John Connell exhibit at Dwight Hackett Projects, 2009

Dwight Hackett Projects to Cease Exhibitions

Dwight Hackett Projects, one of Santa Fe’s leading contemporary exhibit galleries, will cease hosting public exhibitions this year, AdobeAirstream has learned. Asked to comment publicly on reports by artists and art professionals in Santa Fe that the gallery would close, Jenifer Hackett stated in an email, “We will continue to deal privately.”

The gallery’s exhibitions closure follows on several other significant losses to Santa Fe’s contemporary gallery landscape in 2010: Linda Durham Contemporary Art closed after a 30-year exhibit history, and Launch Projects – a more recent but substantial program devoted to emerging artists and projects – also closed last spring.

Dwight Hackett Projects in Santa Fe has hosted exhibits by leading international artists including James Drake, Harmony Hammond and Terry Allen, all of whom live in Santa Fe. It has also featured exhibits by the late Jay de Feo, by Barry Le Va and by Cranbrook professor Heather McGill, whose exhibit, No Object is an Island: New Dialogues with the  Cranbrook Collection, can be seen at the Cranbrook Museum of Art through March 25, 2012.

Prior to launching an art gallery, Dwight Hackett ran The Foundry, which he established in 1980 as a venue for leading artists to come to Santa Fe and cast editions. The group has included Bruce Nauman, Kiki Smith, Richard Tuttle and Rachel Whiteread, among others. The gallery has been located off Siler Road in south Santa Fe at the former Foundry location, for its history. As Linda Yablonsky reported in the New York Times, it was one of the must-stops on the biennial weekend circuit in 2004, when Rob Storr curated “Our Grotesque” at SITE Santa Fe.

 Featured Image: John Connell exhibit at Dwight Hackett Projects, 2009