Charlie Bettigole, Bill Gilbert, Lynn Grimes, Anne Nelson, Ruben Olguin, Samuel Gilbert, Aimee Stewart, Cedra Wood: 500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs

500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs brings together art and science to create a portrait of the ongoing effort of the Survival Kit Collective to regenerate the grasslands of Anaya Springs, New Mexico. Rooted in a decades-long, daily practice of building small dams using only the rocks on hand, the project is an example of topophilia—the bond of care we form with a specific place—and how that bond can propel environmental change. 500 Dams is a project about the efforts of a group of people to repair their local landscape, and a testament to the power of personal agency, and the radical importance of making a difference on a small scale.

The work of the Survival Kit Collective amplifies the connections between commonly siloed methods and materials, bringing together environmental activism, landscape architecture, sculpture, painting, animation, video, interactive web-based mapping, and data programming. The Survival Kit Collective is multigenerational, multicultural, and rooted in place, specifically the high desert ecology of New Mexico. Catherine Harris and Bill Gilbert formed SKC in 2009, and the current members are: Charlie Bettigole, Bill Gilbert, Samuel Gilbert, Lynn Grimes, Anne Nelson, Ruben Olguin, Aimee Stewart, and Cedra Wood.

500 Dams is presented in coordination with The University of New Mexico Art Museum (UNMAM) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA) at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. New iterations of the exhibition will be on view at UNMAM in early 2028 and at SUMA fall 2028–winter 2029. Special thanks to Mary Statzer, Curator of Prints & Photographs at UNMAM, and Rebecca Bloom, Interim Director and Director of Curatorial Affairs at SUMA, for their curatorial collaboration.