ABOUT
The Wright Contemporary is a new venture on the Taos art scene, a set of galleries dedicated to the best in contemporary art of northern New Mexico, as well as a space for lectures, panels, and films (we have state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment and reasonably comfortable chairs and air-conditioning). There is ample parking around the gallery, and we’ve been getting a good turnout for movies and talks, especially for the documentary Agnes Martin: Beyond the Grid and Jason Andrew’s introduction to estate management for artists (see Archived on the main menu). Sign up for our Newsletter in the Gallery News panel box (it appears to the right of most pages and in the Footer) or use the Contact page, and keep an eye on the Tempo calendar in The Taos News, along with our social media posts on Instagram and Facebook.
The galleries are open every day but Monday and Tuesday, from 2 to 6 p.m. and by appointment. For further information: ann@thewrightcontemporary.
ANN LANDI, Director of The Wright Contemporary
Ann Landi has been an art journalist for nearly 30 years, writing for publications like The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, The New York Times, Sculpture magazine and others.
For more than two decades she was a contributing editor of ARTnews, and for six years the editor and publisher of Vasari21.com, a website for an audience of about 2,500 artists. She is the author of the four-volume Schirmer Encyclopedia of Art, and holds degrees in art history from Princeton and Columbia universities.
IRA WRIGHT, Founder of The Wright Contemporary
Ira Wright is largely self-taught as an artist, although he studied industrial design at the University of Michigan and design at Cranbrook Academy of Art. At Litton Industries, in the 1950s, he designed the cases for early computers and had the distinction of naming a color “Tahitian Sunrise.” Throughout his long life, he has held various gigs, including art director and graphic designer, foundry worker, and teacher of studio art and art history at local colleges.
Since 2004, when he settled in Santa Fe, NM, Wright has turned his attention to a unique and unsettling iconography that encompasses both benign and savage images of Mickey Mouse (a childhood totem), bare-breasted women, slobbering dogs, out-of-control party games, and self-portraits in many different guises. Words and sentences sometimes march across the surfaces—“sparkle plenty,” “women in gold,” “for a good time call”—but one is reluctant to scrape too hard for literal interpretations.
His most recent show was at Bareiss Gallery in Taos, NM, in February 2021.
MICHELLE COOKE, Curator of The Wright Contemporary
Michelle Cooke has worked as a curator for museums, private collections, and artists since 1983. Beginning as a preparator for the Orange County Museum of Fine Art she went on to organize exhibitions for the Ettinger Gallery at the Southern California Institute of Art, Scripps College Williamson Gallery, and the Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College, as well as United Cerebral Palsy of New York. In 2006 she was Exhibition Curator for the Doel Reed exhibit at the Harwood Museum.
In 2003 she opened her own gallery, 1030, in Santa Fe exhibiting artists from northern New Mexico. Cooke’s own work has been shown in numerous museums and solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. She lives and works in Taos, NM, and New York, NY. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, and a BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design, in Laguna, CA.
