Museum Foundation

They Wove for Horses: Diné Saddle Blankets opens at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on March 25, 2012 (on long-term view). The exhibition highlights both the textile-weaving proficiency of Diné weavers who produced complex saddle blankets for all occasions and the design skills of Diné silversmiths who created dazzling headstalls of silver and turquoise.

The saddle blankets on exhibit date from 1860 to 2002 and are arranged by weaving methods: tapestry weave; two-faced double weave; and twill weaves of diagonal, diamond, and herringbone patterns. By using a variety of warp and weft yarns—natural wool, cotton, angora mohair, unraveled bayeta, and Germantown—weavers added individuality to the everyday and fanciful tapestries they created for horses.

Horse trappings on exhibit reveal the great pride that Diné horsemen took in their horses and how they adorned them for ceremonial and social events. The Diné first learned how to manufacture saddles and bridles from neighboring cultures and their proficiency quickly surpassed that of their mentors. That devotion resonates still, as the horse remains a viable living force in Diné life today.

Peter Sarkisian: Video Works, 1994-2011 opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art Friday, May 3, 2013 with a free reception hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico. The exhibition features 15 video and mixed-media works spanning 18 years and will be on view through August 18, 2013.

Throughout his career Santa Fe-based artist Peter Sarkisian has been an innovator working at the cutting edge of multi-media art. Juxtaposing projected video and physical objects, his installations explore the intersection of the moving image and sculpture. 

Throughout his career Santa Fe-based artist Peter Sarkisian has been an innovator working at the cutting edge of multi-media art. Juxtaposing projected video and physical objects, his installations explore the intersection of the moving image and sculpture.

Peter Sarkisian: Video Works, 1994-2011 opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art Friday, May 3, 2013 with a free reception hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico. The exhibition features 15 video and mixed-media works spanning 18 years and will be on view through August 18, 2013. 

Plain Geometry Amish Quilts explores the origins and aesthetics of a tradition that has evolved in a changing world. Opening at the Museum of International Folk Art on Sunday, March 3, 2013, thirty-four quilts will be on view from the museum’s collection and loans from local collectors. These remarkably crafted textiles illustrate the influence of religious proscriptions, westward migration, and interaction with "English" neighbors. The exhibition runs through September 2, 2013.

The New Mexico Museum of Art is pleased to present this one-man exhibition by master photographer William Clift, a long-time Santa Fe resident. The exhibition opens April 19 and runs through September 8, 2013.

For almost four decades, Clift has photographed two monolithic sites that dominate their expansive landscapes: Shiprock, an eroded volcanic form that rises above the northwestern New Mexico desert and is sacred to the Navajo (Diné), and Mont St. Michel, a tidal island off the north coast of France that is famous for its Romanesque-Gothic church and monastery. In this selection of more than seventy beautiful photographs, Clift shares his ongoing, nuanced exploration of the two places.

New Mexico artists have incorporated horses in their Southwestern imagery since the 1880s. During the twentieth century, the horse became an icon of the region, reflecting its ethnic diversity and changing aesthetic styles. The 25 paintings, prints, and photographs in Back in the Saddle capture the changing spirit of Southwest art. The works are drawn from the New Mexico Museum of Art collection.

Artists in the exhibition include Gerald Cassidy, W. Herbert “Buck” Dunton, Betty Hahn, Luis A. Jiménez Jr., Barbara Latham, Eliot Porter, Olive Rush, Fritz Scholder, Joseph Henry Sharp, Theodore Van Soelen, and Walter Ufer. The Native American, Hispanic, and European American art on view reveals some of the fusions that have occurred across cultural divides.

Curator Tony Chavarria’s focus with this show is on modern and contemporary Native art including paintings, monotypes, poetry, and sculpture created between 1968 and 2012.

An exploration of the dawn of world cuisine as we know—and consume—it today opens December 9, 2012 at the Museum of International Folk Art with New World Cuisine: The Histories of Chocolate, Mate Y Más. The exhibition runs through January 5, 2014.

