MMAC Speaker Series Ends, Upcoming Performance and Exhibition Planned

On Saturday, February 18, 2023, the Manzano Mountain Arts Council (MMAC) ended its February Speaker Series with a talk by Gloria Lovato Zamora on New Mexico Land Grants.  Zamora’s talk discussed the land grants in a wide-ranging fashion that included personal history, the work of Oglala Lakota Activist Russell Means, and how utilizing the roughly five hundred year history of local land grants was a radical act, recovering land effectively taken by the Homestead Acts of 1839 and 1862.

The previous week, MMAC hosted a discussion of Punta de Agua history with Murt Sullivan.  In this discussion, Sullivan addressed the geologic history of the region as well as the cultural history of the village just north of Mountainair.  Sullivan also addressed the discovery of Folsom man (and the Folsom points) by slave-turned-archeologist George McJunkin.

In the first of the February Speaker Series events, on February 04, 2023, Davine Torres and Sydney Smart shared stories and songs from the history of Mountainair.

The February Speaker Series events each drew a large local audience, which may represent increased commerce for local businesses and donations for the MMAC.  The series was sponsored in part by BNSF, the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Coming up for the MMAC is the March 4, 2023 performance Flamenco de Abó by the Fabian Sisneros Dancers, at 2:00 PM at the MMAC building, 101 East Broadway, Mountainair, 87036. Through the end of March, the MMAC is seeking art, poetry, and music submissions on the subject of “light” and “dark” for its exhibition Chasing the Light, scheduled to begin on April 01, 2023.