Los Alamos artist Margarita Ryan heads to Budapest exhibition

Margarita Ryan’s portraits of J. Robert Oppenheimer and New Mexico life are headed from Los Alamos to Budapest, giving a local artist an international platform and a wider audience for work shaped by this community.

Ryan has been selected for artBIAS IV, the 4th Budapest International Art Show, which TERAVARNA says will run June 8 through July 14, 2026, at Golden Duck Gallery in Budapest along the River Danube. Digital submissions for the show remain open until May 31, 2026. For Los Alamos County, the selection matters because it sends a resident artist’s work far beyond the town’s usual orbit of laboratory headlines and government business.

Ryan’s own website says she was born in the countryside of Argentina and is now based in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It describes her paintings as expressive work that bridges memory and history, reimagining the stories, landscapes and people that shaped New Mexico, including Oppenheimer and ordinary daily life. That mix of biography and subject matter has made her work a natural fit in a place where science, history and art often overlap.

Locally, Ryan has already built a recognizable presence. In April 2023, she painted a portrait of Oppenheimer live at SALA during the premiere of Oppenheimer After Trinity, starting from a blank canvas as guests arrived and finishing in time for auction at the end of the evening. Los Alamos Reporter later noted her growing creative marketing and entrepreneurship work through Beehaus Design & Ecomarketing, which opened downtown at 147 Central Park Square in January 2025. That downtown base gives her a physical foothold in the heart of Los Alamos while she expands her reach beyond Northern New Mexico.

The Budapest invitation also adds another layer to the county’s arts profile. Ryan has been known here for colorful, vibrant portraits and mural work, and her online store shows she has been selling Oppenheimer-themed pieces as part of an ongoing body of work. Her move onto a show in Budapest does more than mark a personal milestone: it carries a Los Alamos voice into an international conversation and reinforces that original art is being made here, not just displayed here.