Albuquerque Museum Announces Major Retrospective Exhibition

ALBUQUERQUE – Albuquerque Museum is pleased to present the exhibition Delilah Montoya: Activating Chicana Resistance. This major retrospective examines Montoya’s decades-long art practice encompassing photography, printmaking, installation art, and bookmaking. With roots deeply tied to New Mexico, Montoya has long collaborated with Chicanx and Latinx communities to explore historical and contemporary narratives, fostering a deeper understanding of identity, history, and community activism. 

The exhibition runs February 7 to May 3, 2026. An accompanying full-length book published by the University of New Mexico Press provides an unprecedented opportunity to consider Montoya’s deep body of work spanning four decades. Montoya continually pushes the technical boundaries of printmaking, photography, and large-scale installations while sustaining a connection to community and an understanding that the present is inextricably linked to a deeper understanding of the past. 

Montoya’s work represents a range of collaborations and features her communities as well as incarcerated people, women boxers, the places and inhabitants of the borderlands, and Chicanx history. The exhibition includes over 150 works, demonstrating a sustained vision of New Mexican cultural diversity and landscape as well as an interaction with broader social and contemporary discourses impacting the United States today.

Art historian Dr. Josie Lopez is guest curator of the exhibition and author of the accompanying book. 

“Montoya poses questions about identity, power, land, borders, gender, community, and family. She is an investigator of histories and the lived experiences she has observed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the U.S./Mexico borderlands. This in-depth exploration of her work reflects the complex ethnic, racial, religious, and socio-economic heritage of New Mexico,” Lopez explains.

A free opening talk with Dr. Lopez and Montoya will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 7, at the Albuquerque Museum.

The exhibition includes works from 10 of Montoya’s most important series and collaborations. The Guadalupano series is comprised of a large-scale photo mural that explores the significance of tattoos and the Virgin of Guadalupe in Chicanx culture.

Her series, Women Boxers, documents the strength and dignity of athletes competing at the highest level. Montoya’s most recent series, Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad, features family portraits that embody both contemporary and historical renderings of Mestizaje and the impacts of colonialism.

Montoya’s work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, and is included in the collections of major museums worldwide. She was named an inaugural artist of the Mellon Foundation’s Latinx Artist Fellowship in 2021.

The exhibition, catalog, and programming are generously supported by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art and is also made possible in part by the City of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Museum Foundation.

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