Marietta Patricia Leis: Breathing Lessons

Susumed

Date: 7/24/26
Contact: Eva Gabriella Flynn,
Education and Outreach Coordinator, NMSU Art Museum, artmuseum@nmsu.edu, 575-646-2185


English | Espanol

Marietta Patricia Leis: Breathing Lessons
Opening Reception: October 16, 2026-March 6, 2027
Exhibition Dates: October 16, 2026 - March 6, 2027

Las Cruces, NM–The NMSU Art Museum (UAM) proudly presents Marietta Patricia Leis: Breathing Lessons, a major career retrospective by renowned New Mexico-based artist Marietta Leis. The exhibition reflects Leis’s exploration of color, time, movement, and place across a diverse range of media, including: video, painting, photography, sculpture, poetry, and sound. Marietta Patricia Leis: Breathing Lessons is on display in the museum’s Contemporary Art Gallery from October 16, 2026 through March 6, 2027. 

Marietta Patricia Leis: Breathing Lessons includes over 40 artworks that survey twenty years of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. Her work invites viewers to pause, contemplate, and become aware of the fragile beauty and tenuous future of our planet. The artworks are rooted in Leis’s 40 years of living immersed in New Mexico’s landscape, and take inspiration from her participation in over twenty artist residencies in the United States and abroad. Curated by Marisa Sage, this retrospective brings together significant series from Leis’s career and builds upon an artwork titled Breathing Lessons from Leis’s The Blue Series, which was acquired into the NMSU Permanent Art Collection in 2006 as part of her exhibition Visceral Images with artist Betty Hahn at NMSU. Realized through seven chromatic installations, Breathing Lessons cements Leis’s status as a leading creative force in New Mexico and traces her evolving investigation of color, movement, and observation from the gestures of dance to the flow of air.

About the Artists:

 

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1938 and raised in East Orange, Leis’s early memories of her grandmother’s gardens continue to shape her sensitivity to hue and atmosphere. After studying dance and painting in New York and Los Angeles, she moved to New Mexico in 1982 to pursue an MFA at the University of New Mexico. There, she developed a visual language that merged drawing, photography, and constructed forms with an interest in public art, education, and mentorship. Leis has exhibited extensively and her artworks can be found in the permanent collections of institutions around the world, including Haegeumgang Theme Museum in South Korea; Fundación Valparaíso, Mojacar, Spain; Rothko Museum, Daugavpils, Latvia; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea - Pinacoteca di Teora, Italy; and the Harwood Museum, Taos, NM.

Programming:

Marietta Leis: Breathing Lessons is on view in the Contemporary Art Gallery at the University Art Museum from October 16, 2026 through March 6, 2027. The community is invited to join the museum in celebrating Leis at the public opening reception on October 16 from 5:30-7:30 pm, beginning with walkthrough with the artist and curator. Accompanying programming for Marietta Leis:Breathing Lessons also includes an artist talk from Leis on October 15 prior to the opening, a poetry workshop on November 5, and an open mic night on November 6. For a detailed calendar of events, please visit uam.nmsu.edu. 

Concurrent with Marietta Patricia Leis: Breathing Lessons, the UAM is excited to present an accompanying exhibition of works by a group of NM based artists mentored by Leis in the Mullennix Bridge Gallery. The UAM will also be opening Shirley Crow: On the Edge in the Bunny Conlon Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery the same evening. This solo exhibition traces the trajectory of artist Shirley Crow’s career and examines the visual language Crow has cultivated across pastel, ink, graphite, acrylic, and oil paint. 

Museum Information:

The UAM is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm, at 1308 E. University Ave., Las Cruces, New Mexico, 88003. Admission to all programming is free and open to the public. For more information and a detailed calendar with associated programs and dates please visit uam.nmsu.edu.

Acknowledgements:

This exhibition and programming is supported by The Southwest and Border Cultures Institute. The UAM would like to extend its gratitude to curator, Marisa Sage, Executive Director of the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Image Credits: 

Marietta Patricia Leis, Susumed, 2025, Oil on curved birch wood panel, 36 x 48 inches. Image credit: Stefan Jennings Battista.

Links to high-resolution Images:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e4rRzoX65y3d62lDDLk17roU-a9Xil4dvRSv5nPgXcM/edit?tab=t.0

For more information on exhibitions, visit Upcoming Exhibitions