The Duke City’s Energetic Mural Scene

BY AUTUMN GRAY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIRK GITTINGS

Up in the air, underground, in an alley, on a museum tower,
everywhere you turn there’s dynamic wall art to be found

Our plan had been to go directly to meet internationally acclaimed fresco artist Frederico Vigil at the Albuquerque Convention Center downtown. He is in the middle of a 2,500-square-foot, multiyear mural project that encases a circular stairwell with rich scenes of local agriculture and winemaking. Instead, first we drove around the city center and its fringes, experiencing the place as if for the first time. “You had a guide, or were you just going?” Vigil asked later. “Just on my own.” “I’m impressed. It’s hard to do it by yourself. You have a lot of gumption.” “No, a lot of ignorance.” “You need a chauffeur next time. Besides being safe, you can see things better and be comfortable.”

He was right, not because of crime risk, but because anyone wanting to see Albuquerque’s vibrant mural scene needs a driver to be able to tour it properly. From behind the wheel, you’re likely to miss a lot, or wreck, or both. We’d set out with a list of about a dozen murals to see. However, becoming distracted by other wall art that popped up, we quickly abandoned our agenda to freestyle it.

Murals in Albuquerque are like weeds both in their number and in their inconspicuous tendency to hide in plain sight: You can be focused on one, then depending on the angle of the sun, the shadows playing on the buildings, the colors at hand, you suddenly notice a half-dozen more lurking like forest wildlife around an unaware hiker. There’s two massive crows peering down from a thirdstory cinder-block facade; a fluorescent violet skull with glowing yellow eyes guarding an alley; a field rich with glowing flowers and friendly animals in a neighborhood where little else thrives; an oldfashioned town square, complete with an ice cream shop, police station, market, candy store, and more, reviving ye olde simple life on the exterior of an abandoned block; a 20-foot graffiti-style horned serpent (“Avanyu” in Pueblo terminology) slithering next to Interstate 25; geometric abstracts befitting a modern art museum; and paintings that incorporate building infrastructure for three dimensional effect, such as a vent that stands in for the nose of a biplane. Indeed, Albuquerque has about 1,800 murals within city limits, according to its first Public Art Census conducted in 2024 by Rokh, a research and design company. The city released the survey results in January 2025 after canvassers drove 12,000 miles in an attempt to catalog all wall art. Though a blogger had dubbed Albuquerque as the “Mural Capital of the Southwest” even before the census, it’s difficult to know with certainty where Albuquerque ranks among the nation’s great mural cities. Still, between the area’s historically robust arts community and liberal public art policy supporting murals, Albuquerque is arguably among the most prolific, especially for its size. Albuquerque was among the nation’s first cities to adopt a public art ordinance, officially defining its Public Art Program and creating an Arts Board in 1978. The legislation also set up the funding mechanism for the acquisition of public artworks. Philadelphia, which, with more than 4,000 murals, is widely heralded as the “Mural Capital of the World,” having adopted the first municipal public arts ordinance in the country in 1959. Baltimore, San Francisco, and Hawaii followed suit in the ‘60s, and Seattle in 1973. About ten years ago, Albuquerque developed a Public Art Program Mural Policy, which took municipal direction a step further. It provides funding for murals that reflect diversity in style and media, and encourages artists from diverse backgrounds and a range of
experiences to apply. Most recently, in 2022, city councilors approved an increase in the amount of funding that goes toward the Art in Public Places Ordinance, from 1 percent to 1.5 percent of all county improvement projects. However, no one has to go through government to do a mural here. “Basically, anybody can put up a mural anywhere they want,” says Sherri Brueggemann, manager of the City of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division. “We just advise you to be very smart, make sure you have the support and approval of whoever’s wall you’re putting it on. As long I’m here, we are not going to have a mural permit because nobody wants to be the art police.” For 40,000 years or more, murals have played a powerful role as a means of creative and cultural expression, visual storytelling, education, commentary, and historical preservation. This flows from prehistoric cave paintings and etchings to Renaissance frescoes exalting Biblical scenes; from the Mexican mural movement of the 1920s, often celebrating the working class led by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, to the federally funded Works Progress Administration (WPA) pieces of the 1930s meant to inspire hope during the Great Depression. It encompasses the rise of LA-style street art making sociopolitical statements in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and satirical works by artists such as Banksy. Murals provide a monumental record of humanity. Today, the conversion of unused urban walls into artworks helps to redefine, invigorate, and beautify public spaces, while also providing free gallery space to often unknown artists and making their work accessible to all. Albuquerque’s extensive collection of public art includes a legacy of indoor, outdoor, Pueblo, WPA, and communitybased murals, Brueggemann notes. Situated at the crossroads of more than 400 years of rich cultural diversity and complex struggles between the various communities of the Southwest, Albuquerque is in a singular position for its murals to tell a history well worth viewing. Today, artists from around the country come to Albuquerque to create murals alongside those installed by schoolchildren, Native artists, and everyday Albuquerque residents. Collectively, their paint, mosaic tiles, and aerosol sprays emphasize the character of Albuquerque’s one-of-kind neighborhoods, reflect the city’s rural and urban influences, document its past, and celebrate its present. Standing at about 110 feet in height and 55 feet wide, a mural titled Windforms is the tallest in New Mexico and among the newest in Albuquerque, having been completed in late 2024. The county commissioned the 4,500-square-foot piece not only to enhance the exterior of its eight-story Alvarado Square building downtown but also to emphasize creative innovation. Self-identified Hispanic-American artist Ivan Toth Depeña intended the mural’s curvilinear forms to produce a 3-D quality. LED lights illuminate the piece at night, animating its multiple dimensions. His inspiration for the mural came from the wind’s impact on New Mexico’s landscape and the progressive colors of the horizon. “It is by far the largest in scale and substance I’ve ever done,” the artist explains from his studio in Charlotte, North Carolina. Having lived, worked, or exhibited in cities such as New York, Miami, and Denver, Depeña also says, “Albuquerque has an amazing and inspiring collection of murals … a range in style and content that keeps pace with most major cities.” The rise of legal and commissioned street art, often evolving from illegal, nocturnal art “capers,” underscores the power of murals to not only foster dialogue but inspire curiosity and fuel the need for publicly accessible art, he adds. Albuquerque also boasts a set of murals so unlike those almost anywhere else in the country that the 1939 artworks helped earn their building a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Known locally as Maisel’s Murals, this compilation of vignettes depicting Native American life is not just one of few examples of Native workmanship on a commercial building façade at the time; they are also rare in that the Native artists received payment for creating public art that doubled as a marketing tool.

