A sea of silvery native shrubs and potato fields stretch across southern Colorado’s vast San Luis Valley. To the west lies the headwaters of the Rio Grande, where craggy rhyolite canyons hint of a turbulent volcanic past. To the east, the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range cradle Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Throughout, wild horses, crumbling adobe churches and sandhill cranes dot the landscape.

The valley is home to deep-rooted culture and history, particularly at the intersection of Hispanic, Native American and African American heritage. That’s one of the reasons the region was designated as a national heritage area — the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area — in 2009.

“The valley is an interesting and unexpected convergence of people who have had to learn how to live with each other,” said Eric Carpio, director of the Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center, which is among nearby attractions the National Park Service suggests to Great Sand Dunes visitors. “Sometimes it has resulted in remarkable collaborations, and other times with violence and trauma. But for a long time, much of its history was swept under the rug.”

So, for the last few years, Carpio and his staff have made bold and elegant moves to better share some of the valley’s complicated legacies. To fully grasp the magnitude of what they’ve done, it’s necessary to first know a bit about the valley’s history.

People have lived in the region since at least the time of the mammoths. Navajo, Ute, Apache, Kiowa and Comanche all called it home. After the Spanish arrived in 1598, the Hispanic population gradually grew to prominence. Then in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago ceded the San Luis Valley and much of the West from Mexico to the United States. Residents suddenly found themselves living in U.S. territory, and many lost their property when their land grants were revoked.

Buffalo Soldiers exhibit sign

Signage for Fort Garland Museum’s “buffalo soldiers: reVision” exhibit, which runs through 2025.

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©Steve Alberts

By 1858, Fort Garland was built to protect Manifest Destiny, the philosophy that the United States had a divine mission to expand westward into what it inaccurately touted as virgin lands and create a transcontinental nation.

After the Civil War, the all-Black 9th Calvary became stationed at the fort. They were dubbed the Buffalo Soldiers by Comanches and Cheyennes — one possible reason, historians believe, was due to their physical fortitude and hair, which the Native Americans generally perceived to be curly. Tasked with protecting white settlers, the Buffalo Soldiers often had the unenviable duty of being on the front lines of Native American removal. They were well-respected by the U.S. government for their valiant and honorable service, and they often established friendships with Native Americans.

“Here in the valley, we are at the intersection of several Indigenous homelands, the northernmost edge of Spanish and Mexican settlement, and American westward expansion,” Carpio said. “Ultimately, this region was shaped by how those relationships evolved. It’s a wildly complex history which still directly impacts how people live their lives today.”

So, how did a rural, small-town museum go about unraveling such an intricate, nuanced puzzle?

The first step was dismantling the 69-year-old centerpiece of the fort-turned-museum: a life-size mannequin of Kit Carson, an American brigadier general perhaps best known for his merciless campaign against the Diné people (also known as Navajo).

The museum then began collaborating with Tribal partners and artist Chip Thomas, an African American physician who worked on the Navajo Nation for 35 years. In June 2021, the exhibit “Unsilenced: Indigenous Enslavement in Southern Colorado” officially took Carson’s place, in the very rooms of the fort that were likely his historical living quarters.

The exhibit includes two room-sized translucent cloths, each with a page from an 1865 document printed on them. The title reads “List of Indian Captives Acquired by Purchase,” and underneath are the names of enslaved people, with ages and Tribal affiliations. As Carpio points out, most of the Indigenous names have been changed to Western ones, as women and children were often baptized into the Catholic Church and prohibited from speaking their Native language. This led to generations of Native Americans who had lost all connection to their cultural traditions and Tribal heritage, including a Navajo boy who Carson kept enslaved.

Though those practices ended 150 years ago, the reverberations of that detachment are still affecting the community. “A lot of families have come forward and told us they had heard their ancestors were enslaved but doubted the story because no one ever heard about Native American enslavement,” Carpio said. “Now families have felt validated that there’s truth to the stories their parents and grandparents told.”

One visitor even found his ancestor’s name in the documents. “The emotion that’s suddenly unleashed from that, the pain and anger of their heritage stripped away, there’s a lot of history we have to unpack,” Carpio said. “That’s what we’re trying to reconcile. Sharing these powerful images hopefully starts a dialogue.”

In 2022, the museum expanded its efforts by hosting the temporary exhibit “Merciless Indian Savages,” in which Pyramid Lake Paiute artist Gregg Deal interpreted what American Democracy means in Indian Country. Then this summer, “buffalo soldiers: reVision” opened as a collection of works by eight artists. The exhibit runs through 2025.

