AIR 2026: Figures in a Landscape Returns to Aspen's Mountain Setting

A Festival of Art and Ideas in the Rockies

Aspen Art Museum's interdisciplinary festival returns next week to the mountain town, running from 27 to 31 July. Titled Figures in a Landscape, this year's edition draws inspiration from a phrase that has resonated across creative disciplines, reflecting the programme's cross-pollination of artistic forms while examining the uneasy relationship between subject and setting.

The festival unfolds across multiple venues, from museum galleries to mountaintops, chapels to ranches, and theatres to meadows. This geographical breadth mirrors the thematic scope, using Aspen's distinctive landscape—where raw wilderness meets mediated environments—as a backdrop to interrogate how acts of staging and human intervention shape our understanding of place and power.

New Commissions and Performances

The programme launches alongside Adrián Villar Rojas's exhibition First Gods, Lost Animals, which opens on 2 July and continues through April 2027. Camille Henrot presents the world premiere of Commedia dell'arte, a slapstick satire staged within the Wheeler Opera House that reimagines a New York apartment building. The work is co-commissioned by LYRA Art Foundation, Performa, and Aspen Art Museum.

Lucy Raven's Murderers Bar appears on a monumental vertical screen, layering one glacial landscape over another, accompanied by an ensemble led by Deantoni Parks. Ivan Cheng introduces a new 'live situation for camera,' while Lyle Ashton Harris brings an encyclopedic montage of oral histories and artistic influences to the museum's rooftop. Two early morning concerts create immaterial sonic experiences: Kali Malone performs on the newly restored Aspen Chapel organ, weaving intricate harmonic cycles, whilst Los Thuthanaka's expansive compositions resonate from Aspen Mountain's peak.

Matthew Barney unveils ZONE DEFENSE: Old Snowmass Parallax, a new sculpture developed from his AIR 2025 performance, continuing the festival's iterative approach where each edition evolves from the previous one.

Keynote Conversations

The Bluhm-Kaul Keynotes feature three artists whose work has significantly influenced contemporary culture. Miranda July appears following her bestselling novel All Fours, which has sparked conversations around ageing, desire and reinvention. Julie Dash presents her keynote thirty-five years after Daughters of the Dust, the film whose distinctive cinematic language continues to influence artists today. Barney returns to Aspen to reflect on three decades of work constructing symbolic worlds where ritual, history, spectacle and violence converge.

Talks and Readings

The festival commissions artists, writers and thinkers to awaken consciousness through poetry, discussion and collective exchange. Morgan Bassichis positions performance as a means of resurrection, tracing recurring ghosts within cultural memory and their desire to inhabit these spectres. Nuar Alsadir and Patrick House stage a shape-shifting encounter that unsettles the boundaries of laughter, consciousness and selfhood in real time.

In the early morning stillness of Aspen Chapel, poets Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis explore the 'vertigo of the infinite'—a generative dizziness that emerges when the mind encounters the boundlessness of cosmos and the limits of perception.

All programming is free with registration now open to the public. The complete schedule is available at airaspen.org.

Curatorial Team

The festival is founded and directed by Nicola Lees, Nancy and Bob Magoon Artistic Director and CEO. Figures in a Landscape is curated by Daniel Merritt, Chief Curator; Vic Brooks, Senior Curatorial Advisor; Stella Bottai, Senior Curator-at-Large; Claude Adjil, Eliza Ryan, and Anisa Jackson, Curators-at-Large, with Mariana Fernández serving as AIR Editor and Project Curator.

The Bluhm-Kaul Keynotes receive support from Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul, while the Tisch Discovery Series is made possible through a gift from Steve Tisch and Jamie Tisch.