The murals were like museum-quality billboards attracting tourists to Maisel’s Indian Trading Post at 510 Central Avenue NW in the heyday of Route 66. Now, the collection represents a Who’s Who of Navajo and Pueblo artists of the time, almost all of whom are sought after by collectors today, including Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo), Harrison Begay (Navajo), Pop Chalee (Taos Pueblo), Popovi Da (San Ildefonso Pueblo), and Awa Tsirah (San Ildefonso Pueblo). However, only two long panels of Pueblo and Navajo dancers
can be seen from the street. The building is vacant and its entrance is blocked by a protective metal gate, in part to protect the murals. Nevertheless, the spot remains a destination for art historians, Mother Road enthusiasts, and architecture
afficionados. Maisel’s Murals are also notable because they were among those in Albuquerque that “represented a sense of space, an indicator of where you are,” says Historic Albuquerque president Diane Schaller. The people who commissioned them, she notes, “wanted to let travelers know you’re in the Southwest, that there’s Native American culture here, providing something that conveys you’re not just in any ordinary place.” Schaller believes the same was true of some stunningly beautiful murals now secreted in a dark tunnel beneath the bustle of air travelers at the Albuquerque International Sunport. About 15 floor-to-ceiling mosaics composed of one-inch square tiles depict Indigenous symbols such as birds and katsina “dolls.” The figures, which once welcomed Albuquerque visitors, stand sentinel flanking both sides of about 100 yards of the passageway’s walls, which is now closed off and not accessible to the public. The tunnel was part of a 1960s terminal that was demolished in an airport expansion decades ago. Since then, it has functioned more as a time capsule, preserving the mysterious images among the tangles of wires, maze of plumbing, and other infrastructure that now live there. Though the subterranean airport murals are stylistically opposite of their graffiti counterparts basking in the sunlight above, the disparate artworks share this in common: No one seems to know who made them. All that’s certain about the tunnel artist is that the person was not

