Category Archives: Uncategorized

We Pledge Allegiance to Our 47-Star Flag

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It took some very careful maneuvering to get it into place, but in honor of next year’s New Mexico Centennial, our 47-star flag was moved into its display case today. The fragile flag was secured to 5-by-9-foot board (by rough estimate) that had to be transported down two flights and through the lower-level Collections Storage Area to join our existing statehood exhibit.

(That’s Palace Press Printer Jame Bourland on the near end and Exhibition Preparator Doug Jewell on the other slooooowly moving it through, at left.)

We readily admit that the flag is unofficial, maybe even a tad illegal. By federal law, new stars could only be added to the U.S. flag once a year: on July 4th. But 39 days after New Mexico’s Jan. 6, 1912 admission, Arizona sneaked in, robbing us of the chance to have a flag with only our additional star. That didn’t stop manufacturers from churning out a few, including the three in our possession.

They’ll be rotated through display, a year at a time, to spare them from too much exposure to light. The first one up is the monster-sized version, 65×115¾”. It came to us via a donor in  Drexel City, Penn., who said her father had owned it. Getting it into condition to be displayed came courtesy of conservation work done by Rebecca Tinkham Hewett and Cindy Lee Scott.

Here’s a photographic journey of what went down (or is that up?) today:

The “before” wall, above. (This is at the bottom of the staircase from the mezzanine; the wall used to have a huge Depression-era photograph on it.)

Cindy checks the existing light levels to determine how much adjustment will be needed in their brightness to protect the flag.

Doug attaches a rail to what will be the top of the exhibition case.

At one point, he had to retreat and let Cindy fix part of the edging with that most trusty of any conservator’s tool: A Swiss Army knife.

After wrestling it out of the room, along the way managing to avoid any number of perilous obstructions, they laid it flat then lifted one end to a vertical position. (“It’s like Iwo Jima,” James said to appreciative laughter.) Then — one, two, three — they pushed it into its exhibition case:

We still have a few Centennial tricks up our sleeve, including a front-window display that will let you pose in a replica 1912 parade float, and a yearlong schedule of statehood-related Brainpower & Brownbags lectures. On Jan. 6, the United States Postal Service will join us for a First-Day-of-Issue event for the official Centennial stamp, designed by New Mexico artist Doug West. It’s all part of what we call 47 Stars, an installation supporting our main exhibition’s section about statehood.

In the meantime, we’re justifiably proud of all the staffers who worked hard to bring this once-depressing (or at least Depressioning) wall in our museum to life.

Come by and check it out, along with all the other pieces of the statehood story we have to tell.

 

We’ll Be Working on the Railroad

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The First National Bank’s renovation of its building on the Santa Fe Plaza has produced a holiday present for the History Museum. Starting this week, the bank’s cherished model train display has chugged across the street and is on view through December 31 in the History Museum’s main lobby for visitors to enjoy.

Come see it for free from 10 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Sunday.

Here’s some background on the train: Sometime in the mid-1950s, bank employees Don Van Soelen and Antonio Romero set up a Lionel railroad around a Christmas tree in the bank’s lobby. Another employee, Rollie Abrahams, built an adobe home, church and station still in use today.

Since then, the display has grown to include a maroon roof Lackawanna Train Master, a wide-door Lionel Lines Streamliner baggage car, and a set of Santa Fe F3 diesels sporting the famous “Warbonnet” paint scheme. The Albuquerque Society of HO Modular Engineers-Santa Fe Division began helping with upkeep and operation in the 1990s. Volunteers expanded the layout to 8 x 20 feet of four independent 0-gauge loops, and added a Greenleaf Victorian Village on one end and an adobe village on the other, a ski lift and skating rink, and an operating milk-car platform.

The bank purchased a special Holiday Train with a musical boxcar and a gondola car where an elf chases a reindeer, and another train modeled on artist/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg’s The Polar Express.

Members of the Santa Fe Model Railroad Club will volunteer to run the trains as often as possible. We’re looking forward to the children and their families certain to come our way over the holidays – and hoping to entice them into staying for our exhibitions. Here’s an idea for those of you living south of Santa Fe: Take the New Mexico Railrunner to the City Different, then come to the History Museum for a full day of indulging your inner Casey Jones.