“How did formerly enslaved peoples rationalize the subjugation of another race, and in what ways do Buffalo Soldiers connect with the lands they were helping to take away from Indigenous people?” asked Thomas, in an artist’s statement. “The land provided solace and space for contemplation, maturation and dreaming of new possibilities in a way the black soldier couldn’t consider in the Reconstruction South.”

Telling stories such as these through contemporary art is an unusual choice for a history museum, but Carpio says the approach has started a lot of meaningful dialogue. “Particularly in communities of color, artists are the knowledge keepers,” he said. “Plus, artists have a good way of not hitting you over the head with it, opening new perspectives without being condemning.”

Earlier this year, the museum earned a finalist spot in the National Medal for Museum and Library Science, and visitors often tell Carpio that it’s a more welcoming and relevant space to them now than it was before. After viewing the exhibits, one couple even asked Carpio how they could better honor the Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans who once lived in the valley.

“That people came in and reflected on the exhibits in that way, in all of our wildest hopes and goals as a museum, that’s it,” Carpio said. “And the stories are still expanding. We have empty rooms in some of our exhibit spaces as a signal to the community there’s more to be done. The reconciliation and healing is ongoing.”

Lebanon County native Michael Hower was awarded the first prize in photography/digital media of Art of the State 2023 for an almost three-foot print of Transparency. He took the award-winning photograph at SCI Cresson, an abandoned prison in western Pennsylvania.

Art of the State 2023 will display 86 art pieces, ranging from photography/digital media to work on paper, painting, sculpture, and craft, produced by 86 artists from across the state until Jan. 7, at the State Museum of Pennsylvania. This is Hower’s second year exhibiting and first year winning.

“The Art of the State Pennsylvania is a very exclusive juried art show. You have about a 2 percent chance of getting into it roughly. There were over 1,800 entries this year,” Hower said. “It’s a show that I covet.”

A Cumberland County resident, 44-year-old Hower is the son of Jonestown residents, a Northern Lebanon alumnus of 1997, a Cornwall Manor employee of 26 years, and the father of an 8- and 14-year-old. He has practiced photography for the past 12 years since his oldest son was 2.

“I went to art school, and I studied painting and drawing,” Hower said of his background. “And I actually never took the photography course because at that time … it was still all film. And I had little interest in spending time in the dark room and learning that whole process. It seemed completely foreign to me.”

Hower experienced burnout with these art mediums during college and stopped until he started making collages as a new father.

“I started seeking out things to photograph to use in the collages,” Hower said. “And the immediacy of … digital photography worked well because I could just go out, take a picture, put the memory card in the computer, download it, work on it, print it out, and use it. So over time, that wasn’t even over a lot of time, I started to recognize that the pictures were better than the collages.”

This realization led Hower to upgrade from using a point-and-shoot and, in an effort to learn how to use his new camera, read a book about it from cover to cover “about seven times.”

When asked how his background in art contributed to his growth as a photographer, Hower said, “There are some of the basic principles of design and composition and color, that sort of stuff came over. But there was also the learning of a brand-new medium, and it being exciting. And it didn’t have the ‘baggage’ that came with the other stuff.”

“So, I had that sort of design sensibility that I was a good foundation to learn the photography from. And through the years, too, it’s something I’ve noticed, and something I’ve been told by other people and critics is that my photos have a very painterly quality to them.”

Regarding his sources of creative inspiration, Hower said, “I have photographer friends, but I don’t spend a lot of time looking at works of famous photographers. I’m more apt to still look at works of artists that do painting or installation pieces, cultural pieces, stuff of that nature. I still go back to the more art side of it.”

Hower started his photography career seeking “old garages” and “canal locks,” spaces of graffiti and abandonment, to photograph.

“I often say to people, ‘My subject matter is that of urban exploration. But I am not an urban explorer,’” Hower said. “I seek out places that I know where there’ll be opportunities and where I’ll have permission.”

In addition to being the type of person who doesn’t “operate well in the thrill of the moment,” Hower said being a father requires him to research locations before visiting them because his time out in the field is limited.

Hower grew up with parts of the Union Canal in his backyard and visited canal lock sites as his father wrote articles about the canal for the Lebanon Daily News. His father still had some original documents, and Hower used them as fuel for his research. “From there, it just snowballed into doing more research and finding bigger and better and more exciting places.”

