The University of Arizona Press
Date: Saturday, January 31, 2026
Time: 10 a.m., MST
Where: Amerind Foundation, 2100 N Amerind Road, Dragoon, AZ
Ann Lane Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, will give an illustrated talk at the Amerind Foundation. Her talk is titled: “Mac Schweitzer: Rediscovering a Southwest Artist and Her Legacy.” The event is part of Friends of Western Art-Amerind Exhibit Celebration. Gallery exhibit doors open at 9 a.m. for viewing; the featured artworks, exemplifying the power, beauty, need and gift of rain in the West, are from the private collections of FWA members and Amerind’s permanent collection. Hedlund is a cultural anthropologist who collaborates with visual artists, including contemporary Indigenous weavers. She is an internationally-recognized expert on historic and modern textiles from the American Southwest. From 1997 to 2013 she served as a curator at Arizona State Museum and professor at University of Arizona, Tucson, where she also directed the nonprofit Center for Tapestry Studies. Tickets for the event are free and can be reserved here.
About the book:
In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. When she died in 1962, Mac’s artistic legacy faded from public view, but her prize-winning works attest to a thriving career.
Author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Her watercolors, oil paintings, prints, and sculptures—a diverse body of work never before seen in public—range from naturalistic studies of Sonoran Desert animals to impressionistic landscapes to moody abstractions.