“Basically, anybody can put up a mural anywhere they want. We just advise you to be very
smart, make sure you have the support and approval of whoever’s wall you’re putting it on.”
–Sherri Brueggemann, manager of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division

Native, Schaller said. Similarly, almost all of Albuquerque’s
edgy “underground” murals, like the horned serpent of I-25, is
also anonymous.
Whereas the airport tunnel murals once greeted travelers
on the south side of town, a relatively new “postcard” mural
is now serving as a gateway to the city’s northern side. Titled
Greetings from Burque, the painting at 3123 Central NE was part
of a nationwide project called the Greetings Tour by artist Victor
Ving and photographer Lisa Beggs. From 2015-2020, they
collaborated with artists in communities across the country to
paint 70 murals in 30 states (greetingstour.com/murals). Using
the classic large-letter postcard typeface, the pieces are intended
as symbols of hometown pride, to spark the interest of visitors,
and serve as interactive landmarks, Ving explains from his
home in Pasadena, California.
Ving got permission from Little Bear Coffee to use its wall
for the mural when the café owners were developing the business.
They also introduced Ving and Beggs to Jaque Fragua, an
acclaimed multimedia artist from Jemez Pueblo, who assisted
with the mural’s content and its production. Fragua later painted
a larger “untitled” abstract mural next to the postcard, tying the
two together through shared geometric imagery and colors.
The postcard image is 90 percent spray paint. Each of the letters
forming “Burque” contain images emblematic of the area,
including hot air balloons, a yucca plant, and chile peppers. An
alert roadrunner stands atop the U. “It’s educational in some
ways. It helps people to learn about the city,” Ving notes.
Now that the project is complete, “people go out of their
way to collect these (through photographs) on their travels,” he
adds. “People visiting Santa Fe will drive to Albuquerque just to
get a picture. That’s our way to get people out of their car and
increase foot traffic and help local businesses.”
Back downtown, when Frederico Vigil and his two young
local apprentices finish the Convention Center fresco, it, too,
will provide visitors with an opportunity to feel a sense of place.
Vignettes of planting techniques, irrigation, cultivation, and
harvest that convey the history of New Mexico winemaking
can already be seen emerging behind Vigil’s scaffolding in the artistic tradition of fresco masters like Michelangelo and Diego
Rivera. (Fresco is an Italian word for the process of painting on
fresh lime plaster before it dries so that the pigment becomes
part of the wall and the art is more durable.)

The revival of the art form in the Southwest is largely attributed to Vigil, a 79-year-old Santa Fe native, who learned the craft in Mexico from former apprentices of Rivera. Vigil is also widely known for his depiction of more than 3,000 years of Hispanic history in 200 frescoed images that saturate the interior of the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Torreon, transforming it into a 45-foot-tall walk-in kaleidoscope. He said he hopes his art will help educate the public about the positive aspects of traditional Hispanic culture. On this day, we walked with some trepidation behind Vigil along his scaffolding’s wood planks to get close-up views of the mythological figures and various New Mexico landscapes underway around the stairwell. His images were vastly different from any we had driven by earlier, so we showed Vigil some of the photos we’d taken of garish spray-painted murals earlier in the day. We asked him, “What do you think of these?” The master didn’t hesitate: “Wow, that’s art! It’s amazing. Look at that!”

For images and addresses of many of Albuquerque’s multitudes of murals, visit the city’s website, murosabq.com.

From the Spring 2025 issue