A Museum Returns an Ancient Artifact…with Style

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At a ceremony today in Washington, D.C., the History Museum repatriated to the country of Peru an artifact that came from a likely illegal archaeological dig in that country’s Sipan region in the late 1980s. There’s more on that artifact and its history here, but we thought the words spoken by museum Director Frances Levine at the ceremony bore sharing. In situations such as these, the parties can be contentious or they can be diplomatic. We’re proud of Dr. Levine for choosing the latter route.

Her comments:

Muchisimas gracias a todos por la oportunidad de estar aquí con ustedes en este día tan historico y importante.

As a museum director and an archaeologist by training, I am pleased to be part of this ceremony to return this magnificent Moche treasure to the people of Peru.

In New Mexico we understand the process and the importance of repatriation.  We too have seen artifacts taken long ago from our ancient archaeological sites and from Pueblo Indian communities returned to the cultures from which they came. And we are grateful for their return.

While the Moche monkey head was appreciated by thousands of visitors when it was on display in the Palace of the Governors, I believe it can more fully tell its story when it is placed in the context of the culture and environment where it was created.  I believe that this treasure has its own stories and legends to tell to the people of Peru, and that it too will be enjoyed by thousands of your citizens when it returns to Peru.

The piece was collected at a time when the world was just becoming aware of the reasons that such contexts matter. Its return symbolizes the commitment of New Mexico’s museums to the recognition of many people’s stories that have told over many centuries.

In the last few decades, museums have changed how they regard artifacts such as these. At one time, it was important to bring the world to our visitors, and so we collected from many parts of the world and assembled those artifacts into exhibitions that attempted to tell stories to people who might never travel to these often exotic places. Today, we are choosing to focus on the stories that took place in our own patria, and on our own tierra, and to do so, in part, with artifacts and the oral histories, las memorias, of our own patrimony.

Since the New Mexico History Museum opened in 2009, joining the Palace of the Governors, we’ve charted a place for ourselves on the international stage of museums. We worked closely with Spain to host the U.S. premiere of –El Hilo de la Memoria-–The Threads of Memory exhibition in Santa Fe in 2010. We are working now with Mexico on a joint exhibition about santero artistic traditions that united the beliefs and cultures of our two countries. Perhaps, we will also find ourselves working with Peru to examine the colonial conditions of our shared histories, both colonies settled by pobladores who came to the New World from Spain.

Our museum is proud of its reputation for integrity, cultural sensitivity and cooperation, and with those qualities in mind our museum collections committees and the museums’ Board of Regents voted unanimously to repatriate this precious artifact. As we place this national treasure in your hands, we very much look forward to a future in which we will work toward even more opportunities for collaboration. Esperamos continuar trabjando juntos en el futuro.  Gracias.

 

History Museum to Return Peruvian Artifact on Thursday

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The New Mexico History Museum is preparing to repatriate an archaeological artifact to Peru, a move that signals the museum’s commitment to cultural diplomacy on the international stage. The exchange of the artifact, a gold pendant from the Moché Period (100-800 AD), will take place on Thursday, Dec. 8, in Washington, D.C.

Assisting in the return is the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where the item has been on long-term loan.

“Museums have changed how they regard artifacts from prehistoric peoples,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the History Museum. “The New Mexico History Museum and Palace of the Governors has also changed in how it chooses which stories to present and preserve. Our focus today is on the stories that played out on this soil. Artifacts from South America can be better used to help museums in Peru tell the stories of their people.

“We want to be an international player on the museum stage. We worked closely with Spain to host the U.S. premiere of The Threads of Memory exhibition in Santa Fe last year. We are working now with Mexico on a joint exhibition about santeros. A reputation for integrity, cultural sensitivity and cooperation are critical to us and foremost in our considerations regarding this request.”

Peruvian officials first raised the question of repatriating the artifact in 1998, when it was included in the exhibition Art of Ancient America at the Palace of the Governors. Citing the National Stolen Property Act, the FBI seized the monkey head, along with two artifacts on loan to the museum over allegations that they had been looted from an archaeological site in Sipán region of Peru. At the time, museum officials said they would return it if evidence proved that was true. Ultimately, the US Attorney’s Office in New Mexico declined to prosecute because of conflicting accounts about the item’s provenance. In 2000, the artifacts were returned to the Palace. Art of Ancient America closed in 2008.