“It was the discovery of the old Michter’s Distillery in southeastern Lebanon County,” Hower said of how his fascination with abandoned spaces began. “Most of it’s largely gone now. They saved a warehouse and one of the original buildings. But it was sort of an ‘aha’ moment. Like I had grown up in Lebanon County … but here is this place that I had never seen. I had never heard of.”

Hower said places of industry often tell stories with multiple layers that connect to the history of a municipality, a state, or a country.

“I’m not interested in a neat-looking abandoned house along the side of the road,” Hower said of what he does, and doesn’t, look for when shooting pictures. “If there’s no story to me, the visual interest, it goes by the wayside.”

“For example, there’s a ghost town I like to photograph called Concrete City outside Wilkes-Barre,” Hower said. “It was a miner’s village. But it was a cutting-edge design for the 1910s that they built the buildings out of all poured concrete.”

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co. owned the coal company and the railroad company that transported the anthracite. Following a Supreme Court case and the breaking up of the monopoly, the Glen Alden Coal Co. purchased the homes almost a century ago and subsequently abandoned them.

Alongside Art of the State 2023, Hower will be part of a two-person show on “abandoned prisons” at the Howard County Arts Council in Ellicott City, Maryland, that opens in December.

Hower also booked a solo show featuring about 40 photographs on “abandonment and graffiti” at The Boyer Gallery of The Hill School in Pottstown that opens in January.

In addition to preparing for his upcoming exhibits, Hower continues to work on his portfolio of abandoned prisons. In the past year, he took trips to Ohio and Tennessee with that purpose and is “taking any opportunity as they arise really,” he said.

Click here to view more of Hower’s photography.

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NEW YORK—The Open Society Foundations today announced the recipients of their 2023 Soros Arts Fellowships, the preeminent award supporting socially engaged art. This year marks the fellowship’s largest cohort, awarding $100,000 to 18 mid-career artists for impact-driven art projects that propose bold solutions to address the climate crisis, reclaim and uplift indigenous knowledge, and imagine and build sustainable futures.

Open Society’s 2023 Fellowships are centered around the theme of “Art, Land, and Public Memory,” focusing on artists who are pursuing projects that offer tangible solutions to address environmental harms. The fellowships recognize artists from around the world—from Brazil, Colombia, Guinea, Iraq, Mexico, Morocco, Palestine, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, South Africa, Syria, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota Tribes, the U.S. and their diasporas. Their work also engages communities in which they work across the Global South, places often on the frontlines of the climate crisis and environmental injustice driven by global settler colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. 

“Art and culture are essential drivers for social change,” said Tatiana Mouarbes, Open Society’s team manager for Culture and Art, Expression. “One of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is the health of our planet. Through their art and culture work, the 2023 Soros Arts Fellows are taking action to help heal a planet in crisis through community-led solutions for environmental justice. We are proud to support their visions.” 

In addition to unrestricted funding, the fellowships offer recipients a holistic suite of services and resources to help the artists build sustainable artistic careers, including leadership development, mentorship, peer-to-peer exchanges, and networking opportunities.  

Working in diverse forms and global contexts, some of the artists and projects include: 

• Chemi Rosado-Seijo (Puerto Rico) is working with residents to transform the community of El Cerro into a “Green Barriada,” a self-sustaining and environmentally resilient community
  
• Martha Atienza (Philippines) is creating a series of collaborative artworks with fishing communities of Bantayan Island to raise awareness of environmental justice, displacement, and cultural erasure
  
• Mónica De Miranda (Portugal) is working with African migrant communities in Lisbon to document stories of migration and land ecologies, bringing together artists, activists, and ecologists to reimagine more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable public spaces
  
• Jordan Weber (U.S.) is producing a regenerative ecologies project to transform a square acre of forest in East Detroit into an air remediation zone, trauma informed community center, and open-air environmental justice classroom
  

With a long history of supporting arts and culture to advance social change, the Open Society Foundations recognize the importance of artists’ contributions and the essential role that art plays in civic discourse and open societies. In particular, the Foundations seek to honor the aesthetic, political, and capacity needs of arts leaders, individual artists, and cultural activists.  

Since 2018, the Soros Arts Fellowship has awarded more than $3 million in unrestricted funding to 29 artists around the world; this year’s $1.7 million is the largest annual amount to date. The fellowship was on a hiatus from 2021–2022 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more than $500,000 was awarded to support existing fellows.  