New World Cuisine explores how foods around the world developed from mixing the old and the new, and how many of the tastiest dishes and desserts came to be associated with New Mexico.

The novels of German author Karl May served as trail guides to the mystique of the American West and even today are celebrated in European festivals and theme parks. His books have outsold those of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey combined and were beloved by the likes of Albert Einstein, Herman Hesse, Fritz Lang, and Franz Kafka.

But there’s a hitch: May never visited the West. Nevertheless, his faith in the land of cowboys and Indians nurtured an entire continent’s love for it. From Nov. 18, 2012, to Feb. 9, 2014, the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors celebrates May’s life, legacy and lasting impact in an original exhibition, Tall Tales of the Wild West: The Stories of Karl May.

Woven Identities features baskets woven by artists representing 60 cultural groups in six culture areas of Western North America: The Southwest, Great Basin, Plateau, California, the Northwest Coast, and the Arctic.

All objects tell a story, if you know the right questions to ask. At the time the baskets in this exhibition were collected little to no information was recorded; the weaver’s names are largely unknown. Nonetheless, each basket has an identity, a woven identity. The identity of each basket—where it was made; when it was made; who made it; who it was made for; why it was made—by “reading” its individual characteristics. 

When America needed hard workers, the cowboy was there. The job was dirty and difficult, low-paid and lowly regarded. But when an America torn by the Civil War needed a hero to unite its soul, the unassuming cowboy was an unlikely—and ultimately lasting—pick. Since riding out of Spanish horse culture, he’s been an itinerant hired hand, an outlaw, a movie star, a rodeo athlete, a radio yodeler, and a rhinestoned disco diva. He’s been Spanish, Mexican, African American, Anglo, male, female, straight, and gay. His image has been co-opted to sell trucks, beer, boots, beans, jeans, tires, cigarettes, leather couches, presidential candidates, and a lifestyle far beyond the means of real-life buckaroos. 

Using artifacts and photographs from its wide-ranging collections, along with loans from more than 100 people and museums, Cowboys Real and Imagined (April 14, 2013, through March 16, 2014) blends a chronological history of Southwestern cowboys with the rise of a manufactured mystique as at home on city streets as it is in a stockyard. Augmented by archival footage, oral histories, musical performances, and a programming series that includes showings of classic Western movies filmed in New Mexico, the exhibition anchors the cowboy story in New Mexico, a place that gave birth to the real thing and held onto it longer than most other states.

Taking flight this summer at the Museum of International Folk Art is Tako Kichi: Kite Crazy in Japan, an exhibition of more than 200 Japanese kites. The exhibition opens June 9, 2013 and runs through March 23, 2014.

Now 400 years old, Santa Fe was once an infant city on the remote frontier.  Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time, on long-term exhibit in the Palace of the Governors, explores the archaeological evidence and historical documentation of the City Different before the Spanish arrived, as well as at the settling of the first colony in San Gabriel del Yungue, the founding of Santa Fe and its first 100 years as New Mexico’s first capital.

Co-curated by Josef Diaz of the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors and Stephen Post of the DCA/Office of Archaeological Studies, Santa Fe Found collects more than 160 artifacts from four historic sites, along with maps, documents, household goods, weaponry and religious objects. Together, they tell the story of cultural encounters between early colonists and the Native Americans who had long called this place home.

Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now, the main exhibition of the New Mexico History Museum, sweeps across more than 500 years of stories - from early Native inhabitants to today's residents - told through artifacts, films, photographs, computer interactives, oral histories and more. Together, they breath life into the people who made the American West: Native Americans, Spanish colonists, Mexican traders, Santa Fe Trail riders, fur trappers, outlaws, railroad men, scientists, hippies and artists.

"I believe we should preserve this evidence of the past, not as a pattern for sentimental imitation, but as nourishment for the creative spirit of the present."

- Alexander Girard