Peruvian Ambassador Luis Valdivieso revived the repatriation request in May 2011. The conflicts over its provenance were resolved by an investigation by the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Delaware, and the History Museum immediately began its process of due diligence. In October, the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents endorsed a recommendation to return the item.

“The Board of Regents never takes de-accessioning lightly,” said Karen Durkovich, president of the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents. “We gave the matter our serious consideration and came to the conclusion that it’s appropriate to work collaboratively with the Peruvian government.”

As described in the Art of Ancient America catalog, the artifact is a “large bead finely modeled in the form of a monkey’s head. Turquoise and shell eyes, lapis nose and open mouth with traces of turquoise on (the) tongue.” The pendant measures 1¾” high by 2¼” wide and has a ball tucked inside of it that rattles when moved.

The item was given to the Palace of the Governors in 1995 by John Bourne, a Santa Fe collector. At the time of the donation, museum officials cautioned Bourne that it could be subject to repatriation, and they agreed it would be returned if a substantive claim emerged.

When the most recent effort emerged, the History Museum worked closely with Bourne and with the Walters Art Museum, and all parties agreed with the decision to return it.  “I’m glad that the artifact was available for many New Mexicans to see during the time it was on display here,” Bourne said, “and I support the process of due diligence that has led to it returning to Peru.”

Charles M. Oberly, III, United States Attorney for the District of Delaware, said: “This repatriation is the result of the joint efforts of this office, the FBI Art Crime Team, the Department of Justice Office of International Affairs, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, and the Museum of New Mexico.  I commend all parties for their efforts in producing this positive outcome.  In particular, I commend the Museum of New Mexico for its selfless and noble action in returning this invaluable artifact to Peru.”

 

Gustave Baumann Mysteries: A Conservator Takes a Crack

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Artist, printmaker and woodworker Gustave Baumann has a well-deserved “beloved” status in Santa Fe, his home for the final 53 years of his life. The Palace Press at the History Museum re-created his studio, using his original materials, tools and furnishings. The New Mexico Museum of Art owns a number of his prints (some of them on display in an exhibit right now) and the replicas and originals of marionettes he carved for theatrical performances.

So what’s a conservator from Indiana doing here this week prowling around his legacy?

She’s trying to solve a couple of lingering mysteries that Baumann left behind.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art holds a complete set of prints Baumann made during his youthful stint in that state’s Brown County Art Colony, and Claire Hoevel, senior conservator of paper for the museum, wants to find out exactly what his materials were — pigments, bindings, gessos, the fibers in his papers.

“Our hope,” she said, “is to gain a very thorough understanding  of Baumann and his processes, how he worked, and his enormous accomplishments. ”

Thanks to the bottles, cans and jars of materials Baumann left after his 1971 death — materials that are now part of the Palace Press’ exhibit — Hoevel has an opportunity rare in conservator circles.

“It’s an extraordinary thrill for me to come out here and take actual samples,” she said. “Because I can, we won’t have to invade the works themselves. ”

The biggest question she hopes to answer is what Baumann used to bind his pigments.

“It’s important for lovers of Baumann,” she said. “He’s known to have mixed his own paints — a very traditonal process, grinding his own pigments. But the binder he used is a mystery. A vague term is used to describe it, `varnish.’ So, we’re sampling the varnishes here in hopes of cracking this mystery. It would explain why Baumann’s prints and inks look the way they do and how they acted when they went through the process. It was unique to Baumann.”

A secondary unsolved question lies in what we might as well call The Mystery of the Disappearing Ink.

It seems that at one time, one very narrow period of time, Baumann used a particular aqua ink to sign his prints. The signature was visible on the prints when Hoevel’s museum obtained them, but today, it’s gone, vanished, even from prints that were held in dark storage.

“You have a tiny bit of it here,” Hoevel said, showing (at left) a few tablespoons of a whitish powder in a brown bottle from the old Zook’s Pharmacy on the Santa Fe Plaza. “We have remnants of it on other prints —  maybe enough for analysis. The big question we have is what was the binder. Then, it’s what the heck was that ink?”

For her samples, Hoevel puts about an eighth of a teaspoon of each powdered pigment into a vial. Drops of the varnishes were placed in vials that she left open in hopes of evaporating the liquid to make it easier to transport them back to Indiana. A scientist there will test the pigment samples using microfadometry to determine their light tolerance. With that knowledge, the museum officials will know how long they can exhibit Baumann’s pieces and in what kind of lighting. The results may also affect their loan policy.

