Exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

This list contains brief summaries of small and large changing exhibitions previously presented at the New Mexico History Museum. For additional information about past exhibitions, please contact the museum.

Art from the Heart & Good Cheer for the New Year
11/17/2023 – 02/18/2024

The New Mexico History Museum presents "Art from the Heart & Good Cheer for the New Year": Gustave Baumann and artists’ friends holiday card exhibition, a captivating display of holiday cards created by renowned woodcut artist Gustave Baumann. This special exhibition will be on view from November 17, 2023 to February 18, 2024 in the Palace of the Governor’s.   Gustave Baumann, a prolific artist known for his masterful woodcut prints, paintings, and marionettes, extended his artistic vision to his holiday cards. For ...

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Solidarity Now! 1968 Poor People’s Campaign
10/14/2023 – 01/14/2024

Supported by the CVS Health Foundation, Solidarity Now! is a Smithsonian Institution traveling show based on a National Museum of African American History and Culture exhibition. It investigates the factors surrounding the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, which was a six-week, multi-ethnic, live-in demonstration at the nation’s capital, called Resurrection City. Organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. prior to his assassination, the movement focused on poverty as a human rights issue. A New Mexico delegation, led by land grant activist Reies ...

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Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and World War II
10/23/2022 – 12/31/2022

Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Examines the Complex History of WWII Japanese American Incarceration Camps

The New Mexico History Museum announces the opening of the Smithsonian traveling exhibition “Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and World War II”. The exhibition examines the complicated history and impact of Executive Order 9066 that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Honoring Tradition and Innovation: 100-Years of Santa Fe's Indian Market 1922-2022
08/07/2022 – 08/31/2023

The New Mexico History Museum presents an exhibition that commemorates a century of Santa Fe’s Indian Market. Honoring Tradition and Innovation: 100 Years of Santa Fe’s Indian Market 1922-2022, traces the history of this historic market and explores the impact of Federal Indian policies on the Native American art world. Many of these policies are reflected in the social and economic trends that shaped Indian Market through the years. The exhibition celebrates the artists and collectors who have made it possible and includes over 200 pieces of artwork by ...

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Stories, Memories, and Legacies
04/09/2022 – 05/06/2022

Located on a hill at the Frank S. Ortiz Park in Santa Fe, NM, stands a stone Marker, placed there April 20, 2002, commemorating the Santa Fe Internment Camp (SFIC). Established in March of 1942, the camp interned over 4,500 Japanese immigrant men, making it one of America’s largest prison camps for resident aliens in the United States during WWII. Please join the New Mexico History Museum (NMHM) and the New Mexico Japanese American Citizens League as we inform and remind attendees of the historical existence of the U.S. Justice Department internment camp on the ...

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Curative Powers: New Mexico's Hot Springs
03/18/2022 – 09/04/2022

The New Mexico History Museum is pleased to present Curative Powers: New Mexico’s Hot Springs, a photographic history of our state’s many hot springs.

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In Search of Domínguez and Escalante: Photographing the 1776 Expedition Through the Southwest
09/03/2021 – 06/19/2022

Beginning in 2003, photographers Siegfried Halus and Greg Mac Gregor set out with their cameras and maps in hand to document the contemporary changes to the land that friars Domínguez and Escalante traversed in 1776. Halus and Mac Gregor’s photographs are the basis for the New Mexico History Museum’s long-awaited exhibition, In Search of Domínguez and Escalante, on view through summer 2022 in the Palace of the Governors and based on their book of the same title.

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WORDS on the Edge
05/29/2020 – 08/31/2022

WORDS on the Edge consists of twenty-six poetry broadsides and lyrical texts addressing themes of nature and its irresponsible destruction. Twenty-six notable poets, artists, and writers have been paired with an equal number of highly regarded letterpress printers from four countries. Included in the collection are Arthur Sze, Santa Fe’s first Poet Laureate, and Thomas Leech, curator of the Palace Press.

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Looking Back
03/08/2020 – 10/17/2021

How does a museum acquire its collections? Are they purchased or donated? Where is everything stored, and how are things maintained? Why does the New Mexico History Museum have objects and photographs from faraway places? Looking Back: Reflecting on Collections explores these questions and many more as we delve into our museum’s collecting history since the late 19th century.

