About

About me: I am a historian, art museum curator, systems theorist, and writer-naturalist.

Radical Natural History supports the premise that what we do and how we are in the world really matters to our moral and physical survival. Socrates held that the only life worth living is the examined one. The dictum of the radical naturalist is that the life worth examining is the one in lived in relationship to all other living beings. We must fight to preserve that life in whatever way we can—through art, writing, science, and political action.

My past work has included Ernest Thompson Seton, The Life and Legacy of an Artist and Conservationist, the biography of an environmentalist whose teachings about our connection to nature remain important today. I continue my research on him through the Seton Legacy Project. https://www.ernestthompsonseton.com

I consulted on and appeared in a BBC/PBS Nature documentary about Seton’s famous “Lobo” story, The Wolf That Changed America.  https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-wolf-that-changed-america-introduction/4260/

I have written extensively about the social and art history of Taos, New Mexico. Two books focused on the avant-garde: Taos Moderns, Art of the New and Modernists in Taos from Dasburg to Martin. I have consulted and appeared in New Mexico PBS programs on art history, including the widely syndicated Painting Taos.  https://www.pbs.org/video/painting-taos-jdmm7e/

I co-authored Spirit Ascendant: The Art and Life of Patrociño Barela, the definitive biography of the man who in my opinion is the most original and soulfully deepest artist to have worked in New Mexico.  https://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa046.shtml

All four books won literary awards and all of them accompanied museum exhibitions.