New Mexico Museum of Art | Apr 24, 2015
New Mexico Museum of Art, recently named New Mexico’s host for the First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare national tour, is pleased to announce that the First Folio will be on view to the public February 5-28, 2016.
New Mexico History Museum | Apr 21, 2015
The 1990 release of The Civil War, a nine-part documentary, not only brought new attention to our nation’s greatest crisis, but also revolutionized the art form. Film editor and post-production supervisor Paul Barnes worked hand-in-hand with Ken Burns on the series, which earned numerous awards. The two have since made other landmark documentaries.
On Friday, May 8, at 6 pm, Barnes will show re-cut clips from The Civil War to detail their experience and describe how they remastered the series in high definition for a 25th-anniversary airing on PBS stations this September. Barnes will speak at the historic Lensic Performing Arts Center, which is graciously partnering with the museum on this event. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10. The presentation is part of the programming series for the History Museum exhibit, Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War, opening May 1, in collaboration with the Santa Fe Opera’s debut of Cold Mountain this August.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Apr 17, 2015
May 1 through July 26, 2015
Longtime Santa Fe resident Gay Block’s photography is internationally recognized for its fearless exploration of personal identity issues—gender, class, religion, familial relationships, and sexual orientation. A survey of more than forty of her works from 1975 to 2012 in To Feel Less Alone: Gay Block, A Portrait, opens Friday, May 1, 2015 at the New Mexico Museum of Art. The exhibition runs through July 26, 2015.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Apr 17, 2015
The fourth in a series of “Photo Lab” installations opens Friday, May 1, 2015 at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Featured will be photographs from the collection made with two historic processes. The first are cyanotypes—cyan meaning blue--are “bluish” images (think blueprints); the other are albumen prints—albumen meaning egg white—are photographs made using a combination of egg white and specific chemicals. Both of these processes were popular in the nineteenth-century and the examples on view will be by early practitioners including Francis Frith, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Arthur Wesley Dow. These processes have been revived by contemporary artists—such as Rita Dewitt, Betty Hahn, Robin Hill, Jennifer Schlesinger, Nancy Sutor, and Zoë Zimmerman–whose work is exhibited alongside these earlier masters.
Photo Lab #4 is part of the final installment of “Focus on Photography” series. The free to the public opening is on Friday, May 1, 2015 at 5.30 p.m. Photo Lab #4 runs through July 26 2015.
New Mexico History Museum | Apr 16, 2015
From the Civil War to the Gila River, Harvey Girls and more, there’s something for everyone this month. Most events are free with admission. Sundays are free to NM residents; children 16 and under free daily. May 1: Opening of Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War. May 3: Decorate the Divine, a family art-making event. May 6: A Brainpower & Brownbags lecture on the Gila Bioregion. May 8: Revisiting The Civil War, the Ken Burns’ classic documentary. May 23: Harvey Girls Day. May 31: A performance by Schola Cantorum and a panel discussion on restoring the 1785 Roque Lobato House.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Apr 14, 2015
Fire Season is the fourth and final group exhibition in the Focus on Photography series, a year-long examination of the influential and ever-changing medium of photography. The exhibition opens Friday, May 1 at 5.30 p.m. with a free public reception and runs through July 26, 2015. This group show of fifteen photographs includes work by Jane Fulton Alt, Patricia Galagan, Philip Metcalf, Larry Schwarm, and Greg Mac Gregor.
Museum of International Folk Art | Apr 9, 2015
Provocative program on pottery announced The Museum of International Folk Art presents a dialogue on Southern pottery featuring leading ceramic writer and commentator Garth Clark and prominent North Carolina potters Mark Hewitt and Matt Jone ...
New Mexico Museum of Art | Apr 9, 2015
Seven contemporary artists from the Southwest will be featured in the Friends of Contemporary Art + Photography’s juried exhibition, Art on the Edge, hosted by the New Mexico Museum of Art. The artists, selected by Nora Burnett Abrams, Associate Curator at MCA Denver.
ART ON THE EDGE 2015 participating artists: Jill Christian, Will Clift, Danae Falliers, Ian Fisher, Sarah McKenzie, Chris Oatey, and Kate Rivers.
The exhibition opens Friday, April 17, 2015 with a free public reception and runs through August 16, 2015.