The 2023 Soros Arts Fellowship selection committee includes Azu Nwagbogu, curator and founder of African Artists’ Foundation; Diane Lima, curator of the 35th Bienal de São Paulo; Eriola Pira, curator at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics; Helena Nassif, director of Culture Resource (Al Mawred Al Thaqafy); Paulina Suárez, general director of Ambulante; Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, senior program officer, Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation; Siobhan Riordan, consultant and creative Strategist; Tania El Khoury, artist and director of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College; Open Society’s Culture and Art staffers Tatiana Mouarbes, Ayoka Wiles, and Ibrahima Niang, and Alvin Starks, director, Narrative and Culture Change at Open Society-United States. 

2023 Soros Arts Fellows

Bilia Bah will produce a collaborative and participatory theater production to launch public dialogue around climate change, urbanization, and the impacts of unregulated water drilling across Conakry, Guinea.

Cannupa Hanska Luger will publish SURVIVA, centering Indigenous knowledge and survival practices related to land, climate, and the environment— and to boldly assert how Indigenous technologies are critical to sustaining life and humanity worldwide.

Carolina Caycedo will produce We Place Life at the Center—Situamos la vida al centro, bringing together ancestral and embodied approaches to the natural world as alternatives to the global climate crisis, grounded in field research and engagement with Natives, campesino/peasant communities, and climate activists throughout the Americas.

Chemi Rosado-Seijo will work with residents of El Cerro, Puerto Rico, to transform the community into a “Green Barriada,” a self-sustaining and environmentally resilient community.

Dalton Paula will organize Quilombo-Escola, an arts and education project that supports Afro-Brazilian artists through artistic residencies and training, and fosters community collaboration and exchanges with art, the environment, and ancestral and traditional knowledge rooted in a Quilombo perspective across Brazil.

Deborah Jack will create To Make A Map of My Memory: Wayfinding Along Synaptic Topographies, linking cultural memory preservation in St. Maarten with climate justice through an archive of oral histories, a connected film and multimedia installation.

Fehras Publishing Practices (Kenan Darwich and Sami Rustom) will create Hader Halal (With Regard to Presence) a multi-format project that aims to reclaim forgotten collective memory in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa region and rewrite narratives of modern Arab history from a queer, migrant, and feminist perspective.

Ixchel Tonāntzin Xōchitlzihuatl will organize We the Trees, a multi-tribal art and land rematriation project in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Jordan Weber will organize a regenerative ecologies project in East Detroit that will revitalize a square acre of forest as an air remediation zone, a trauma informed community center, an open-air environmental justice classroom, and a site for conifer tree transplants to counter the harmful effects of pollution from nearby automobile plants.

Martha Atienza will organize collaborative artworks and actions with fisherfolk and farmer communities on Bantayan Island and its group of islets in the Philippines for Tigpanalipod (The Protectors) to raise awareness around environmental justice, displacement, and cultural erasure.

Molemo Moiloa will produce a series of art and community engaged works under the framework of the “house of ungovernability,” an informal center for sharing and co-developing tactics for sustaining in times of uncertainty, rooted in our relationships to the land.

Mónica de Miranda will work with African migrant communities in Lisbon to document stories of migration and land ecologies for Where cities are invisible, gardens grow, bringing together artists, activists, and ecologists to reimagine more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable public spaces.

Nida Sinnokrot will produce Storytelling Stones: How far does your mother’s voice carry?, a series of collaborative and site-specific sculptures that uplift indigenous practices and reclaim cultural memory, expand discourse and action on environmental justice, and activate public spaces in ways that are resonant and impactful for Palestinian and indigenous communities globally.

Omar Berrada will examine anti-Black racism in North Africa and propose poetic re-articulations of Moroccan identity, reclaiming marginalized narratives and invoking histories of pan-African solidarity.

Rijin Sahakian, through images and text, will trace the legacies of war-making on the physical, cultural, and psychic landscapes between Iraq and America, centering the Iraqi experience.

Sari Dennise will organize Almárcigo, a collaborative, multidisciplinary, and archival project with communities in Xochimilco, Mexico to preserve and articulate water-related knowledge and practices, and promote shared learning around alternative ways of being with the environment.

Yto Barrada will expand botanical literacy to disseminate radical ways of making and thinking with the Mothership Manifesto, a collaborative, multidisciplinary, transgenerational and educational textile project at the Mothership, an eco-feminist residency, garden, and studio in Tangier, Morocco.