Tag Archives: museum

Party Like It’s 2009

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This time a year ago, we were crossing fingers that floors would be finished, scaffolds would go away, artifacts would appear and maybe, just maybe, a few people might decide to show up for the New Mexico History Museum’s grand opening on May 23, 2009.

Boy, were we surprised. Not only did the interior look as spit-polish as the exterior, but more than 20,000 people stood in blocks-long lines opening weekend outside …..

4x5 lines outside

… and inside …

4x5 line inside

…waiting for a peek. (Worth noting: Those people who not only stood in the waiting lines but did so as a thunderstorm threatened to drown them.)

Since that auspicious start, we’ve drawn more than 150,000 visitors (more than doubling the attendance of our predecessor, the Palace of the Governors); held a packed schedule of lectures, workshops and performances; played host to the Crown Prince of Spain; and carried home an armload of awards.

In honor of its accomplishments and in gratitude to those who helped make the first year such a success, the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents voted to open the museum for free May 22 and 23.

“We want to throw a party to say `thank you’ for everything that New Mexicans and out-of-state visitors have done for us,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the museum. “The outpouring of support from visitors, scholars, donors, businesses, and especially our volunteers has carried us beyond our expectations.”

The highlight of the free “Wild Weekend” is the opening of Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton, an original exhibit created with special support from the Academy for the Love of Learning, home of the Seton Legacy Project.

“It took 20 years and the hard work of many dedicated staff members, volunteers and donors to create this wonderful new museum,” said Stuart Ashman, State Cultural Affairs Department Secretary.  “The overwhelming successes that we’ve witnessed during its first year of life are endorsements of these efforts.”

The full weekend schedule:

Saturday, May 22

10 am – 5 pm: Free admission, plus a sneak peek at the new exhibit, Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton, from 12 – 5 pm.

12 – 2 pm: The Wildlife Center in Española displays an assortment of the wild mammals and raptors it has rescued. Palace Courtyard.

Sunday, May 23

10 am – 5 pm: Free admission. Grand opening of Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton. Albert and Ethel Herzstein Changing Exhibitions Gallery.

12 – 4 pm: Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary brings a live wolf to the Palace Courtyard. Special program at 1:30 pm.

2 – 4 pm: Wild at Heart opening reception, hosted by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico. Booksigning of Ernest Thompson Seton: The Life and Legacy of an Artist and Conservationist with author and guest curator David L. Witt. Palace Courtyard.

Upon opening, the 96,000-square-foot History Museum joined a campus that included:

The Palace of the Governors, the nation’s oldest continuously occupied public building; Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives; Palace Press; and Portal Artisans Program. In its last year as a solo museum, the Palace drew 68,454 visitors.

POG exterior from Washington

Major accomplishments of the last year include:

Renovation of the Palace Press, including the addition of a new permanent exhibit recreating famed artist Gustave Baumann’s original printing studio

BaumannStudio_edited-1

Opening the exhibit Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time and hosting a series of lectures on the founding of the city, in honor of its 400th birthday

Comb helmet and breast plate

Moving 3,700 textiles and 10,000 artifacts (including 1,404 pieces of furniture) into new, state-of-the-art collections storage inside the museum

wedding dress 5x4

Acquisition of an 1842 book printed by Padre Antonio José Martínez on the first press in New Mexico, as well as letters written by Billy the Kid to Gov. Lew Wallace

martinez book 300

Winning a $147,000 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to partner with KNME-TV on development and broadcast of history documentaries

covered wagon

Playing host to His Royal highness Prince Felipe of Spain and his wife, Letizia, during a 400th Anniversary event

prince in ctyd

Publication by the Palace Press of Santa Fe Poet Laureate Valerie Martinez’s book, This Is How It Began, commemorating the 400th anniversary

This Is How it Began

Unveiling the commemorative Bill Mauldin stamp with the US Postal Service

unveiling 5x3

“Visitors tell us time and again that they love what we’re doing – and that they want more,” Levine said. “Our goal is to continue bringing forward even more of the stories that shaped the West, more exhibitions, more lectures, and more ways for people to engage with history and be inspired to explore more of New Mexico.”

