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Friday June 12th, 2026

Media contacts:

Angelika Albaladejo, History Colorado Communications and Public Relations Manager, 720-541-2334

Lily Woodbury, Harwood Museum of Art Marketing and Outreach Coordinator, 575-758-9826

FORT GARLAND, CO & TAOS, NM — June 11, 2026 — An ambitious and sprawling cross-border exhibition exploring the art of adobe is opening at History Colorado’s Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center in the San Luis Valley and the Harwood Museum of Art in the high-desert of Taos, New Mexico. Unearthing Futures / Desenterrando Futuros is a sprawling immersive exhibition exploring adobe as a living practice that connects art, architecture, and ancestral knowledge across the southwestern United States.

Through unique adobe installations at History Colorado’s Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center and the Harwood Museum of Art, artists show how adobe endures not through permanence but through renewal – its survival bound to the annual acts of maintenance, ceremony, and reciprocity that give it life. Unearthing Futures brings together some of the most significant artists working with earthen architecture and land-based practice today.

Creations by artists Ronald Rael, Santino Gonzales, and Joanna Keane Lopez are featured at the Fort Garland Museum, while works by those artists, in addition to Gabriel Chaile, Rafa Esparza, and Christine Howard Sandoval, are on display at the Harwood Museum of Art. These installations examine how earth, water, and fiber, shaped by hand and sustained through communal care, embody both tradition and transformation.

Designer Ronald Rael is building a Fort Garland-specific installation of Casa Desenterrada/Exhuming Home, previously shown at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. The installation fills a large black wooden structure with adobe bricks, each unique.

Some are painted with the names of Indigenous captives listed in an 1865 census or embedded with images or small objects, including items from an abandoned adobe home in the San Luis Valley town of Conejos, which Rael rescued from the threat of demolition in 2018. The adobe home once served as the office of the first Lieutenant Governor of Colorado and the headquarters of the Ute Indian Agency.

Santino Gonzales is creating Skyharp, an installation turning the Commandant’s Quarters, one of the original adobe buildings at Fort Garland, into an aeolian harp – an instrument activated by the wind. Gonzales is also crafting The Disc at Fort Garland (for Nana), an outdoor earth sound mirror inspired by New Mexico’s Very Large Array and the Sound Mirrors employed by the British military as pre-radar tools to detect distant aircraft.

This adobe sound mirror invites opportunities for deep, quantum listening, turning the attention of visitors towards the landscape and the sky. Joanna Keane Lopez is creating A Raven Croaked like a Witch from a Dead Pine, a film projected onto a mud-plastered wall that traces the lived experience of the southwestern landscape where ranching, myth, and memory coexist with the ongoing presence of military occupation.

“Unearthing Futures aptly bridges the borderlands of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico as it also builds connections between past/future, earth/sky, humanity/technology, and our ancestors/our descendants,” said History Colorado President/CEO and State Historic Preservation Officer Dawn DiPrince. “History Colorado is honored to collaborate with the Harwood Museum of Art on this place-based exhibition that uses the land to remind us where we are rooted.”

Unearthing Futures also extends well beyond the museum galleries, offering a road trip experience guided through a website and phone app developed in collaboration with the computer science department at the University of Colorado Boulder. The app offers six curated road trips organized by location and theme, highlighting historic and contemporary adobe structures dotting the landscape between the southwestern towns of Fort Garland and Taos.

The app also includes a playlist compiled by the exhibition’s artists to set the mood as visitors drive between the locations. This expansive engagement with adobe artworks, homes, churches, and community spaces serves as a living archive of memory, labor, and cultural continuity.

As Colorado reflects on 150 years of statehood and 250 years of nationhood, Unearthing Futures offers visitors a timely opportunity to examine histories and cultural practices that predate state and national borders, while fostering meaningful dialogue about our shared future. The Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center in south-central Colorado’s San Luis Valley is a fitting location for this immersive experience.

