Since the Civil War, photographers have tried to capture the lives of Native American peoples, resulting in some of the most beautiful and elegant portraits in the collections of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. More than 50 of these images will be on display from May 18 to November 4, 2012, in Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry, a salon-style exhibition in the History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery. Together, the images document the changing perceptions of Native peoples over a span of almost 100 years.

From a Spanish government that never quite knew where to draw its northern colony’s borders to a Mexican government that disagreed with where the lines eventually were drawn to a Texas Republic that wanted to claim the Rio Grande, Santa Fe, and much of eastern New Mexico, the U.S. government eventually managed to carve out the trusty rectangle we now know as New Mexico.

Between the Lines: Culture and Cartography on the Road to Statehood opens Thursday, January 5 and will be on view through May 4, 2012, in the Governor’s Gallery on the fourth floor of the state Capitol. The exhibition, part of the state’s 2012 Centennial celebration, explores explores how cartographers interpreted New Mexico’s land, its physical and political boundaries, and the cultural minglings of Native, Spanish, Mexican, and American people.

New: Exhibition's run extended to December 30, 2012.

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.

Outlaws, Rough Riders, classic restaurants and a possible spy will come to life at the 2012 New Mexico Statehood History Conference, May 3-5, in Santa Fe. Presented by the Historical Society of New Mexico and the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors, this Centennial version of the Society’s annual conference includes a special treat: A daylong free symposium, open to the public, plus free admission to the History Museum on May 3.

The conference, May 4 and 5 at the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Center, is held in collaboration with the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance, which is having its annual conference at La Posada that weekend. Details, including special hotel rates and how to register for all or part of the Statehood History Conference, are at the Historical Society’s web site: http://www.hsnm.org/2012%20Items/home__2012_conference.htm.

Join Robert Larson for "New Mexico: Early Attempts to Gain Statehood," part of the 2012 Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series. A free event in the John Gaw Meem Room; enter through the Washington Avenue doors.

Larson is professor emeritus of history at the University of Northern Colorado.  He has written books on Populism in the West and is the author of New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 1846-1912 (University of New Mexico Press, 1968). 

Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry pulls some of the most beautiful and elegant portraits from the collections of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. Dating back to the Civil War, the images reveal photographers’ attempts to portray the lives of Native American peoples. Almost inadvertently, the photographs also portray a nation’s changing attitudes toward Native peoples.

The Museum of New Mexico Press invites you to join author Ana Pacheco as she speaks about her new book on the life of J. Paul Taylor—a key figure in New Mexico’s arts community, the legislature, and a gifted educator. The lecture, at 2 pm, on Saturday, May 19, in the Meem Community Room at the New Mexico History Museum, will be followed by a Q & A period and book signing. Light refreshments will be served.

The event is free.

Working with famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe and learning the rustic ways of northern New Mexico filled author Margaret Wood with stories that she shares in her newest book, O’Keeffe Stories, a limited-edition production by the Press at the Palace of the Governors. Wood reads from the book on Friday, May 25, at 6 pm in the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium. The event is free, and the books, printed by letterpress on fine paper and bound by hand, will be available for purchase at $225.

A $19.95 trade edition is being published by the Museum of New Mexico Press and will be available in July.