On behalf of the Meadows Museum, I am thrilled to introduce our 2026 members travel program, which will take us on a curated journey to the heart of Oaxaca, Mexico with Dallas's own Laura Wilson.  Laura’s stunning photographs have been featured in prestigious publications like The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The London Times Magazine, among others. Her upcoming exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Roaming Mexico: Laura Wilson, September 14, 2025-January 11, 2026, will showcase her exceptional talent and keen eye in capturing the rich culture and vibrancy of Mexico.

We invite you to join us February 25-March 1, 2026, on this unique, small-group travel experience designed to immerse you in the beauty and artistry of Oaxaca. The program will feature a stay at the region’s premier hotel, behind-the-scenes access to select art galleries, and an exploration of the work and profound impact of the renowned Oaxacan artist Francisco Toledo (1940-2019).

Throughout the journey, we will visit small artisan villages, where we will witness the intricate craftsmanship of a master weaver and explore a candle studio that produces exquisite carved candles, truly works of art in their own right. And, of course, we’ll indulge in the authentic flavors of Oaxacan cuisine with private receptions and dinners at some of the finest local restaurants.

We would be delighted for you to join us in Oaxaca for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Limited spaces available so we encourage you to register early and secure your place in this unforgettable adventure.

We look forward to sharing this journey with you.

Amanda W. Dotseth

Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair in the Meadows School of the Arts, SMU

About Roaming Mexico: Laura Wilson 

September 14th, 2025-January 11th, 2026 at the Meadows Museum , SMU

For four decades, the wilds of the American West have served as a key source of inspiration for renowned Dallas-based documentary photographer, Laura Wilson (b. 1939).  Her images of the people living and working “out west” (“out” meaning removed from modern American life) on ranches, Native American reservations, rodeos, and rural high schools are intimate yet distant. Indeed, as ever, the West is populated with characters defined by their distance, by their landscapes and lifeways that stand in sharp contrast to the familiar claustrophobia of urban and suburban America. There is, likewise, a kind of otherworldliness to Wilson’s West; it is a marginal (if nested) place. Her images reside “on the edge,” to paraphrase the renowned historian of medieval art Michael Camille, and we imagine the person behind the lens herself straddling the boundary between outsider and insider in a foreign land.

The challenge, of course, is how to define a much-mythologized American West that has forever been emphatically heterogeneous, fiercely independent, and rife with the complexities of frontier life. For most of its history, the West (loosely defined as the land west of the Great Plains) was, moreover, not part of the United States. Lines on maps made by politicians as far away culturally as they are geographically have shaped conflict and coexistence in the region for centuries. And even the most powerful lines prove permeable. For over two hundred years, the most dramatic example of this has been the Mexico–United States border, which extends nearly two thousand miles between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. No wonder that the ranchers, fire-breathers, and children of this liminal zone captured Wilson’s attention from her very first visit to Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in the early 1990s.

For Laura Wilson, Mexico has always been a key chapter of this story. While her early published work focused on life along the Mexico–U.S. border, this exhibition will introduce viewers to a more comprehensive if deeply personal vision of our southern neighbor. It brings together over thirty years’ worth of images documenting Wilson’s sojourns across Mexico and areas just beyond its northern border. Some work she created as recently as this year and especially for this exhibition. The nearly eighty photographs, which will also be presented in an accompanying catalogue, offer a unique perspective of a multifaceted Mexico seen through Wilson’s eyes. They capture colorful festivals, traditional farms, and the poetry of everyday life. The viewer is therefore presented not with one Mexico—defined, for example, by its northern border, its religiosity, or rural populations—but with a nuanced, often contradictory view of a land of dynamic contrasts.

On this year's Meadows Museum Member's trip, Laura will take our select group truly behind the scenes to discover the heart of Mexico in Oaxaca.