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A Walk on the Moon
07/16/2019 – 10/20/2019

Come be a part of the world wide celebration of our nation’s space history and learn about the role New Mexico played in it.

On display will be the Mercury Space Capsule 12B, created as a backup for the mission and on loan from the Smithsonian Institute, which illustrates the series of one-manned exploration missions leading up to the Apollo 11 lunar 8-day mission and first moon landing.

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A Past Rediscovered: Highlights from the Palace of the Governors
05/11/2019 – 10/20/2019

The Palace of the Governors museum will share stories of the past-and of living communities in New Mexico at the Albuquerque Museum. This must-see exhibit will display Spanish Colonial paintings, images from the dawn of photography to contemporary digital prints, nineteenth-century retablos and bultos, turn-of-the-century clothing, rare books and maps, and many more fascinating objects. Never before in its history, as a public museum, have the Palace of the Governor’s vast collections been celebrated in a comprehensive exhibition accompanied by an overarching ...

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We the Rosies: Women at Work
03/28/2019 – 03/28/2020

In collaboration with the crowdsourcing sculpture collective We the Builders, the New Mexico History Museum will exhibit We the Rosies: Women at Work. This exhibit, celebrating the 1940s iconic symbol Rosie the Riveter, which has stood as an international symbol of women’s labor and empowerment, will open during this year’s women’s history month. The exhibit showcases a 3D printed sculpture of Rosie created through the joint effort of an international body of 700 persons, containing 2,625 individual parts, and will include ongoing profiles of New ...

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Gustave Baumann Santa Fe Holiday Card Display
12/20/2018 – 01/31/2019

Gustave Baumann exchanged hand printed holiday cards with artist friends who lived both in Santa Fe and other parts of the world. A selection of these cards are on display in the Chávez History Library for an intimate look into the lives of the Baumann family and their friends.

Library access by appointment only.

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On Exhibit: Designs That Defined the Museum of New Mexico
10/26/2018 – 07/28/2019

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.

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Atomic Histories
06/03/2018 – 01/19/2020

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 

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Meridel Rubenstein's Oppenheimer's Chair and The Meeting
06/03/2018 – 06/08/2019

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".

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The Land that Enchants Me So: Picturing Popular Songs of New Mexico
03/02/2018 – 09/29/2019

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 ...

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Alzheimer's Poetry Marble Paper Project
11/10/2017 – 08/25/2018

Three hands-on workshops on creating marbled paper were led by Tom Leech, curator of the Press at the Palace of the Governors, and took place at Art Street in Albuquerque, and Santa Fe Cares and Sierra Vista in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The artists and poets created original group poems inspired by the marble paper with poets Joanne Dwyer, Gary Glazner and Michelle Otero.

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Out of the Box: The Art of the Cigar
10/14/2017 – 02/12/2018

From the 1880s into the early 20th century, cigar manufacturers provided an avenue for the lithographic arts to flourish. Layering up to 10 colors in a stone-lithography process and even adding gold embellishments and stamped embossings, the images sold cigars through romantic landscapes, Western adventures, and iconic representations of women. In Out of the Box: The Art of the Cigar, opening Oct. 7, 2016, Palace Press Curator Thomas Leech shares primo examples to showcase the rich breadth of artwork created during the golden age of cigar box labels.

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A Mexican Mirror
10/06/2017 – 03/25/2018

This exhibit features Mexican prints made by the Taller de Gráfica Popular (the Peoples’ Graphic Workshop) from the collection of Senator Jeff and Anne Bingaman, along with other prints by contemporary artists working with the same commitment and passion for social justice. 

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Syria: Cultural Patrimony Under Threat
06/23/2017 – 11/03/2017

As Syria’s ongoing civil war, staggering death toll, and displacement of thousands of refugees threatens to destroy Syrian culture, the Palace of the Governors will display seven albums of photographs of historic sites in Syria taken between 1899 and 1909. Entitled Syria: Cultural Patrimony Under Threat, the exhibition will includes a multi-functional information kiosk with insights into Syrian people and culture.

