Top 10 Moments of 2025

SAMA's Top 10 Moments of 2025

SAMA’s 2025 brought people together with art in many ways. From artist visits to special and focus exhibitions to community events, the Museum offered a great year of artful connections. Thank you for being a part of our story! Scroll down for a look back at our top ten moments of the past year.

Envisioning the Hindu Divine: Expanding Darshan and Manjari Sharma

Envisioning the Hindu Divine: Expanding Darshan and Manjari Sharma featured forty historical objects from India and Southeast Asia and nine photographs by global contemporary artist Manjari Sharma. Sharma visited the Museum for the opening and returned for an artist talk in May.

Mai Yamaguchi

In March, SAMA welcomed Mai Yamaguchi as the Museum's new Coates-Cowden-Brown Associate Curator of Asian Art. She currently oversees the Museum’s Asian collection, one of the largest concentrations of Asian art in the Southwest with approximately 3,000 objects drawn from several cultures across the continent, including China, Japan, Korea, India, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.

Art Madness

In March, Art Madness made its return to SAMA’s social media. Marcus Aurelius donned his sportswear and helped us sort through brackets and polls to find your favorite works of art. By the end of the month, the Tree of Life was our champion! 

Readymade Remix: New Approaches to Familiar Objects

Drawn from SAMA’s collection, the works in this exhibition reframe the readymade to transform the familiar through acts such as mixing, deconstructing, and repeating. Explore how contemporary artists transform everyday materials into compelling, conceptually rich works of art through this exhibition, on view through April 2026.

Maya Blue: Ancient Color, New Visions

Maya Blue: Ancient Color, New Visions highlights objects from Mesoamerica that illuminate how blue was utilized and conceived in ancient Maya visual culture. The exhibition focuses on a pigment that was highly prized by Maya artists of the first millennium AD and its enduring meanings for artists and communities in our own time.

Reaccreditation

In July, SAMA again achieved accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums, the highest national recognition afforded to the nation’s museums. Accreditation signifies excellence to the museum community, to governments, funders, outside agencies, and to the museum-going public. SAMA has been accredited since 2000.

Larry Bell: Improvisations

Larry Bell: Improvisations celebrates the artistic achievements of one of the most influential and renowned artists who emerged from the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s. Larry Bell returned to SAMA for the opening of the exhibition and a conversation with acclaimed writer Randy Kennedy.

Canvas to Clay: Georgia O’Keeffe & Maria Martinez to Mata Ortiz & Tonalá

Canvas to Clay: Georgia O’Keeffe & Maria Martinez to Mata Ortiz & Tonalá, brings together four paintings by O’Keeffe and three black pottery vessels by Martinez with ceramics from SAMA’s Latin American collection, including works from Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, and Tonalá, Jalisco. See the works on view in the Steves Gallery through October 2026.

Family Days

Along with SAMA’s annual free Spring Break Family Day, this year, we introduced Archaeology Adventures in October and Holidays on Jones in November. All three days offered free admission, art activities, and featured events throughout the day.

TIPSY  

SAMA’s Gateway series continues with a new artist mural on view in the Great Hall. New York-based artist Marisa Morán Jahn’s TIPSY was inspired by the Museum’s history as the former Lone Star Brewery. It explores the role of art and “spirits” (drinks made from distilled and fermented plants) in shifting perspective and communing with the divine or with others.

YOU: Our Members 

Thank you for spending another year with SAMA! Your generous support makes all these special moments at the Museum possible.