Get Into This: Another Award for the Museum

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NMHM_Cowboys 4x3

In the months before and after the History Museum opened (May 23, 2009), newspaper readers, radio listeners, TV watchers, Web surfers and billboard hounds were greeted with this message: “History — Get Into It!”

That ad campaign helped produce block-long lines of people patiently waiting to physically get into it on opening weekend and has kept ’em coming back ever since. (Don’t worry: You no longer have to stand in a block-long line … in the rain … to get in.)

media kit 4x3That campaign just won honors from the American Association of Museums, which gave it two first-place awards in its 2009 Museum Publications Design Competition. The first award was for the media kit (at left), basically a folder stuffed with enough information about all the construction that was going on behind the Palace of the Governors to keep reporters and others intrigued. (Many of those materials are still available here, on the Museum of New Mexico Media Center.)

The second first-placer was for the grand-opening’s marketing and public-relations materials. Gathered around the “History – Get Into It” theme, those materials mixed archival photography with modern-day people. (Go here to see the full campaign and, hey, vote for your favorite. Cowboys? Railroads? Hippies?)

Clearly, the “Get Into It” concept worked: More than 20,000 people lined Lincoln Avenue and packed into galleries during last year’s Memorial Day weekend to be part of the grand opening. As the museum’s first anniversary approaches, attendance has surpassed 150,000, more than doubling the annual attendance of the museum’s predecessor, the Palace of the Governors.

“From the beginning, our marketing team believed two things: First, that New Mexico’s history is not dead, boring or in the past; it is alive, fascinating and all around us. And second, that no one could tell the story better than the home team,” said Shelley Thompson, marketing and outreach director of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs’ Museum Resources Division. “Within our department existed the talent, the creative ability, and most important, the passion to do the job better than anyone else. It took a village in every sense, but a special shout-out goes to David Rohr, Natalie Baca, Cheryle Mitchell and Kate Nelson for excellence in publications, design, advertising and public relations.”

In case you’re wondering: AAM is the premier organization for more than 3,000 museums, including art, history, science, military and youth museums, as well as aquariums, zoos, botanical gardens, arboretums, historic sites and science and technology centers. Here’s a full list of winners. Now, get cracking on voting for your favorite “Get Into It” ad by clicking on comments, below.

We’re Number One

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True West Magazine has given us the early word that its May edition will name the New Mexico History Museum as the nation’s top Western Museum.

“This is the result of years of hard work by many people,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the museum, which opened on May 23, 2009. “From designing a modern building in a historic setting to developing the exhibits to getting out the word, our staff and volunteers have come through time and again. We are honored by this recognition.”

In his write-up about the museum, Johnny D. Boggs, a Santa Fe author and historian, noted the overflow crowds that filled the museum on its opening weekend: “I hadn’t seen likes like this since I tried to get into a bookstore in Dallas, Texas, where actor Jimmy Stewart was authographing copies of his book of poetry. That was like trying to get into a Dallas Cowboys home playoff game.”

4x5 lines outside

The magazine cites the museum’s large campus, which includes the Palace of the Governors, the nation’s oldest continuously occupied public building; Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives; Palace Press; and Native American Artisans Portal Program. Its core exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now, the magazine says, “is as diverse as the culture, and history, of New Mexico.”

Boggs writes that he admires the 96,000-square-foot building’s architecture, including the 300 handmade arrows that dangle from the ceiling in the core exhibit’s Pueblo Revolt area.

“Special events, kid-friendly activities and changing exhibits kept things hopping throughout 2009,” he writes. “Expect a busy year again at the New Mexico History Museum, and perhaps some more long lines, as 2010 is the year Santa Fe celebrates its 400th anniversary.”

