Staff Reports | Happenings & Events
Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West will open Curt Walters: Resilience on Jan. 17, 2026.
The exhibit will feature 20 paintings by artist Curt Walters.
According to a press release, the exhibition will include works from the 1980s to the present, showing the range of Walters’ career. He is widely recognized for his depictions of the Grand Canyon, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
The exhibit will be open to the public from Saturday, Jan. 17, through April 12, 2026, at Western Spirit, 3830 N. Marshall Way.
The exhibition will include award-winning works such as First Touch of Winter, which won the Frederic Remington Award at Prix de West in 2013, and Inexorable Shiprock, which received the Buyer’s Choice Award at Prix de West in 2022. Other paintings will highlight Mr. Walters’ approach to scale, season and atmosphere.
From small studies to canvases exceeding six feet, the selected works reflect the artist’s understanding of light, geology and the changing moods of the American Southwest.
The exhibit coincides with the release of Walters’ book, Resilience: The Life History and Grand Canyon Art of Curt Walters (University of New Mexico Press), a survey of his career.
“Curt Walters has spent decades studying the Grand Canyon with the discipline of a geologist and the sensitivity of a painter,” said Andrew Patrick Nelson, chief curator at Western Spirit. “To see these works together is to experience an artist in dialogue with one of the world’s most complex landscapes. These paintings remind us why the Grand Canyon remains one of the most powerful subjects in American art.”
Born in New Mexico and raised in the Four Corners region, Walters studied with landscape painter Wilson Hurley before establishing his studio in Sedona in 1979. His decades of painting on location at the Grand Canyon also led him to conservation advocacy.
Mr. Walters has raised more than $500,000 for the Grand Canyon Trust and serves as an honorary board member of the Grand Canyon Foundation.
In addition to Mr. Walters’ exhibit and book release, Western Spirit will open its expanded museum space, the Louis Sands IV Center, which will house four new exhibitions.