During her week in Santa Fe, Hoevel’s giving it the full Baumann treatment. She visited the Museum of Art exhibit, The Prints of Gustave Baumann, checked out the Baumann woodblocks held by the History Museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, and visited the Jane & Gustave Baumann House now owned by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation. Alas, she won’t stay long enough to see the replicas of Baumann’s marionettes perform during the Museum of Art’s Holiday Open House on Dec. 18.

According to Hoevel, folks in Indiana consider Baumann’s Brown County stint as “his formative years. We made him what he is,” she said, jokingly.

During those years, he “did a great number of extraordinary woodblock prints,” though what items will be displayed pending her investigation’s results has yet to be determined by museum curator Martin Krause.

While Hoevel’s work this week in Santa Fe will certainly produce valuable information for Krause, he may be surprised at what other information she brings back.

“I’m trying to pressure him into doing a marionette room,” she said with the slightest of smiles.

 

 

The Holiday Classics

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Staff and volunteers have been in a whirl over the last week helping the Palace of the Governors (a National Historic Landmark) don its gay apparel. Here are some photos of the process and the product. We hope you’ll stop by during December for some of our holiday festivities, which include:

The First National Bank’s model train display. From Dec. 13-31, the train will chug over to our lobby because of the bank’s ongoing renovation project. This is a family-time holiday favorite.

A performance by Schola Cantorum and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery. At 2 pm on Sunday, December 4, in the Museum Auditorium, the Santa Fe-based sacred-music ensemble joins the monks for this event, tied to the exhibitions Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape. Expect to hear the sounds of Advent, the ancient pre-Christmas period with its roots in the seventh century. Free with admission; Sundays free to NM residents.

Christmas at the Palace. From 5:30-8 pm on Friday, December 9, enjoy an evening of hot cider, live music, piñatas for the children, and the annual visit of Mr. and Mrs. Claus, all in the legendary magic of the Palace of the Governors. A free, family event for all.

Las Posadas. From 5:30-7 pm on Sunday, December 11, join the community for this annual favorite. The candle-lit procession of Las Posadas travels around the Santa Fe Plaza and concludes in the Palace Courtyard. This version of an old Hispanic tradition recreates Mary and Joseph’s search for a place to give birth to the Baby Jesus – and throws in a few devils for good measure. Stay for carols in the Courtyard, along with cookies and refreshments. Free and open to the public.

Young Native Artists Show and Sale. On Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 17 and 18, children and grandchildren of the Palace Portal artisans will display their own creations in the museum’s John Gaw Meem Room. (Enter from Washington Avenue.) Pick up some nifty Christmas presents and support the next generation of Native American artisans.

To get our staff’s decoration day efforts started …

… Daniel Kosharek selected from a big bin of potential ornaments.

One of our newest employees, Mark Scharen, joined Daniel in reaching to new heights. (Mark and Daniel both work in the Photo Archives.)

Pretty much half the staff — (from left) Director Frances Levine, Finance Manager Judy Morse, Administration Angel Carla Ortiz, Librarian Patricia Hewitt (partly hidden), and Photo Archivist Daniel Kosharek — got busy decking the hallway outside of the exhibition Santa Fe Found.

In the Palace’s Architectural Room (the room to your right as you come in the building’s main entrance), we always have a tree with decorations donated to us by the late former First Lady Dee Johnson. The ornaments were made by New Mexico artists, and it feels good to remember Mrs. Johnson’s generosity to the museum.

Inside the Santa Fe Found exhibit is this tree, which was beautifully decorated by two of our most loyal Los Capitanes volunteers, Tay Balenovic and James Rivera. (How can a tree not look beautiful against window mouldings that fine?)

Curator Josef Diaz and Assistant Collections Manager Pennie McBride decorated this tree inside the Gov. Bradford Prince Room, which always has a Christmas-y feel with its ceiling garlands of greenery and roses.

Registrar Wanda Edwards and NEH Project Manager Patrick Cruz worked on this tree in the Mexican Governor’s Room, to the left as you walk in the main entrance. (That’s them in the blur of action at the top as well.)

After working on each of our doorways …

… they look like this.

The holidays in Santa Fe are a special time. The aroma of piñon smoke, the farolitos, fabulous shops, and terrific exhibitions at all of the state museums (but especially ours — hey, we’re allowed some parochialism here).