Juror Statement:
Surveying recent art from the region, Art on the Edge celebrates the myriad ways artists are working today. Painting, photography, collage, and sculpture are but a few highlights of these western artists’ creative practices. Culled from nearly 300 submissions, the seven artists represented here demonstrate both a deep connection to their immediate environments, as well as a remove from the exigencies of daily life. Taken together, the works indicate how these artists engage a rich diversity of approaches and a broad range of content to produce artworks that employ traditional techniques as much as they embrace the pace and spirit of contemporary life. Whether they are invigorating landscape photography or sky-scape painting — or even playing with color tonalities — the works on view make clear that these regional artists are pushing the boundaries of their chosen medium or subject matter and advancing the long-held notion of the West as a site of continual creative expansion and exploration. Nora Burnett Abrams Curator, MCA Denver
New Mexico Museum of Art | Apr 9, 2015
Material Matters: Selections from the Joann and Gifford Phillips Gift opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art on Friday, April 17, 2015 and runs through August 16, 2015. The twenty-eight works on view are artists working in California and New Mexico who took an experimental approach to abstraction through materials and process.
New Mexico History Museum | Apr 1, 2015
Hot off the interwebs, it’s all the latest news from the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors. Discover a flag that saw action at the Civil War’s Battle of Glorieta Pass. Take a slow ride on a horse-drawn hearse. Dance! All that and more. Click here to download a PDF.
New Mexico History Museum | Apr 1, 2015
Civil War battles raged across America’s northern and southern states as Texas Confederates launched a plot: Head north and west through the New Mexico Territory with hopes of seizing California’s goldfields and sea ports. In 1862, battles erupted in Mesilla, Valverde, and Glorieta. Confederate forces briefly occupied the Palace of the Governors. Despite such victories, breaks in supply chains forced the Texans to retreat. In the History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery, May 1 through Feb. 26, 2016, three curators join forces for the exhibition, Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War. Photo Curator Daniel Kosharek, 19th- and 20th-Century Southwest Collections Curator Meredith Davidson, and Palace Press Curator Thomas Leech approach the subject from different angles and invite visitors to consider the possible meanings behind the fragments of memories on exhibit and how a long-gone war still defines us as Americans.
Museum of International Folk Art | Mar 22, 2015
Face jugs of the American South are the subject of a two-part public program at the Museum of International Folk Art on Sunday, March 22, 1-4pm. John Burrison will give a lecture on the history of this Southern tradition at 1pm, followed by a face jug demonstration by Georgia potter Mike Craven. The programs are in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibition Pottery of the U.S. South: A Living Tradition. Both events are by museum admission. New Mexico residents with ID are free on Sundays.
New Mexico History Museum | Mar 17, 2015
Take part in the debut of CreativeMornings’ latest chapter. Learn more about the Santuario de Chimayo, Fred Harvey artisans, and pinhole photography. Plus: It’s the annual return of the Historical Downtown Walking Tours, Monday through Saturday, April 13 through Oct. 17.
New Mexico History Museum | Mar 14, 2015
In an age when every cell phone can take a respectable picture, cameras as low-tech as an oatmeal box still beguile a legion of practitioners, both artistic and documentarian. With roots in the ancient discovery of the camera obscura, pinhole photography has enchanted artists from the 1880s through today. Opening April 27 (through January 10, 2016), Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography, in the Herzstein Gallery of the New Mexico History Museum, explores a historical art form that exemplifies thoroughly contemporary ideals: Do-it-yourself handmade technology with a dash of steampunk style.
Nearly 225 photographs and 40 cameras show how a light-tight box pierced by a hole and holding a piece of old-school film can reveal alternate versions of reality. At heart, photography is a method of capturing the way that light plays upon objects, the seen and the unseen—a visual form of poetry that extends beyond a literal representation whenever pinhole cameras are involved.
Poetics of Light offers a premiere of original prints by photographers from around the world. Drawn from the holdings of the Pinhole Resource Collection, the body of work was amassed by co-curators Eric Renner and Nancy Spencer in San Lorenzo, in New Mexico’s Mimbres Valley. In 2012, seeking a permanent repository and impressed by the capabilities of the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors, the couple donated the collection—more than 6,000 photographs, 60 cameras and hundreds of books—to the New Mexico History Museum.
Coronado Historic Site | Mar 11, 2015
The exhibition Early Native American Easel Art in New Mexico just opened at the Coronado Historic Site and runs through February 2016. Featured are seventeen prints of original water color paintings lent by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s Dorothy Dunn Collection.
