This exhibition features 23 original graphic history art works by Santa Fe artist Turner Avery Mark-Jacobs. This display, ’The Massacre of Don Pedro Villasur,’ narrates the history of an ill-fated Spanish colonial military expedition which set out from Santa Fe in 1720, a story that is also depicted in the History Museum’s Segesser Hide paintings.  

The First World War exhibition investigates the contributions of New Mexicans to the war, through letters, photographs and objects.

“New Mexico played an important role in both world wars,” said Andrew Wulf, Director of the New Mexico History Museum. “We are proud to be able to recognize and remember that contribution and add The First World War as a permanent exhibition, to underscore the sacrifice and heartfelt letters home from these brave soldiers.”

Santa Fe is widely recognized as a city of museums. These beloved institutions and their exhibitions have long been integral to the fabric of local culture. On Exhibit: Designs That Defined the Museum of New Mexico, presents a fascinating look back at more than a century of changing exhibition design in the historic state museum system. This “exhibit about exhibits” reveals how presentation techniques evolved and helped establish the unique character of the Santa Fe’s museums.

The Atomic Histories exhibit explores the most famous events, sometimes little known stories, and inventions born here which impact our lives, and helps to recognize the remarkable contributions of thousands of people involved in writing New Mexico’s Atomic Histories for the last 75 years. 

Photo courtesy of the Los Alamos Historical Society Archives 

Photographer Meridel Rubenstein’s "Oppenheimer’s Chair and The Meeting"  offers a thought-provoking work that weaves together two threads of history, as a feature within the exhibition; "Atomic Histories".

Before radio and television, when making music at home was the evening’s entertainment and playing the piano was considered an essential talent among the middle class, sheet music was the music consumer’s gateway to the world.”  The New Mexico History Museum celebrates this era with sheet music of popular songs about the State of New Mexico, dating from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries, in the new exhibition The Land That Enchants Me So. The show spotlights graphically striking sheet-music covers published from 1840s through about 1960, along with other printed materials, sound recordings, and memorabilia relating to New Mexico and its musical life.

Be sure to see the show before it closes on Sunday, September 29, 2019!

Will Rogers noted that Fred Harvey “kept the West in food—and wives.” But the company’s Harvey Girls are by no means its only legacy. From the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway’s 1879 arrival in New Mexico to the 1970 demolition of Albuquerque’s Alvarado Hotel, the Fred Harvey name and its company’s influence have been felt across New Mexico, not to mention the American West. The company and its New Mexico establishments served as the stage on which people such as Mary Colter were able to fashion an “authentic” tourist experience, along with Herman Schweizer who helped drive the direction of Native American jewelry and crafts as an industry.

Setting the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy, a new section that joins the New Mexico History Museum’s main exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now, helps tell those stories. Opening December 7, Setting the Standard uses artifacts from the museum’s collection, images from the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives and loans from other museums and private collectors. Focusing on the rise of the Fred Harvey Company as a family business and events that transpired specifically in the Land of Enchantment, the tale will leave visitors with an understanding of how the Harvey experience resonates in our Southwest today.

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.

This exhibition features 23 original graphic history art works by Santa Fe artist Turner Avery Mark-Jacobs. This display, ’The Massacre of Don Pedro Villasur,’ narrates the history of an ill-fated Spanish colonial military expedition which set out from Santa Fe in 1720, a story that is also depicted in the History Museum’s Segesser Hide paintings. The evening event will be hosted by the Women’s Board of Santa Fe and will include a book signing with the artist.

Copies of the graphic history shall be available for purchase.

Free event 

Join us for a stained glass for beginner’s workshop, recommended ages 10 and up.   Learn the basics of copper foil soldering with bits of colored glass and take home your own unique ornament or pendant.

Adult supervision requested.

Free with admission

Today’s Galisteo Basin is a vast and inspiring landscape on the edge of Santa Fe. Open range land has preserved a record of history that is a remarkable testament to powerful influences, natural and cultural, from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. These three centuries encompass dramatic changes in climate, economy, population, and organization of Pueblo communities, even before the initial Spanish expeditions of the sixteenth century.

Eric Blinman Director, Office of Archaeological Studies will discuss how the Seventeeth century Spanish Colonization changed the trajectory of the Galisteo Basins cultural history in both expected and unexpected ways, culminating in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. But perhaps the most dramatic transformation occurred in the few years immediately after the Revolt. By the Reconquest, the large Pueblo communities had moved north, setting the stage for the Euroamerican-dominated pastoral landscape of today.

Please join Heather McClenahan, Executive Director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, who will discuss, “The Manhattan Project in Fiction”.

Join us for an “Atomic Histories” exhibition presentation on how historic events have been featured in literature. 

Free Auditorium event. Bottled water only please

Kevin Henderson, who holds a PhD in Physics and works for the Physics Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, will share on the global topic of Symmetry, and how it breaks.

The universe is filled with symmetry and broken symmetries.  Humans have embraced an enduring relationship with those principles in science, art, and culture. This talk will describe the mathematical and physical origin of symmetry and its manifestation in the natural world, and will also illustrate the many profound examples and extensions of symmetry into everyday life.

Free event in the Meem room. Limited seating. Coffee provided by Iconik Coffee Roasters.

Please join us for another opportunity to view the Palace Museum in its raw state, as we continue our efforts to refurbish and restore our beloved historic national treasure.

Open house from 1-5pm

Palace in the Raw lecture: 3-5pm (see separate post) 

Free event

Please join us in the Palace Museum as Tim Roberts, Regional Manager at Ft. Stanton and Lincoln Historic Sites explores the complex events that led to Lew Wallace’s appointment, his eventful short tenure as governor, and the questions surrounding his eventual departure from the Territory of New Mexico.

A free public event