Roaming Mexico: Laura Wilson, an exhilarating new exhibit at The Meadows Museum, runs Sept. 14, 2025 through Jan. 11, 2026. The exhibit features nearly 90 of the celebrated Texas artist’s photographs, most of them not previously published. Wilson took the photos over the past 40 years on a number of personal visits to Mexico.
Wilson is best known for her documentary-style images of the American West, including her travels with iconic photographer Richard Avedon. (The 40th anniversary exhibit of Avedon’s In the West is currently on display at the Amon Carter Museum of Art in Fort Worth). Wilson’s striking portraits of renowned authors have been featured in numerous publications, and she is herself an author of six books. Based in Dallas, the internationally famed photographer is also known as the mother of three creative sons–Andrew, Owen, and Luke Wilson.
Roaming Mexico: Laura Wilson’s Vision
“It is a privilege to open the fall season with Laura Wilson’s vision of Mexico. She is a truly gifted artist who has so eloquently captured the story of the American West. It seems only right that she should have turned that penetrating lens toward Mexico,” said Amanda W. Dotseth, The Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair in the Meadows School of the Arts, SMU.
“Roaming Mexico speaks to Wilson’s admiration for and deep ties to Mexico but does so in ways that are at once sensitive, beautiful, challenging and complex. Mexico is part of the American experience. The Meadows Museum is committed to fostering cross-cultural understanding through Spanish art and its global connections. This exhibition offers a rare and moving look at Mexico through the eyes of one of Texas’ most compelling visual storytellers,” Dotseth said.
At age 85, Wilson continues to capture the human experience with unmatched curiosity and grace. In Roaming Mexico, she uses images from colorful festivals and quiet village scenes to religious rituals and enduring traditions. A number of the images were created as recently as 2024 and especially for this exhibition.
Spanish Influence in Mexico and American West
“It’s not every person’s Mexico — it’s my Mexico,” said Wilson. “Much as in the American West, the Spanish influence is elemental in Mexico. Things we consider icons of Western culture — the horse, the longhorn — came from Spain and gave rise to the vaquero or cowboy. Mexico is culturally vibrant — the literature, the art, the sculpture, the architecture. The architects, the writers, and even the collectors that I have focused on are as much a part of modern Mexico, and of my appreciation of Mexico, as the laboring paisano or the fire-breather.”
The artist’s photographs present not a singular narrative but a colorful tapestry of contrasts, depicting a Mexico that is equally rural and urban, religious and secular, timeless and evolving. The images exemplify Wilson’s gift for capturing the poetic in the everyday, from manual labor to street festivals.
Curating the Exhibit
Wilson was closely involved in curating the exhibition and overseeing its installation, working in collaboration with Dotseth and her longtime collaborator, designer Gregory Wakabayashi. She credits Wakabayashi’s thoughtful approach for bringing an added layer of intimacy and narrative clarity to the exhibition and to the fully illustrated book that accompanies it. The book, produced in association with Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd., is available for purchase in the Meadows Museum’s gift shop.
Running concurrently with Wilson’s exhibit, Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Visions of Mexico features photographs by one of the most significant figures in Latin American photography. The images were drawn from the collections of the Meadows Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Meadows Museum
The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings and funds to start a museum to Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters.
For more information about the exhibitions or The Meadows Museum, please visit them online at meadowsmuseumdallas.org.