Among the artists on view are Vidal Casiquito, Jr. and José Rey Toledo of Jemez, Gilbert Atencio of San Ildefonso, and Pablita Velarde of Santa Clara, as well as several pieces by Zia artist, Velino Shije Herrera, who in the early 1930s painted the murals in the reconstructed Kiva at the Coronado Site. Pueblo lifeways is the exhibition’s theme.
New Mexico History Museum | Mar 5, 2015
The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives has acquired a rare carte de visite depicting Ceran St. Vrain, Dick Wootton and José Maria Valdez. Photo Curator Daniel Kosharek obtained the ca. 1865 image from Cliff Mills, a photographer, collector and dealer who has sold his own and historical images on the Santa Fe Plaza for 20 years.
Carte de visites were an early phenomena of photography. Mounted on cardstock, they could be given to friends or guests. That ease helped create a Victorian craze—“cardomania.” This particular carte de visite represents the first original photograph that the Photo Archives has of St. Vrain, a legendary frontiersman, military leader and wheat magnate. The museum has one small original photograph of “Uncle Dick” Wootton, and none of Valdez.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Feb 26, 2015
The New Mexico Museum of Art has been selected as the host site for First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, a national traveling exhibition of the Shakespeare First Folio, one of the world’s most treasured books. The Folger Shakespeare Library, in partnership with Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, is touring a First Folio of Shakespeare in 2016 to all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. The New Mexico Museum of Art will be the only New Mexico venue.
Final touring dates for First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare will be announced in April 2015.
New Mexico History Museum | Feb 24, 2015
New Mexico’s iconic adobe buildings reveal the colors of the earth—pearly white, sandy tan, cinnamon red, chocolate brown and shades in-between. We all love our turquoise skies, but when we build a home, the color of adobe surrounds us. One of the earliest and greenest building materials, adobe stretches back through millennia and around the globe. Like pottery, it reflects the maker’s identity, incorporating handprints and personal style.
An exemplar of adobe construction is the 400-year-old Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. Its Spanish Pueblo Revival style carries elements of European, Mexican, American and Native American influence. Both a National Historic Landmark and, as of this year, a National Treasure, the Palace, like all adobe buildings, needs constant maintenance. A $1.5 million campaign is underway to raise the renovation money.
Throughout the Summer of Color, the museum will heighten visitors’ understanding of adobe, the historical importance of this building medium, and how the Palace plays into that story.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Feb 19, 2015
On display Dec. 19, 2014 through April 19, 2015
Photographers used to spend much of their time in the dark, processing film and developing pictures. Many have come into the light by switching to digital image-making but the mystique of the darkroom lingers. This group exhibition is a tribute to the tools of the trade of wet-process, darkroom photography.
Join us for a gallery talk by Santa Fe artist Robert Stivers who will talk about his unique photograms made with his darkroom developing tray, Friday, February 6, 2015, at 5:30 p.m.
New Mexico History Museum | Feb 19, 2015
In war and in peacetime, in theaters of conflict and on the home front, U.S. women have participated in our nation’s defense. Until recent years, those contributions have failed to attract much notice. Even less understood: the contributions of African-American women, who had to fight just for the right to serve.
On Sunday, March 29, at 2 pm in the History Museum auditorium, see the New Mexico premiere of Sweet Georgia Brown: Impact, Courage, Sacrifice and Will, a documentary by Lawrence E. Walker of PureHistory Films. A celebration of National Women’s History Month, the event will include remarks by Walker; retired Army Brigadier Gen. Jack R. Fox, secretary of the state Department of Veterans’ Services; and Lt. Col. Pam Gaston, representing Women Veterans of New Mexico, a nonprofit organization providing support services.
The event is free with museum admission. Sundays are free to NM residents. Seating is limited, but you can make a reservation by calling (505) 476-5152.
New Mexico History Museum | Feb 17, 2015
March 6: "New Mexico Women’s Clubs: Civic Pioneers," a Free First Friday Evening talk by historian Pat Farr. March 11: "Black Pioneers on Route 66," a Brainpower & Brownbags lecture by National Park Service historian Frank Norris. March 15: 18th-century harpsichord music by Susan Patrick. March 29: Screening of Sweet Georgia Brown, a documentary about African-American women in World War II.
Museum of New Mexico | Feb 16, 2015
As Museum Hill’s Summer of Color prepares to launch, galleries throughout Santa Fe have joined the excitement. See who’s doing what and get ready to immerse yourself in the colors of the rainbow throughout the summer of 2015. Learn more about the Summer of Color by clicking here.
