Considered the Sistine Chapel of the modern era and overseen by the Benedictine monks at Saint John's Abbey in Minnesota, Illuminating the Word: The Saint John's Bible features portions of the first modern-day Bible entirely handwritten and illuminated in 500 years. World-renowned calligrapher Donald Jackson, senior scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s Crown Office at the House of Lords, serves as the project’s artistic director from his scriptorium in Wales. Also on exhibit will be a page from an original Gutenberg Bible. A series of lectures, musical performances and calligraphy workshops accompany the exhibit, which serves as a companion to Contemplative Landscape.

Contemplative Landscape is a photographic exploration of how people have responded to and interacted with New Mexico’s landscape through art, architecture and sacred rituals. Drawing on works from the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors and contemporary photographers, the exhibition prominently features the work of Tony O’Brien, whose 1994-95 sojourn at a New Mexico monastery forms the heart of his new book, Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert  (Museum of New Mexico Press), debuting with the exhibition. A companion exhibit to Illuminating the Word: The Saint John's Bible.

Blending an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western poetry and printing techniques, From a Distant Road features hand-colored Japanese albumen prints and original haiga by Santa Fe poet John Brandi. The exhibit runs Sept. 16-March 4, 2012, in the John Gaw Meem Room.

The exhibit includes: Eighteen of Brandi’s contemporary haiga (haiku poems accompanied by brush art work) that find their source in the poet-painters of 17th-century Japan. The haiga will be displayed on papers marbled by Palace Press Curator Tom Leech in the Japanese technique of suminagashi (black ink floating).  Six hand-tinted albumen photographs from a collection of late 19th-century images of Japan from the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors, paired with excerpts from the travel diaries of 17th-century haiku master Matsuo Basho. A new marbled broadside from the Palace Press featuring a prose poem by Brandi.

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.

Join Dennis Reinhartz for "The Graphics of Statehood: The Mapping of New Mexico," part of the 2012 Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series. A free event in the John Gaw Meem Room; enter through the Washington Avenue doors.

Reinhartz is professor emeritus of history and Russian at the University of Texas at Arlington. His publications include Mapping and Empire: Soldier-Engineers on the Southwestern Frontier (University of Texas Press, 2005). He received the 1996 Adele Mellen Prize for The Cartographer and the Literati, a Friends of the UTA Libraries Faculty Award; and the 1987 Presidio La Bahia Award for The Mapping of the American Southwest.

This event is sold out. Thank you, everyone, for your support.

Join Diane von Arx, special treatment artist for The Saint John's Bible, for a hands-on calligraphy workshop, "Oh My Gouache." The event costs $100; to reserve a spot, call (505) 476-5096. Part of the programming series for The Saint John's Bible and Contemplative Landscape.

Artist, calligrapher and illuminator Diane von Arx will talk about her work for The Saint John’s Bible in the museum’s auditorium. Her lecture, “Special Treatment Illuminations for The Saint John’s Bible,” is free with admission; Sundays are free to NM residents. Part of the programming series for The Saint John's Bible and Contemplative Landscape.