work has appeared in galleries and museums, such as SITE Santa Fe, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the UNM Art Museum, GRAFT Gallery, CFA Contemporary, and at the Carlsbad Museum as part of the Atomic Culture series. Demarco received her MFA in Experimental Art + Technology from the University of New Mexico. She’s worked as a journalist for over 20 years, and she’s an editor for the national nonprofit network States Newsroom.
About Carmina Escobar
Carmina Escobar is an experimental vocalist, improviser, performer, multimedia artist, composer, and educator from Mexico City, living and working in Los Angeles. She has extensively explored the capacities of her voice, developing a wide range of vocal techniques that she applies not only to her performance and creative practice but also to investigate radical ideas and concepts regarding the voice
About the Exhibition
Raven Chacon: Three Songs brings together three of Raven Chacon’s projects that pay tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work. In the series For Zitkála-Šá (2018), Chacon created musical arrangements dedicated to different contemporary Indigenous, First Nations, or Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, or sound art. The video installation Three Songs (2021) features Indigenous women singing as they reoccupy sites of historic massacres, displacement, or relocation of tribal people. The final work, Silent Choir (2016-2017), is a field recording Chacon made while taking part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, which captures the silent protest of 600 water protectors facing police and security forces. When presented in unison, these works resound the suppressed histories and present-day stories of Native resistance in the face of systemic power.
Raven Chacon is a Diné (Navajo) composer, performer, and installation artist born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Kennedy Center, and the Whitney Museum, among others. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music.
For Zitkála-Šá Performances
Feb 24: Kona Mirabal + Masa Rain Mirabal
Apr 6: Autumn Chacon
May 4: Laura Ortman
Jun 7: Marisa DeMarco (performing For Carmina Escobar)
Support for the For Zitkála-Šá Concert Series is provided by the Richard B. Siegel Foundation
more
Time
(Friday) 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
22Jun11:00 pm5:00 pm2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party
Event Details
You are invited Saturday, June 22 from 11am-5pm for the 2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party. Come celebrate our incredible community with performances, art making, local food vendors
Event Details
You are invited Saturday, June 22 from 11am-5pm for the 2nd Annual Ledoux Street Block Party. Come celebrate our incredible community with performances, art making, local food vendors and creative activities for all ages. Featuring FREE museum admission all day for EVERYONE.
The Museum’s Ledoux street neighbors, including Barra Vino, Omni Hum, Taos Art Supply, Inger Jirby Gallery, Blumenschein Home and Museum, and The Valley will join us for this festive celebration hosting activities up and down the block. Whether you are visiting Taos for the day or have lived here for generations, this day offers something for everyone to celebrate the creative spirit of Taos.
Check back for the schedule of events and musical lineup for this years celebration!
more
Time
(Saturday) 11:00 pm - 5:00 pm
The Fern Hogue Mitchell Education Center
The Fern Hogue Mitchell Education Center is a dedicated area for art-making programs housed in a sun-filled space that was once the living room of the original home of Burt and Lucy Harwood. In addition to the studio, the Sidney and Gladys Smith Children’s Art Gallery offers an extension gallery where student art can be showcased. Taos’ original children’s library, part of the Harwood Public Library from the 1920s to the 1990s was once housed in the studio. Thanks to the generosity of Orin and Stephanie Smith the studio has been restored to its original splendor and named for Stephanie’s grandmother, the beloved Taos schoolteacher, Fern Hogue Mitchell.
Contact Us
For more information or inquries please email education@harwoodmuseum.org