The University of Arizona Press
Date: Monday, December 1, 2025
Time: 6 p.m., MDT
Where: Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque, NM
Ann Lane Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, will be in conversation with Tom White, the son of artist Mac Schweitzer, at Bookworks in Albuquerque. White is a well-known Albuquerque restauranteur. After a brief illustrated talk, the two will discuss Mac’s adventures in Navajo and Hopi country during the 1950s and early 1960s.
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.
