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 through 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. view the online exhibition »

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.

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.

A photographer and a poet get into a car. No, it’s not the start of a joke. It’s the start of a remarkable collaboration between Teresa Neptune and Miriam Sagan. Together, the pair drove all over New Mexico, checking out places like the Very Large Array, Pie Town, the Valley of Fires, Tent Rocks, Ojo Caliente and more. One of them captured visual memories. The other wrote them down, elegantly, beautifully.

On Friday, July 13, at 6 pm, Neptune (the photographer) and Sagan (the poet) will share some of what happened during their “Road Trips to the Moon” collaboration in the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium. This free event is part of the programming series for Contemplative Landscape and Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible.

 Begin collecting art, jewelry, pottery and more from the next generation of Native American artists and craftspeople at the annual Young Natives Arts & Crafts Show. Children and grandchildren of artists associated with the Palace of the Governors' Portal Program will demonstrate and sell their own arts and crafts in the Palace Courtyard from 9 am to 3 pm, July 14 and 15. Free.  

Music historians Mark Gardner and Rex Rideout return to the New Mexico History Museum with "Music of the New Mexico Frontier: From the Santa Fe Trail to Statehood," an evening of songs celebrating New Mexico’s Centennial. The free event will be at 6 pm on Friday, July 20, in the History Museum Auditorium. 

Come along on a musical ride from the time of Zebulon Pike’s entry into Nuevo Mexico, through the Civil War, the outlaw days of Billy the Kid, and more.  With fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and bones, Gardner and Rideout will perform songs that were not only popular at the time, but were inspired by New Mexico people and events. 

Organized at Fort Union and Albuquerque in the fall of 1861, the 3rd New Mexico Volunteers Infantry  played crucial roles in returning the New Mexico Territory to the Union side during the Civil War. On July 22, from 2-3 pm, re-enactors will present a special program in the Palace of the Governors Courtyard. The event is free with admission; Sundays are free to NM residents, and children 16 and under are free every day.

Part of the National Park Service and Fort Union National Monument, the re-enactors will talk about about who they were, demonstrate drills in Spanish, and describe their weapons and accoutrements. Participants can then become re-enactors-for-a-day by using a wooden musket and joining the volunteers in some drills.