On display October 28, 2011 – April 15, 2012 at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Throughout his career, James Drake has examined the theme of humanity in all of its triumphs, failures, and follies—including violence and war; love and desire; greed and gluttony; and the realities of life along the U.S.-Mexico border. The exhibition James Drake: Salon of a Thousand Souls includes sculptures and works on paper by the Santa Fe-based artist dating from the 1980s to the present day. Among the dozen works to be shown are a never-before-exhibited 21-foot red pastel drawing and a wall drawing done in the museum galleries specifically for this exhibition.

During his 35-year career, James Drake has worked with equal fluency in video, photography, sculpture, drawing and printmaking. He has had over 60 one-person shows and has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including the 2000 Whitney Biennial and the 2007 Venice Biennale. Drake is the recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and a Nancy Graves Award for Visual Arts. His most recent accolade is a Texas Medal of Arts (2011). His work is in more than 30 museum collections, including the Albright-Knox Gallery, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Blanton Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Phoenix Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Born in Lubbock, Texas, in 1946, Drake lived for many years in El Paso, Texas, and presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Exhibit photography by Blair Clark.