Portal - Parkhurst 4x5Also in the magazine is an article noting 25 kid-friendly museums, and it names the Native American Artisans Portal Program (left) at the Palace of the Governors.

Other museums getting the magazine’s Top-10 Western Museums nod: the Adams Museum & House, Deadwood, S.D.; Buffalo Bill Museum & Grave, Golden, Colo.; Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas; High Desert Museum, Bend, Ore.; Plains Indian Museum, Cody, Wyo.; National Oregon/California Trail Center, Montpelier, Idaho; Boot Hill Museum, Dodge City, Kan.; Cripple Creek District Museum, Cripple Creek, Colo.; Rim Country Museum, Payson, Ariz.

“These Western museums are important in preserving and exhibiting history and culture,” says True West Executive Editor Bob Boze Bell. “They keep the Old West alive.”

Boggs, who’s been honored four times with a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, selected the winners for this annual award based on his extensive travels, research and firsthand experiences in visiting Western museums each year.  He analyzed their grand showcases of the American West in 2009—“and they had to be really cool,” says Boggs.

Join the Stampede!

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Join the Stampede


New Mexico History Museum’s Grand Opening Events
Promise Two Free Days of Family Fun

After 20 years in the planning – not to mention centuries in the making – New Mexico’s newest museum opens its doors to the public at noon on Sunday, May 24, 2009. It wouldn’t be a Santa Fe event without a Santa Fe-style party, and we’re pulling out the stops.

With events and entertainment at the Museum, in the Palace of the Governors’ shady courtyard and on the Santa Fe Plaza, there’s a little something for everyone. Lowriders, Mariachi music, flamenco dancing, Celtic pipers, Native American drummers, and Chautauqua performers are just part of what you’ll find, along with a free Ice Cream Social 1-4pm Monday, May 25, in the Palace Courtyard.

All of it’s in honor of the New Mexico History Museum, http://www.nmhistorymuseum.org/, the state’s newest museum, which includes interactive multimedia displays, hands-on exhibits, and vivid stories of real New Mexicans. As a 96,000-square-foot extension of the 400 year-old Palace of the Governors – the oldest continually occupied government building in the US – the New Mexico History Museum anchors itself on the historic Santa Fe Plaza and offers a sampling of the people and the legends to be found throughout the state. Get into it! Come be a part of history in the making!

Schedule of events:

Sunday, May 24, 2009
9am-noon:
Members-only preview and light breakfast. Find out how to become a member at www.museumfoundation.org or sign up at the event.

12-6pm:
Free admission to the History Museum and its exhibits, along with all other state museums in Santa Fe.

12-1pm:
Native American drumming in the Palace Courtyard.

1-3 pm:
Ribbon-cutting with Dr. Frances Levine, director of the Museum, and other dignitaries in the Palace Courtyard. Presentation of the Colors by La Orden Military; Pledge of Allegiance; Blessings of the Ground; ribbon-cutting and ceremonial walk over the bridge connecting the Palace Courtyard to the Museum.

3-6 pm:
Procession of lowriders and display outside the Palace. Participants includes Joseph, Matt and Bobby Chacon; Almardo and Pam Jaramillo; Victor Martinez.

3-4 pm:
Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Team performance (Dia de los Niños/Dia de los Libros) on the Plaza. Indigenous youth writers, the team members have received national recognition for performances of poetry that incorporate Native languages and philosophies. The school’s spoken-word program demonstrates the importance of culture, history, tradition, identity and poetry. The youths are coached by teacher and writer Tim McLaughlin.

3-5:30 pm:
Museum of New Mexico Press/University of New Mexico Press book signings in the History Museum Gathering Space.

4-4:30 pm:
Kenpo Po Karate Karate School demonstration on the Plaza. Like the History Museum, the Kenpo School believes the next generation – our future history-makers – will be more successful with a confident and well-rounded childhood. Participants: D’Kota Potter, 5; Carlos Garcia, 5; Markus Vigil, 10; Evan Watkins, 7; Fernanda Carranza, 9; Maria Lozova, 12; Tommy Dearing, 14; Maria Najarro.