Stop on by. We’re open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm, with free Fridays 5-8 pm. Sundays are free to NM residents, and children 16 and under are free every day. Come discover the child in you this holiday season.

 

 

 

Remembering Ann Baumann

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Observant visitors to our main exhibition, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now, may have noticed the late-18th-century horse-and-rider toy in an exhibit case with other playthings of the era. Extra-observant visitors may have noticed a name on the label marking who gave the toy to us: Ann Baumann.

The daughter of famed artist and printer Gustave Baumann was an especially kind friend of the museum, which houses a recreation of her father’s Santa Fe studio in the Palace Press. (A video accompanying the exhibit includes an interview with Ann.) She also donated her father’s paper archives to the museum’sFray Angélico Chávez History Library.

The role she played in her father’s artwork and the life she lived in a house bursting with creativity was detailed by Carmella Padilla in a 2009 El Palacio magazine article. “A home full of art was the only home I knew,” she said in the article.

As a child, Ann served as a model for many of the marionettes her father carved–some of which are now held by the New Mexico Museum of Art. (Replicas of them come out to play once a year at the museum’s Holiday Open House, this year from 1-4 pm on December. 18.)

On view through March 18 at the Museum of Art is The Prints of Gustave Baumann. The Historic Santa Fe Foundation owns Baumann’s 1923 Santa Fe house and opens it for tours occasionally.

Ann passed away earlier this month at her home in Santa Rosa, Calif., and we wanted to honor her time here. Here is a story about her that appeared in this week’s Santa Fe New Mexican. Below is an obituary prepared for her. We join those who knew her in wishing her well on this leg of her journey.

Ann Baumann, philanthropist, social worker, and community activist, passed away peacefully with friends by her side on November 15, 2011, in Santa Rosa, California. Friends will miss her humor, frankness, compassion, and grammatical correctitude. Ann was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico to artistic parents on July 31, 1927. As a child she was introduced to poets, painters, patrons, musicians, opera singers, playwrights, and social activism. Ann attended public school in Santa Fe before her parents enrolled her in Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque. She left New Mexico in 1944 to attend Bradford Junior College in Bradford, Massachusetts. Upon graduation she returned to California settling in Pasadena while working at International House. Ann enrolled at the University of California Berkeley in 1956, earning her B.A. in Psychology in 1958 and her Masters degree in Medical Social Work in 1961. She was resident of Sonoma County since 1964, where she worked for the State of California and the County of Sonoma as a medical and psychiatric social worker.
A believer in giving to those in need as well as to her community, Ann gave generously to various charities and worthy organizations. At the local level she was a patron of the Santa Rosa Symphony and a generous supporter of the Sonoma Land Trust. She did not forget her hometown and made generous contributions to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, the Santa Fe Opera, and Historic Santa Fe, which purchased and restored her family home.
The American Association of Blood Banks honored and saluted Ann “for noble generosity to the ill and injured over many years through the unselfish donation of 10 gallons of blood.” Ann was also honored by Bradford College for her commitment to serving and helping others.
Her father, Gustave Baumann, was an artist now famous for his color woodcuts depicting the American landscape and her mother, Jane Henderson Baumann, was an opera singer, stage actress, and community activist. Ann safeguarded and promoted her father’s legacy with donations of his work to the British Museum; Cleveland Art Museum; Georgia Museum of Art; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; Indianapolis Museum; Library of Congress; New Mexico Museum of Art; New Mexico History Museum; and the Worcester Art Museum.
Ann was a charter member of the Society for Clinical Social Work and served on its Board of Directors. As a member of the local chapter of Soroptimist International, she served on its Board of Directors for three terms and was considered a life member. Ann was also a member of the Sonoma County Council for Community Services and the League of Women Voters of Sonoma County.
A celebration of Ann’s life is planned for Sunday, December 11, 2011, between 3 and 4 p.m. at Friends House, Commons B, 684 Benicia Drive, Santa Rosa. Please RSVP to Doris Davidson at 707-537-0891 or 707-490-7055. Friends are encouraged to make memorial donations to charitable organizations of their choosing.

Preserving the Lost Art of Fine Handwriting

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In the days before the weight of our words fell to the skill of our thumbs, people did crazy things. Some of them took goose quills, cut off the feathers, and fashioned the points into nibs. Some mixed powdered pigments with water; others purchased teeny bottles of ink. All dipped some sort of pen into some kind of ink, placed the points of said pens to paper (often calfskin vellum), and then wrote messages to one another. Messages with meanings greater than LOL or OMG.