Museum of New Mexico | Feb 16, 2015
Six of Santa Fe’s leading cultural institutions located on the beautiful Museum Hill kick off summer 2015 with joint exhibitions and programming in what Mayor Javier Gonzales proclaimed today as the Summer of Color. They were joined by other museums and Santa Fe galleries. Together, the bounty of exhibits and events promises to turn Santa Fe a rainbow of colors for the summer of 2015. Download a copy of the proclamation by clicking here.
Museum of New Mexico | Feb 16, 2015
The nationally acclaimed Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP) and a growing consortium of Santa Fe-based arts and cultural institutions are joining forces to help people living with memory loss, along with their care partners, friends and the public. Each month, the Community-in-Residence program will open the doors at a different institution for an hour-long session of creativity, playfulness and learning. The program launches on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 9 to 10 am, at the George O’Keeffe Museum, and moves to the Museum of International Folk Art on Tuesday, March 24, at 10:30 am. Future events will be announced soon. A highlight of the event will be the creation of a new poem set to music inspired by the artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe. The series includes light refreshments and is free and open to the public with registration. For a reservation, please write gary@alzpoetry.com.
New Mexico History Museum | Jan 20, 2015
Bring the family Feb. 6, 5:30-7 pm, for a free Valentines craft event. Feb. 8, 2-4 pm, make a camera obscura (reservations required). On Feb. 15, 2-4 pm, pinhole photographer Donald Lawrence speaks in the auditorium and shows how to make camera obscuras in the courtyard. At noon on Feb. 18, John McAllister speaks on "Lozen, Apache Warrior Woman." There’s always something to do at the New Mexico History Museum.
Museum of International Folk Art | Jan 15, 2015
The exhibition, The Red That Colored the World opening at the Museum of International Folk Art, combines new research and original scholarship to explore the history and widespread use in art of cochineal, an insect-based dye source for the color red whose origins and use date to the pre-Columbian Americas.
The Red That Colored the World opens on May 17, 2015 and runs through September 13, 2015.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Jan 8, 2015
The New Mexico Museum of Art opens Colors of the Southwest, March 6 through September 20, 2015, to coincide with the "Summer of Color" taking place on Santa Fe’s Museum Hill. Colors of the Southwest will encompass an array of art created from the early 20th century to the present and will include paintings, photographs, prints, watercolors, and ceramics.
New Mexico Museum of Art | Jan 8, 2015
On display Dec. 19, 2014 through April 19, 2015
A survey of remarkable images by this master of photography whose work ranges from the southern Andes of Peru to the Galisteo basin. A longtime New Mexico resident, Ranney has extensively explored the cultural landscape of ancient peoples as well as contemporary human interventions such as artist Charles Ross’ immense Star Axis project near Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Join us for a gallery talk by Santa Fe artist Edward Ranney, who will talk about his work as an artist and his efforts to photograph ancient habitations along the coastal Americas on Friday, March 6, 2015, at 5:30 p.m.
Museum of International Folk Art | Jan 2, 2015
Pottery was crucial to agrarian life in the U.S. South, with useful forms such as pitchers, storage jars, jugs, and churns being most in demand for the day-to-day activities of a household and farm. Today, a century after that lifeway began to change, potters in the South continue to make vital wares that are distinctively Southern. The Museum of International Folk Art will celebrate this “living tradition” of American regional culture with the exhibition Pottery of the U.S. South: A Living Tradition, which opens on Friday, October 24, with a free public reception from 5:30 to 7:30pm hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico. The two-man folk orchestra Round Mountain will perform Southern-inspired music, including original compositions, at the opening reception.
The exhibition presents traditional stoneware from North Carolina and north Georgia, current works characterized by earthy local clays, salt and ash glazes, and surprising effects of wood firing. The exhibition closes on November 15, 2015.
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture | Jan 1, 2015
Internationally collected and admired worldwide as a sculptor, painter, and teacher, Allan Houser (1914-1994) is back in the Santa Fe spotlight in a major way this summer on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Five monumental artworks by the famed Chiricahua Apache sculptor will be displayed in the exhibit Footprints: The Inspiration and Influence of Allan Houser at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC), accompanied by an assortment of life-size and monumental sculptures by notable artists who either studied with Houser at IAIA, worked with him at his studio, and/or were influenced by him. For high resolution media images please contact Steve Cantrell.
