Image: Tucson Museum of Art
The Tucson Museum of Art will present ‘Fierce Bodies’, an exhibition examining how bodies carry stories of strength, vulnerability and care across generations, regions and artistic traditions. The exhibition will be on view from August 19, 2026, through July 3, 2027, in the Kasser Family Wing of Latin American Art’s Rotating Bay.
Organized around the poetry of Tucson-based Naomi Ortiz, the exhibition brings together creative voices from the Borderlands, Latin America and the diaspora. Its stated focus is the relationship between culture, identity and wellbeing, with the presentation considering how personal experience and broader cultural and historical forces shape representations of the body.
The exhibition is grounded in the Tucson Museum of Art’s permanent collection and will include selected loans that expand its consideration of the materials artists use when representing care. The museum’s collection spans areas including Latin American, Indigenous, contemporary, modern, European and decorative arts. The institution describes itself as Southern Arizona’s oldest visual arts institution and is located in downtown Tucson.
Works in ‘Fierce Bodies’ address a range of physical and lived experiences. According to the museum, the presentation includes figures shaped by parenthood and pregnancy, people with visible and invisible disabilities, bodies marked by time, and forms of protection associated with fashion. Rather than treating repair through a single clinical definition, the exhibition turns attention toward lived experiences that include self-exploration, adaptation and relationships.
The exhibition includes loans of works by Marcus Xavier Chormicle, Joel Gaitan and Sara Hubbs, among others. One work identified by the museum is Gaspar Enriquez’s ‘La Patsy’ (1991–93), an acrylic-on-paper work from the Tucson Museum of Art collection. The work entered the collection through a museum purchase funded by Dorothy M. Jester.
Marianna Pegno, the museum’s senior curator of art and social practice, is curating the exhibition. The project has been developed with guidance from Ortiz, the Nopal Collective and representatives of the Southern Arizona Psychological Association. The museum lists the 2026–27 season as presented by Mary Jo Brown and Kit and Dan Kimball.
‘Fierce Bodies’ will be open during the museum’s regular hours, Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition is included with paid museum admission, while admission is free for Tucson Museum of Art members. It will remain on view through July 3, 2027.