4:30-5 pm:
Mariachi Sonidos del Monte (Sounds of the Mountain) on the Plaza. With a variety of violins, trumpets, guitars, a guitarron, vihuela and a range of harmonic voices, this group is quickly becoming a Northern New Mexico favorite. The group plays traditional Mexican favorites with its own unique sound. Musicians include Raul Duran, violin; Sean Trujillo, violin; Anthony Ortiz, violin; Santiago Romero, guitar; Fernando Romero, guitarron; Rachel Miller, vihuela; Christina Gomez, guitar; Brandie Duran, violin; Eric Ortiz, trumpet; Nikki Brancha, trumpet.

5-6pm:
Institute for Spanish Arts and Maria Benítez’s La Generación performance on the Plaza. World-renowned flamenco dancer Maria Benítez, with the Institute for Spanish Arts, formed this company of young New Mexicans to preserve and strengthen our rich and diverse artistic heritage. Since 2003, the company has fostered new generations of artists and audiences by stimulating public awareness of Hispanic and Spanish art and culture – bolstering the Museum’s desire to carry a legacy of history and identity to the next generation. The company, consisting of children ages 10-18, has performed throughout the state. Maria Benítez, with her husband, Cecilio, founded and direct Maria Benítez Teatro Flamenco, long known for its commitment to excellence.

6-6:30pm:
Order of the Thistle pipes and drums on the Plaza. Besides performing throughout New Mexico, this band attended the Pipefest ’05 in Edinburgh, Scotland, marching with more than 400 bands from around the world. They show that New Mexico has more than three cultures comprising its varied heritage. The band, wearing the muted MacDonald tartan, range from 10-year-olds to seniors. Members include Ron Crawford, pipe major; Lisa Lashley, pipe sergeant; Gwyneth Duncan, drum sergeant; Ed Hansen, piper; Cullen Dwyer, drummer, bass; Paulette Keeney, piper; Louis Jacobs, drummer, tenor.

Monday, May 25:
10am-5pm:
Free admission to the History Museum and its exhibits, along with all other state museums in Santa Fe.

10am:
Interfaith service at St. Francis Cathedral.

11am:
Processional parade from the Cathedral to the Museum with Los Caballeros, the Santa Fe Fiesta Council, representatives of Native American groups and New Mexico Historical societies, and others.

11:30am:
Lion Dancers from the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of New Mexico perform outside the Museum. (Feed the lion dollar bills for good luck!)

12-5pm:
Live music and dance on the Santa Fe Plaza from various periods and cultures of New Mexico, including Andrew Tomas on Native American flute; Barbershop Sounds; Santa Fe Community Band; National Dance Institute; Not-So-Andrews Sisters; Alamogordo Ballet Folklorica Dancers; Call of the Drums.

Throughout the Plaza, characters from the past, dressed in the costumes of their time, reappear, ready to tell their stories, answer questions and pose for pictures.

12-4pm: The Santa Fe Vintage Car Club roars into the Plaza to display shining examples of the vehicles that once carried Americans across the Southwest.

1-2:30pm: Members of Sociedad Folklorica join members of New Mexico’s tribes and pueblos to model historical clothing, complementing the Museum’s premiere rotating exhibition, “Fashioning New Mexico.” Come to the Museum’s upstairs Gathering Space to enjoy the show.

1-4 pm: The Route 66 Ice Cream Parlor sets up shop in the Palace Courtyard, offering free scoops served by members of Kenpo 5.0 Team Silva. Live music and historical photo boards to pose yourself into (bring a camera!).

