The University of Arizona Press
Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2026
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Place: Stonewall Community Room, Education Center, Tucson Museum of Art, 166 W Alameda, Tucson
Tucson Modernism Week features author Ann Lane Hedlund’s talk, “Rediscovering Mac Schweitzer,” on Wednesday, November 5. Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, will discuss the life and art of Mac Schweitzer (Mary Alice Cox Schweitzer)—a pioneering artist who captured the beauty, grit, and humanity of the American Southwest. Ann Lane Hedlund is a cultural anthropologist who collaborates with Indigenous weavers and other visual artists to understand creative processes in social contexts. From 1997 to 2013 she served as a curator at Arizona State Museum and professor at the University of Arizona. The event is open to the public, and tickets are $5. Books will be available for purchase and signing by the author.
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. A sharp observer of Indigenous life, she sketched and painted scenes of Navajo (Diné), Hopi, O’odham, and Yaqui people and events. These unique portrayals of the Southwest illustrate this saga of a maverick artist rediscovered.
