Happy Belated Birthday, New Mexico Museum of Art.  You were a hundred!  November 24 and  I missed it.  The holidays were here and I was, as usual, my busy self.  You were the last thing on my mind.  So  yes, I missed the celebration.  I heard it was a party that overflowed on to the street, with a  line in the  morning waiting for the doors to open.  But no matter.  It isn’t until January and February each year, when the holiday rush is over and the cold sets in for real, that my mind turns to quieter things.  Museums are quieter things, a source of reflection and quiet inspiration.  When I am inside a museum everything else seems miles away.  So now, the middle of January, I visited again the New Mexico Museum of Art. (http://nmartmuseum.org)

When the museum’s doors opened  in 1917, the city of Santa Fe was a small town, population a mere 5,000.  Considering the financial investment for the city, construction of the museum was a leap  of faith.  There must have been a blind  confidence that Santa Fe would be what it is proclaimed today:  the Art Capital of the Southwest.  Young artists, established artists were arriving from the East Coast.  They were attracted here by the wide open skies, the landscape, and the shapes, colors and light.  There was a unique regional identity calling these artists and a respect for the Native arts.  It was a time of growth and pure artistic excitement.

What most endears me to this museum is the original intention.  This was a participation and exchange between the artists, the museum, and the community.  I suppose I mostly think of a museum as a repository of precious and valuable pieces of our cultures to be guarded, but to be shared by all.  Wonderful and true.   However, at its inception the New Mexico Museum of Art was in a sense a home for the artists.  A support system set up by the original founders aimed at attracting and keeping fine artists in Santa Fe.  There were no juried exhibits.  Artists could very reasonably rent studio space near the museum and hang their work in the museum. they shared the museum among themselves and with the citizens. It touches me to know that the very first exhibit was mostly donated by pioneering local artists and became the core of the museums permanent collection.  See some  favorites of the pioneering artists below:

 

 

Artist John Sloan.  Founding member of the Ashcan movement in Philadelphia, John Sloan spent 30 summers in Santa Fe.  The painting below is of a summer’s night, 1920, in La Plaza.

 

E. Martin Hennings:  “Among the Aspens”.  Done before 1939

 

Marsden Hartley.  Painting on the left side of photo.  He wrote of his experience in Santa Fe in 1918, the year after the museum opened:  “I am an American discovering America.”

 

Josef Bakos, “The Springtime Rainbow”, 1923

 

Gustave Baumann.  It just wouldn’t be complete without a piece from the collection of Baumann.  Here I chose some of his puppets which he made to entertain his own children.  The museum brings them out from hiding every year to entertain the children of Santa Fe (and beyond) with a Christmas puppet show.

 

Zozobra.  Either a cause for doom and gloom or for fun and merry-making.  These early artists were a fun loving group. One instigator, Will Shuster, had everyone over to his place for a rowdy and creative party that ended in the burning of their effigy, Zozobra.  It’s been happening ever since.  So save the date for the 2018 event on August 31 st   https://burnzozobra.com/event-information/ The burning of Zozobra is the annual kick-off of all the Fiestas celebrated in Santa Fe.  (Our group of creatives were also the instigators for the annual Pet Parade. They dressed their pets in costumes and marched them around La Plaza.)

 

Past the main entrance to the museum , through the lobby, you can open doors on to an inner courtyard.  For the most part, the sun shines brightly and warms the eyes.  The museum was built in the Pueblo Revival Style.  This is the regional Southwest architectural style, which draws its inspiration from the Pueblos and Spanish missions in New Mexico.  It became popular at the turn of the 20th Century, most popular from 1920 to 1930.  In the 1930’s William Shuster, the same artist responsible for creating Zozobra, was hired to paint the courtyard frescoes.  They were made with ground pigments and water and wet plaster, much as the Romans would have done.

 

 

 

 

Since almost all of the architecture in Santa Fe continues in the Pueblo Revival Style, you will see the use of vigas.   spanning the width of a ceiling, they provide structural support for the different levels.

 

Corbels, under the far end of the vigas, are mainly for decoration.  The lamps, made by local craftsman,  are traditional tin work.

 

And so to you, our New Mexico Museum of Art.  And if I live to be a hundred years old, may I stand as tall, as straight and as dignified as you.