Team Silva – professional cage-fighter Paul Silva and his father/mentor/cornerman Gilbert H. Silva – along with fighting colleagues Paul Tapia, Tony Potter, Ricky Salas and Leroy Ortega, are taking off the gloves and picking up the scoops as part of their shared goal with the Museum to promote family, values, self-realization and nurturing for the next generation.

2:30-4 pm: Telling New Mexico, the book accompanying the Museum’s core exhibition, will be unveiled at a book signing and panel discussion among authors who contributed to the collection of historical essays. Enjoy your first event in the Museum’s brand-new auditorium and get a copy of what’s sure to become a must-have historical resource.

New Mexico History Museum
at 113 Lincoln Avenue, just behind the Palace of the Governors on the Santa Fe Plaza

For more information about the New Mexico History Museum, including a selection of user-ready high-resolution photographs, log onto http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/nmhm. More than 8,000 additional, high-resolution photographs illustrating the history of New Mexico are available by keyword search at www.palaceofthegovernors.org (click on “Photo Archives” then on “Digitized Collections”). Most requests for scans from this site can be delivered the same day, and usage is free for publicity purposes only.

Previous releases:
Four Centuries of History: the Fiestas de Santa Fe

Where ancient artifacts meet cutting-edge art

Fashioning New Mexico

The Tiffany Ties that Bind

The Railroad Wars

The New Face of History

The Tales that Made the American West

New Mexico History Museum’s Core Exhibits

Telling the People’s Stories: A Message from the Director

Creating a Place for Our Past, by Dr. Frances Levine, El Palacio, Summer 2006

Other Sites:
NM History Museum on Twitter
NM History Museum on Facebook

Media Contacts:
Kate Nelson
New Mexico History Museum
505 476 1141
Kate.Nelson@state.nm.us
www.nmhistorymuseum.org

Rachel Mason
Ballantines PR
Rachel@ballantinespr.com
505 216 0889
www.ballantinespr.com

SCHEDULE SUMMARY

Saturday, May 23rd
6:30 – 9pm
New Mexico History Museum Grand Opening Gala
$200 per person
e-mail heather@museumfoundation.org or
call 505-982-6366 x116 to RSVP

Sunday, May 24
9am – Noon
New Mexico History Museum
Members-Only Preview
Reserve at membership@museumfoundation.org

Noon – 6pm
New Mexico History Museum Public Opening
Free

Noon – 6:00 pm
New Mexico Creates Shop Opens
Members receive 10% discount
http://www.newmexicocreates.org/

Noon-1pm
Native American drumming in the Palace Courtyard

1-3pm
Official ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Palace Courtyard

3-6pm
Low-rider exhibition outside the Palace

3-4pm
Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Team performance on the Plaza

3-5:30pm
Museum of New Mexico Press/University of New Mexico Press book signings in the History Museum’s Gathering Space

4-4:30pm
Kenpo Po Karate School demonstration on the Plaza

4:30-5pm
Mariachi Sonidos del Monte (Sounds of the Mountain) on the Plaza

5-6pm
Institute for Spanish Arts and Maria Benitez’ La Nueva Generación flamenco performance on the Plaza

6-6:30pm
Order of the Thistle pipes and drums on the Plaza

Monday, May 25
10:00 am – 5:00 pm
New Mexico History Museum Family Day
Free

10am
Interfaith Service at St. Francis Cathedral

11am
Procession from the Cathedral to the History Museum

11:30am
Lion Dancers from the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of New Mexico perform outside the Museum (feed the lions dollar bills for good luck!)

Noon-5pm
Music and dance on the Plaza Gazebo.

Noon-4pm
Santa Fe Vintage Car Club exposition

1-4pm
Route 66 Ice Cream Parlor’s Ice Cream Social in the Palace Courtyard

1-2:30pm
Sociedad Folklorico complement to the exhibition: Fashioning New Mexico

2:30-4pm:
Book signing and panel discussion of Telling New Mexico in the Museum Auditorium

Where ancient artifacts meet cutting-edge art

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Where ancient artifacts meet cutting-edge art

Welcome to the latest installment of our media-release series, “Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now.” See the links below for previous releases, along with information about obtaining photographs to accompany your coverage.


