New Mexico Historic Sites | September 2025

From the desk of Anne McCudden, Executive Director, New Mexico Historic Sites

New Mexico Historic Sites is excited to announce that it has embarked on a long-range planning process that will align with the Department of Cultural Affairs reaccreditation process with the American Alliance of Museums.  It has been some time since Historic Sites went down the road of looking at long term goals and objectives and to date the process has been both cathartic, humbling and encouraging.

All 39 staff within the Historic Sites have been part of the discussions as we wanted to make sure this was a fully inclusive process. We hope to have our “bridge plan” in place by late fall.  The choice to tackle a bridge plan and not a comprehensive strategic plan was due to time constraints. With recently joining the division as the Executive Director and the timing of the accreditation process, we felt that this was the best way to take an introspective look at how we’re operating and set the perfect stage for a full planning process in fiscal year 2027.

I’d like to give you a sneak peak of what our bridge plan will cover but I think it’s best to just say that after in-person meetings, zoom calls and phone calls, the one thing I can say for sure, is that Historic Sites staff were amazingly on track of what we need, what we’re missing and what we want to move forward.  Often you’ll see some sort of version of a hurricane tracking map when it comes to where everyone is at but in this instance, we heard a lot of the same concerns, passions, and desires from our employees and that was very encouraging.

All that to say that we still have a small mountain to climb to get to a point where we are all on the same bus, going down the same road and in the same direction.  I am inspired by what we’ve done so far, and I appreciate the support we’ve received from DCA, the Foundation, our friends’ groups and most of all, our professional colleagues.  These types of efforts are never done in a bubble and this will be no exception.