Millicent Rogers Museum to Honor DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo in New Exhibition

A new exhibition at the Millicent Rogers Museum will bring DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo’s work back into public view nearly five years after her death. Opening March 19, 2026, and running through March 1, 2027, Honoring the Life and Work of Artist DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo will feature a public reception on March 19 from 5 to 7 p.m. The museum describes the show as a tribute to Suazo’s life, artistry, and lasting legacy.

Suazo, a Diné and Taos Pueblo artist, is the daughter of Navajo artist Geraldine Tso and Taos Pueblo painter David Gary Suazo. She grew up on the Taos Pueblo Reservation. She developed a visual language and artistic practice that blended traditional and contemporary influences, drawing on Japanese manga. She graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in spring 2021 with a BFA in Studio Arts and entered IAIA’s inaugural MFA program that same year.

Recognition came early and kept building for Suazo. She exhibited at the Southwest Association for Indian Arts market for more than a decade and was named a SITE Santa Fe Scholar and the 2021 Taos Fine Arts Visionary Artist. Her work was shown nationally, including at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and IAIA established the DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo Memorial Scholarship in 2022 to support Indigenous women in its MFA in Studio Arts program.

Her work brought together Diné and Taos Pueblo influences, the artistic legacy of her family, and a modern visual approach that set her apart. Through her art, Suazo focused on strength, presence, and the everyday realities of Native life, specifically Indigenous girl and womanhood. By the time she entered IAIA’s inaugural MFA program, she was already broadening her reach as a visual storyteller, with a practice that pointed toward an even larger future.

Any effort to honor Suazo’s life also has to acknowledge the violence that ended it. Her life ended in a domestic violence incident on November 12, 2021. Prosecutors said her boyfriend, Santiago Martinez, killed her after she told him she wanted to end the relationship. He later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2025 and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in January 2026.

National data make clear that Suazo’s killing was part of a larger pattern of violence that continues to affect Indigenous women. The National Institute of Justice found that 84.3 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, including 55.5 percent who have experienced physical violence by a partner.

Acknowledging the violence that ended her life is necessary, but stopping there would also be its own tragedy. She was Diné and Taos Pueblo, an artist, a relative, a friend, and a young Native woman whose life and work already carried an extraordinary range and possibility. It would be a disservice to her memory to reduce her to being just a statistic or victim.

Part of what makes the Honoring the Life and Work of Artist DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo exhibition special is the way it returns the focus to her art and legacy. Visitors will discover and remember Suazo through her art, the Indigenous women she chose to center, and the artistic path she was still shaping. What fills the gallery is the presence of an artist with purpose and hope for a better future for everyone. Even though DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo is gone, her spirit, her vision, and the sense of possibility she brought to her work remain visible in the art she left behind.