“Green Fragment” – Kumi Yamashita


Fragments, 40 Resin Casts
Kumi Yamashita


Kumi Yamashita At Her Studio


“Rio Grende Colcha” – Paula Castillo

Santa Fe, NM – A 20-foot metal sculpture crawls along an exterior wall, mimicking the life-giving Rio Grande. Inside, a magical mix of sculpted resin and strategic spotlights turns apparently mundane objects into an amazing array of shadows.

Cutting-edge contemporary art in the nation’s newest history museum? It could only happen in New Mexico, where artistic traditions have had millennia to grow deep roots and produce the sweetest of fruit.

Besides honoring more than 400 years of cultural interactions, the New Mexico History Museum, opening May 24, is delighted to include works by Kumi Yamashita and Paula Castillo in its permanent collection and on public display. Their intriguing creations come courtesy of the 1% for the Arts initiative, also called the Art in Public Places Program.

The artists began installing their works this week and are available for interviews and photographs.

Started in 1986 as a way to keep the arts alive and present, the Art in Public Places Program requires a 1 percent set-aside in every public building budget of more than $100,000 for cities, counties and the state. The money is used to acquire public art to display in, on, or around the building.

At a time when public funding for cultural endeavors is at risk, the program provides a stream of revenue that helps enrich our citizens’ lives while supporting artists and craftspeople. It echoes the WPA initiatives of the Depression era, when artists’ and craftspeople’s paintings, furniture and architecture achieved a pinnacle that stands today. The New Mexico History Museum is proud to continue in that tradition by working with artists who are crafting their own interpretations of what it means to be in New Mexico.

Kumi Yamashita works heavily with light and shadow in ways that defy description. (A video of her displaying a few of her pieces on a Japanese TV show, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulzyrV8IjE0, has been a regular You Tube sensation.) She’s crafting two pieces for the Museum’s second-floor interior:

  • Fragments consists of 40 cast-resin tiles arrayed in an oval shape. Though they appear to simply be colored blocks, when lit, they reveal the shadows of human faces – actual New Mexicans, whose photographs she took on a statewide tour.
  • Untitled begins with a simple frame in the shape of New Mexico. When lit, it casts the shadow of a man sitting on the southern border while gazing at the stars.

“One of the issues I focus on is the boundary we create within ourselves by categorizing the world,” Yamashita says. “Through my work, I wish to remind ourselves of how we preconceive what is around and inside us. Knowledge, ideas, and values are too often accepted without questioning. Can we find a way to evaporate ourselves from a pond and condensate over an ocean? Can we see a common thread that connects all things?”

Yamashita has been a visiting artist and guest lecturer at universities and academies in the United States, Turkey, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Japan, and has received residencies such as the Roswell Artist in Residence Program, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the Millay Colony, the Aomori International Art Center and the Border Art Residency in New Mexico. Her work is on permanent display in public spaces in Seattle, Osaka, Hokkaido, and Tokyo and is a part of museum collections in Boise, Idaho and Shimane.

Paula Castillo is a well-known, native New Mexican artist, based in Cordova. She frequently works with discarded pieces from industrial metal fabrication processes and is preparing four works for the Museum’s exterior:

  • A set of benches sculpted to resemble the mountains of New Mexico, will be placed to the left of the Museum’s main entrance at 113 Lincoln Ave.
  • On the west face of the Museum, Dos Arboles, Dos Hermanas (Two Trees, Two Sisters) will begin at ground level, then climb 32 feet high, cresting the roofline of the Museum.
  • Rio Grande Colcha, an image of the Rio Grande and all of her tributaries in a colcha, or traditional Spanish embroidery, design, will span 20 feet across the west face of the museum.
  • On the wall of Museum’s second-story patio terrace, Castillo will craft an excerpt from the Nambe Pueblo Tewa poem, “My home over there, Now I remember it.”