Fort Garland was built on the homelands and sacred spaces of Indigenous communities, including the Ute, Jicarilla Apache, and Navajo (Diné). The area was claimed by Spain in the 16th century and later governed by Mexico until the region became part of the United States in 1848. Fort Garland was established in 1858 as a US Army outpost – ten years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the US-Mexico War and ceded vast territories to the United States, forever changing the map of North America.

The Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center makes this historic place accessible for visitors to explore life in a nineteenth-century military fort by walking the parade grounds and touring five of the original adobe buildings. These adobe buildings require ongoing maintenance. Historic photographs from the History Colorado collection show how traditional artisans known as adoberas helped restore Fort Garland’s adobe buildings in the 1950s and 60s.

“Unearthing Futures amplifies the deep connections of land, history, and culture that unite southern Colorado and northern New Mexico,” said Eric Carpio, Director of Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center. “This partnership honors shared stories and traditions while inviting communities to reflect on a landscape and heritage that transcends state borders. Fort Garland Museum is thrilled to collaborate with the team at the Harwood to bring to life a project spanning roughly 80 miles across two states and centuries of history.”

The Fort Garland Museum is celebrating the opening of Unearthing Futures with an event featuring artist meet and greets, live music by the Arellano Brothers, food baked in a traditional adobe horno, and interactive activities for all ages. The opening celebration is free and open to the public on June 28 from 10 am to 2 pm.

The Harwood Museum of Art’s opening on June 27 marks the occasion with an artist panel followed by a celebration and after party.

Unearthing Futures will be on view at both museums through February 28, 2027. The exhibition is included with General Admission tickets at each location.

History Colorado is also offering a Tours & Treks excursion departing Denver in late September to explore both museums and a few historic adobe structures along the way. Registration for this excursion closes on August 18, 2026.

Unearthing Futures / Desenterrando Futuros in Fort Garland is made possible by the generous support of the Robert Hoag Rawlings Foundation, The Trinchera Blanca Foundation, the Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies, and Visit Alamosa. The Opening Celebration is supported by the Community Foundation of the San Luis Valley.

About the Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center: Fort Garland was built in 1858, ten years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, during U.S. expansion into the west. Today, visitors can explore life in a nineteenth century military fort by walking the parade grounds and touring five of the original adobe buildings.

The Fort Garland Museum & Cultural Center – a community museum of History Colorado – offers exhibitions amplifying historically silenced narratives and encouraging reflection, dialogue, and a deeper understanding of the region’s past and its continuing impact on the present. The museum is located at 29477 CO-159, Fort Garland, Colorado, and is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum offers two dual-port accessible Electric Vehicle charging stations on site for travelers through the San Luis Valley. Visit www.FortGarlandMuseum.org or call 719-379-3512 for more information.

About History Colorado: History Colorado is a 146-year-old institution that offers access to our state’s history through enriching experiences at eleven museums and historic sites. As an agency of the State of Colorado and a nonprofit organization, History Colorado is committed to serving all Coloradans through generational work that centers communities, deepens knowledge and catalyzes the transformative power of history.

History Colorado is also home to a free public research center, people-centered preservation work done by the State Historical Fund and the State Historic Preservation Office, the Office of the State Archaeologist, the State Historians Council, and many other community-driven public history projects such as the Museum of Memory. History Colorado stewards more than 15 million objects, photographs and archival resources that make up the State’s collection, and serves tens of thousands of learners of all ages each year. History Colorado is one of only six Smithsonian Affiliates in Colorado. Visit HistoryColorado.org or call 303-HISTORY for more information. #HistoryColorado

About Harwood Museum of Art: Harwood Museum of Art celebrates Taos’s artistic legacy, cultivates connections through art, and inspires a creative future. Harwood is fully accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located at 238 Ledoux Street in downtown Taos, Harwood Museum of Art’s nonprofit vision is to inspire a thriving creative community connected through excellence in the arts. For more information, call 575-758-9826 or visit harwoodmuseum.org.

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