They called it calligraphy, and it’s an art celebrated in our new exhibition Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible. It’s also celebrated in our second-floor Gathering Space, where each weekend through the show’s closing on April 7, 2012, Albuquerque and Santa Fe practitioners of this dying art are demonstrating their skill at it.

(Those are the hands of Catherine Hogan above, and she’s writing my name far prettier than I ever could on something I”ll use to mark my place in another lost craft that some of us still love: books.)

The calligraphers and bookbinders adding to the exhibition belong to Escribiente, Albuquerque’s calligraphy guild, and the Santa Fe Book Arts Group. They plan to be available from 10 am to noon and 1-3 pm on Saturdays and Sundays through April 7, though winter weather may occasionally interrupt those plans. Keep an eye open during the week, too: Calligraphers sometimes show up and set up shop for the love of it.

Take today (i.e., Thursday, Nov. 10). Three members of Escribiente–Catherine Hogan, Beth House, and Rick House–drove up from Albuquerque and worked away on a variety of crafts.

Rick, for example, was practicing his newfound skill of turning feathers into quills.

Beth was calligraphing a piece of writing by Henry David Thoreau–an ode of sorts to the benefits of forest fires.

(On April 30, 1844, shortly before retreating into isolation at Walden Pond, Thoreau accidentally started a blaze in the Concord Woods, destroying some 300 acres. The devastation, including the narrow miss of Concord itself, so angered residents that for years afterward Thoreau could barely escape the epithet “woods burner” from his neighbors. The event, though, likely played into his budding environmental philosophy. In 1850, Thoreau’s journal noted in part: “I once set fire to the woods….It was a glorious spectacle, and I was the only one there to enjoy it.” For more on that event, click here.)

In the meantime, here’s a sample of Beth’s work:

Take special note of the letter at the top left; she illuminated it with real gold leaf:

If you can’t be here when the demonstrators plan to be, but have a group of folks who might be interested in learning more about the book arts, call ahead and we’ll work to arrange a demonstration for you. For such requests, call Tom Leech, director of the Palace Press, at 505-476-5096.

Whenever you come, bring your curiosity and your questions. Not only are the volunteers good at what they do, but they love to talk about the book arts.

Thanks, Rick Beth and Catherine (below, from left to right), for helping us bring another day of life to an art that deserves many more.

The Wisdom of Donald Jackson

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Were you to spy them in a Santa Fe cafe, you might mistake Donald and Mabel Jackson for any other vacationing couple. But make no mistake: They are a power couple unlike any other power couple before them.

As a child with extraordinary artistic talents, Donald Jackson imagined writing an entire Bible in the best style of medieval monks–with careful calligraphy and inspiring illuminations. Earlier this year, he inscribed the word “Amen” onto the final page of The Saint John’s Bible, a work that has been called the Sistine Chapel of the book arts. Donald Jackson, senior scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s Crown Office at the House of Lords, oversaw the project from the scriptorium he and Mabel created in Wales. There, a team of scribes and artists worked hand-in-hand on page upon page.

From left: Mabel Jackson, Palace Press Director Tom Leech, Donald Jackson, and assistant collections manager Pennie McBride outside the exhibition.

Forty-four of those pages are on view through April 7 at the New Mexico History Museum, and just this week, that otherwise ordinary-looking vacationing couple dropped by to see how the exhibition looks.

Good news for us: They liked it.

“It just feels really nice walking in,” Mabel said. “It just felt good.”

Donald was particularly interested in seeing how we displayed the creation that put the entire project into motion. While at a calligraphers’ retreat at Ghost Ranch in 1994, he mocked up an art piece representing how he would approach doing a handwritten Bible. He later showed it to the Benedictine monks at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., and soon got their commission to tackle The Saint John’s Bible. The piece is on display at the museum for the first time in the project’s history.

“That’s come out well, hasn’t it?” he said upon seeing it near the front of our exhibit, Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape.

Donald Jackson will talk about The Saint John’s Bible and his life in calligraphy at 6 pm this Monday (Nov. 7) at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. The lecture costs $15; a private $50 reception follows at the History Museum. Call 505-988-1234 or go to ticketssantafe.org for tickets.

