Arizona-sonora Desert Museum
Ironwood Art Gallery 2021 N. Kinney Road, Tucson, AZ 85743 (520) 883-3024, arts@desertmuseum.org www.desertmuseum.org
The Arizona-sonora Desert Museum is a renowned combination of zoo, natural history museum, botanical garden and art gallery that reflects the diverse flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert. The ASDM Art Institute was founded more than 20 years ago with the goal of promoting conservation through art education.
In the 1990s, Priscilla Baldwin studied botanical illustration and became an ardent conservationist. With her husband, Michael Baldwin, they founded the Arizona-sonora Desert Museum School of Natural History Art. A few years later, it was re-named Arizona-sonora Desert Museum Art Institute (AI). Today, the Art Institute provides art classes, curates art exhibits, manages a growing art collection and hosts an artist-in-residence program, all of which attracts students and visitors from around the world.
“To offset our low attendance during the pandemic, we have put our art pieces for sale on the website. This has enabled many more people to enjoy our exhibitions,” says Marie Mcghee, associate director of the museum.
This year, the Ironwood gallery at the Art Institute is proud to host the International Society of Scratchboard Artists (ISSA) 9th Annual International Exhibition. Both an exhibition and competition, the show will feature more than 60 pieces of scratchboard art defy expectations. The exhibition will run February 7, 2021, when they will also be hosting Vanishing Circles: Portraits of Disappearing Wildlife of the Sonoran Desert Region, including works of art that portray vulnerable, endangered and extirpated species indigenous to the Sonoran Desert regions.