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.

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.

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.

Check out the handmade creations of people devoted to the beauty of books at the Santa Fe Book Arts Group's "Celebration of the Book" Thursday, May 2, through Saturday, May 4, 10am to 4 pm, in the History Museum's Meem Community Room. Approximately 100 one-of-a-kind books will be on display, including rubber-band books, popup cards, origami, bookmarks and calligraphy demonstrations. Enjoy the intricacies of marbled papers, accordion folds and embellished bindings—while escaping cover-to-cover hum-drum in a world where books become visual art.

Admission is free to the event (and the inspiration you’ll receive is priceless).

Enjoy a lively presentation by Emmy Award-winning costume designer and historian Cathy Smith, "I See By Your Outfit: Historic Cowboy Clothing," at 2 pm on Sunday, May 5, in the History Museum Auditorium. Smith's presentation is part of the exhibit, Cowboys Real and Imagined. Free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents).

Author, painter, and raconteur Max Evans is joined by Jim Harris, director of the Lea County Museum, to talk about his storied career, including the making of movies from his works, at 6 pm on Friday, May 17. After jawin’ about the cowboy life, the two will introduce a special showing of The Hi-Lo Country (1998), starring Woody Harrelson, Billy Crudup, and Patricia Arquette.