We walked around the exhibit chatting with Jackson, as fitting a preview as any to what Monday evening holds in store. Here’s a taste.

On working through difficult sections of the Bible: “You grind your teeth. There was some reaction among the scribes. Some of Leviticus, for example, was quite heavy-going–very proscriptive and dark. One of the scribes, a woman, we were writing out something that was dreary and uncomfortable, and she said, `I just realized this is like the evening news. Every night there’s something horrible.’ You look at a newspaper today, you see war, atrocities, abnormalities. She realized that this was life.

On where the scribes’ focus lay: “On the one hand, you have to experience it. On the other hand, you have to spell it right, and you’ve got to arrange it. You’re not just thinking about what it’s saying a lot of the time; you’re thinking about how you’re going to manage it.”

While trying to translate a piece of his own non-calligraphed-but-most-decidedly-scrawled handwriting that’s on display in the exhibit, Jackson could barely make out the words “green slime.” On whether there’s calligraphy hope for others with similarly wretched handwriting: “I can look at somebody whose handwriting is bad and, if it’s consistently bad, I can probably knock them into shape. To be fair, if I put you in a high-powered car and you went 100 miles per hour through downtown Santa Fe, you’d crash. If you do it too fast, it isn’t going to be good.”

To be honest: “I also have a bit of resentment about writing (non-calligraphy) things by hand. There’s something there that hasn’t got the patience to write it.”

Suffering Servant, Isaiah 53, 54:1-8, by Donald Jackson, 2005. The Saint John’s Bible, Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota.

On how Ghost Ranch did or didn’t inspire The Saint John’s Bible: “It was time in the wilderness. That’s where it started. It was September, October. It was freezing. Frosty mornings and spectacular landscape. But any landscape is inspiring. Even downtown Detroit is. Flying into LA over night is. … But the truth is, it was creating the space within yourself and putting yourself into it. It’s what you bring to it as much as what it brings to you. The wilderness is frightening as well as beautiful. It’s definitely a metaphor.”

On the subversiveness of teamwork: “There were five scribes, plus me, at the scriptorium. That is a very unusual scenario. Nowadays, it’s counter-cultural, all working on one thing, all one script we’re trying to imitate. The word `artist’ in our society is synonymous with individuality. You had to be as different as you can be from the next person. … Our culture exploits that. It turns us against each other.

“To have to work together is a wonderful thing–like when you’re singing in a choir. Six people sitting in a room, all writing out sacred text. There is a noise to it, the sound of quills on vellum, the sound of occasional irritation–a mistake’s been made. Then you hear scratches of a knife raising up a comma in the wrong place. One of the most powerful things in that silence with six people is that there is a great depth of silence. It’s more silent than when you’re on your own. There’s power in that.”

On being human: “There will be mistakes in (The Saint John’s Bible). It’s not going to be perfect.”

Spinning Some Gold for “The Saint John’s Bible” Exhibition

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On Oct. 23, when we open the two exhibitions Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape, visitors will be treated to world-class examples of calligraphy and illumination, on a par with the most cherished works of the medieval era. Workers are busily preparing the space in our second-floor Albert and Ethel Herzstein Gallery, where craftsman Tom Hyland spent the day adding a glittering touch to the title wall–the first thing visitors to the exhibition will see.

Because The Saint John’s Bible features the first entirely handwritten and illuminated Bible to be commissioned by Benedictine monks in 500 years, “We thought it would be morally correct to have the letters hand-lettered,” Hyland said.

Using the logo script created by Diane von Arx, one of the calligraphers on the project, Natalie Baca, our graphics designer, developed a computer-generated stencil, called a frisket, which Hyland applied to the wall, then filled in with a metallic gold paint.

If you’ve walked around Santa Fe, you’ve already seen Hyland’s work. He hand-painted the signs for the Cowboys and Indians shop on the Plaza, Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery; Pasqual’s Cafe; and the Hotel St. Francis, among others.

Here’s a peek at how he accomplished our title wall (and it’s your first look, by the way, at the exhibition itself):

Tom Hyland and exhibit designer Caroline Lajoie tested a variety of metallic paints against a swatch of the wall's purple color.

The frisket was applied to the wall.

Tom Hyland got to work filling in the frisket...

...which required clambering up a ladder.

He carefully, carefully peeled off the frisket.

And, voila, the finished, glimmering wall.