Collectively, the pieces reference mountains, trees, rivers and homes – a simple yet profound way to understand the connection between the natural world and the cultural history of New Mexico. Castillo says she intends to introduce visitors to the always contingent, personal and human-scaled history of New Mexico.

“For me, form is complex and adaptable with all of its hundreds of fluid and solid systems: regional watersheds, train sounds, star flows, off the interstate, waving at someone,” she says. ”Like hydrogen attaching to oxygen in a flowing hexagonal movement or a group of people laughing at an absent minded gesture, I see form as alive and emerging from itself in an easy flash.”

Using art to help tell the story of the people who were and are the fabric of New Mexico was only natural. Dr. Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum, notes that art has been, and continues to be, a vital part of the state’s culture.

“Artistic expression has played an important role in New Mexico’s culture from its earliest days,” Dr. Levine says. “From Native American pottery and weavings through Spanish devotional objects of colonial life, to the Taos Artists and WPA craftspeople. Our collections at the New Mexico History Museum celebrate those traditions, and their roots continue to bear fruit today. The works of Paula and Kumi help us connect the Museum to this longer artistic history. We are pleased that these works relate to our history and to the present.”

Loie Fecteau, executive director of New Mexico Arts, the agency that oversees the 1 Percent for the Arts program, calls public art “the most democratic of all the art forms because it really does belong to all of us.”

“New Mexico has long been recognized as having one of the strongest and most innovative public art programs in the country, which I think is really fitting given the historical importance of the arts in our state and the way the arts are treasured and embedded in our many diverse cultures,” Fecteau says. “Our Legislature is really to be commended for having the foresight to create our state 1 percent for public art program more than 40 years ago,” Fecteau said.

Fecteau notes that the program has placed more than 2,200 pieces across New Mexico in each of the state’s 33 counties.

Art is a subjective media; it allows the viewer to take what they will from it, to draw their own conclusions. In the same way, the New Mexico History Museum sets out to allow visitors the opportunity to decide for themselves what “really” happened. Create your own place in history. Get into it! Join us at the grand opening of the New Mexico History Museum, www.nmhistorymuseum.org/, on May 24, 2009.

For more information about the New Mexico History Museum, including a selection of user-ready high-resolution photographs, log onto http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/nmhm. More than 8,000 additional, high-resolution photographs illustrating the history of New Mexico are available by keyword search at www.palaceofthegovernors.org (click on “Photo Archives” then on “Digitized Collections”). Most requests for scans from this site can be delivered the same day, and usage is free for publicity purposes only.

Previous releases:

The Tiffany Ties that Bind

The Railroad Wars

The New Face of History

The Tales that Made the American West

New Mexico History Museum’s Core Exhibits

Telling the People’s Stories: A Message from the Director

Creating a Place for Our Past, by Dr. Frances Levine, El Palacio, Summer 2006

Other Sites:

NM History Museum on Twitter

NM History Museum on Facebook

For media inquiries, please contact:
Kate Nelson
New Mexico History Museum
505 476 1141
Kate.Nelson@state.nm.us
www.nmhistorymuseum.org

Rachel Mason
Ballantines PR
Rachel@ballantinespr.com
505 216 0889
www.ballantinespr.com

Grand Opening: May 24, 2009!

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Some people say that “history is written by the winners.” The New Mexico History Museum, opening May 24, 2009, sets out to challenge that notion by taking a new approach, engaging visitors in the craft of history. Rather than staidly reporting what “happened,” the New Mexico History Museum presents a theatrical environment and the powerful stories of the many cultures that have called the Land of Enchantment home. Sometimes those cultures blended. Sometimes they clashed. Always, they added new stitches to a tapestry of life that’s among the oldest in the nation. Whether those stitches were for good or ill is up to visitors to decide. The museum allows them to reach their own conclusions about what “really” happened.


Kit Carson