Fine Arts 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards

The College of Fine Arts at The University of New Mexico recently announced its 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients.

This annual award recognizes graduates of the UNM College of Fine Arts who have achieved outstanding success and made significant contributions to their field. These individuals have demonstrated excellence, creativity, and innovation in areas such as visual arts, performing arts, music, design, or other artistic disciplines.

This year, the college will celebrate the distinguished alumni at The UNM Symphony Orchestra concert at Popejoy Hall May 8. The 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients include: Eric-Paul Riege for the Department of Art, Ramona Emerson for the Department of Film & Digital Arts, Andrew Megill for the Department of Music and Mónica Sánchez for the Department of Theatre & Dance.

In addition to honoring the 2025 Distinguished Alumni, the College will recognize those who have named a seat in the new Center for Collaborative Arts & Technology (CCAT) concert hall. Those who have named seats will receive an invitation to the CFA Distinguished Alumni reception and tickets to the UNM Symphony Orchestra concert. Scheduled for completion in Fall 2026, CCAT will be home to a state-of-the-art concert hall, with cutting-edge acoustics, designed by world-renowned architects at Diller Scofidio %20 Renfro in partnership with the award-winning local firm ROMA Architecture. To name a seat, patrons can make a tax-deductible gift of $2,500 to the CCAT project.

“It is that time again to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of the alumni of the UNM College of Fine Arts,” said Harris Smith, dean of the college. “This year marks the 125th year of the Department of Theatre and the 95th year of the Department of Art at UNM. The Bachelor of Arts was first offered in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1916. Since then, many creative professionals have built their careers on the fine arts education they earned at The University of New Mexico. These distinguished alumni represent our diverse and talented pool of students and the commitment and dedication of our amazing faculty and staff.”

Department of Art: Eric-Paul Riege, 2017, BFA in Art Studio & Ecology

Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) is a weaver and fiber artist working in collage, durational performance, installation, woven sculpture and wearable art. Using weaving as both means and metaphor to tell hybrid tales that interlace stories from Diné spirituality with his own interpretations and cosmology, he understands his artworks as animate and mobile. His practice pays homage and links him to generations of weavers in his family, which aids him in generating spaces of sanctuary.

Riege’s recent solo exhibitions include “Hammer Projects: Eric Paul Riege” at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022–2023), “Larger than Memory” at the Heard Museum, Phoenix (2020), and “Hóló—it xistz” at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (2019). His recent group exhibitions include the “Prospect.5 Triennial” in New Orleans (2022), the “Toronto Biennial of Art” (2022), and “SITElines Biennial,” presented by SITE SANTA FE (2018). He holds a BFA in Art Studio and Ecology from The University of New Mexico. His work is collected by Forge Project and ICA Miami, among others.

Riege is a member of the Charcoal Streaked Division of the Red Running Into the Water clan. He was born and is based in Gallup, New Mexico.

Department of Film & Digital Arts: Ramona Emerson, 1997, BA in Media Arts

Ramona Emerson is a Diné writer and filmmaker originally from Tohatchi, New Mexico. She earned her degree in Media Arts in 1997 from The University of New Mexico and her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) in 2015 from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

She has worked as a professional videographer, writer and editor for over 20 years and is currently working on her eighth film project, “Crossing the Line.” She is a Sundance Native Lab Fellow, a Time-Warner Storyteller Fellow, a Tribeca All-Access Grantee, a Public Broadcasting Service and ITVS grantee and a WGBH Producer Fellow.

Emerson published her first novel “Shutter” – the first of a trilogy – with SOHO Press in Aug. 2022. Through her storytelling, Emerson looks at contemporary stories about her people and aims to question and redefine the expectations of Native cultural identity, highlighting stories that are not a part of mainstream media.

She currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she and her husband/producer, Kelly Byars run their production company Reel Indian Pictures.

Department of Music: Andrew Megill, 1987, Bachelor of Music

Andrew Megill is professor of conducting and director of choral organizations at the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music, where he holds the Carol F. and Arthur L. Rice, Jr. University Professorship in Performance. He leads choir of the Music of the Baroque, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Chorus, the Carmel Bach Festival Chorale and Fuma Sacra. Megill earned his Bachelor of Music from the University of New Mexico in 1987.

Megill is recognized as one the leading choral conductors of his generation, admired for both his passionate artistry and his unusually wide-ranging repertoire, which extends from early music to newly composed works. He has prepared choirs for the American Composers Orchestra, American Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonie, National Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, New York Philharmonic and Venice Baroque Orchestra for conductors including Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Joseph Flummerfelt, Rafael Frühbeck du Burgos, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Zdenek Macal, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, John Nelson, Rafael Payare and Julius Rudel. Recordings of choirs conducted or prepared by him may be heard on the Decca, EMI, Canteloupe, Naxos, Albany and CBC labels.

Megill is particularly admired for his performances of Baroque choral works. He regularly collaborates with leaders in the field of historically-informed performance and has conducted many period-instrument orchestras, including Piffaro, Rebel, Sinfonia NYC, Brandywine Baroque, the Sebastians, Tempesta di Mare and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra. A frequent champion of music of our own time, he has also conducted regional or world premieres of works by Caleb Burhans, Paul Chihara, Dominic DiOrio, Sven-David Sandström, Caroline Shaw, Lewis Spratlan, Steven Stucky, Jon Magnussen, Arvo Pärt and Krzysztof Penderecki. Today Megill lives and works in Urbana, Illinois.

Department of Theatre & Dance: Mónica Sánchez, 2018, MFA in Dramatic Writing

Mónica Sánchez heard her calling in the theater 40 years ago when she became a company member of La Compañía de Teatro de Alburquerque. Her life-long vocation as a theater artist includes 20%20 years in California beginning with a residency at El Teatro Campesino, the preeminent Chicano theater company founded by Luís Valdez during the nascent civil rights movement led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to unionize farmworkers. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, she honed the craft of professional actor in theater, film and television, all the while enjoying a multitude of posts as a teaching artist and facilitating community engagements. In 2015 she embarked on her MFA in Dramatic Writing at UNM, graduating in 2018.

Recent projects include her role onstage at the Yale Repertory Theatre in Luís Alfaro’s play, “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles;” and a micro-commission from Lortel Theatre’s Alcove initiative for her new play, “Voy.” She has been on faculty at Colorado College since 2019 as assistant professor of Playwriting and Performance.

In May 2025, she will return to her native New Mexico full-time to embrace the next phase of her work as an actor, playwright, director, and educator in independent and community engagements at a crucial moment when the theater can perhaps offer a place and time to provoke our presumptions, assuage our sorrows, and connect in community.

For more information, contact Shelly Smith, director of Development, UNM Fine Arts at shelly.smith@unmfund.org or Kristine Purrington, executive director of Academic Development, UNM Fine Arts at kristine.purrington@unmfund.org.