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Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest
05/14/2017 – 02/11/2018

At a time when concerts and gatherings on the West Coast gave birth to 1967’s infamous “Summer of Love,” New Mexico was experiencing its own social and environmental revolution depicted in Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest. On display through February 11, 2018, the exhibition spans the decades of the 60s and 70s exploring this influx of young people to New Mexico and the subsequent collision of cultures. Through archival footage, oral histories, photography, ephemera and artifacts, the exhibition examines this cultural revolution and asks how ...

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Sleeping During the Day
04/07/2017 – 09/24/2017

There is no shortage of photographs documenting the horrors of the Vietnam War. In fact, between military photographers and the free press, millions of photographs of the Vietnam conflict were taken between 1962 and 1975. But, there are very few that document the war from the perspective of a young gay man serving in the United States Army. 

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Agnes Martin and Me
08/05/2016 – 08/05/2017

Shrouded in myth, the artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004), an iconic figure in 20th-century art, was emotionally and artistically tortured, exquisitely sensitive yet socially inept. Canadian born, she started to make a name for herself in the New York art scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but in 1967, abandoned her career for a reclusive life in the New Mexico desert. She did not return to her work for nearly a decade. Several years after she began creating art again, photographer Donald Woodman met her and remained a fixture in her life from 1977 through 1984. In ...

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Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities
05/22/2016 – 12/31/2016

In 1492, Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued a royal edict ordering all Jews to either leave the country or convert to Catholicism. The Spanish Inquisition (and later, the Portugese and Mexican Inquisitions) stood ready to persecute anyone who failed to abide. Violators would endure prisons, torture and death. Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition, and New World Identities, opening May 22, 2016, leaps into the ensuing diaspora, a journey that stretches back to biblical times. For the first time, a major institution tells the ...

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Lowriders, Hoppers, and Hot Rods: Car Culture of Northern New Mexico
05/01/2016 – 03/05/2017

Take a ride into the creative reimaginings of American steel as captured in photographs, hubcaps, hood ornaments, car show banners and, yes, actual cars. Lowriders, Hoppers, and Hot Rods: Car Culture of Northern New Mexico at the New Mexico History Museum, focuses on mobile works of art and their makers—home-grown Nuevomexicanos who customize, detail, paint and upholster these favorite symbols of Hispanic culture.

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Santa Fe Faces: Alan Pearlman Photographs
03/13/2016 – 09/18/2016

In 2009, photographer Alan Pearlman set out on a quest to capture the soul of Santa Fe in a series of staged portraits. Some of the results take center stage as archival pigment prints in the New Mexico History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery, March 13–September 18, 2016. Santa Fe Faces: Alan Pearlman Photographs features a selection from 90 portraits he took between 2009 and 2013. Included among them are images of flamenco artist Juan Siddi and Turquoise Trail rancher Archie West. Through them, Pearlman aimed to reveal a moment in the City Different’s ...

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The Book's the Thing: Shakespeare from Stage to Page
02/05/2016 – 03/26/2016

The Palace Press presents a special exhibition in collaboration with the New Mexico Museum of Art’s First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare. The Book’s the Thing: Shakespeare from Stage to Page offers a multi-part exhibit with a hands-on twist: The printers make facsimiles of a First Folio page using a replica “Gutenberg” wooden hand press. (Lucky visitors can make their own prints for a take-home treat.) In addition, members of the Santa Fe Book Arts Group have crafted contemporary art books inspired by the works of Shakespeare. And ...

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Along the Pecos
06/19/2015 – 07/25/2016

One of the staples of desert life is the presence—or scarcity—of water. Its importance can be seen across eastern New Mexico, where the Pecos River strives to quench a fragile, 926-mile riparian environment. Along the Pecos, a collage of photographs and sounds, opens June 19, 2015 on the second floor of the New Mexico History Museum. Developed by photographer Jennifer Schlesinger and the late composer Steven M. Miller, the materials were recently donated to the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, whose Photo Legacy Project collects the work of ...

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Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War
05/01/2015 – 02/26/2016

Civil War battles raged across America’s northern and southern states as Texas Confederates launched a plot: Head north and west through the New Mexico Territory with hopes of seizing California’s goldfields and sea ports. In 1862, battles erupted in Mesilla, Valverde, and Glorieta. Confederate forces briefly occupied the Palace of the Governors. Despite such victories, breaks in supply chains forced the Texans to retreat. While the carnage of Shiloh, Manassas and Gettysburg roiled the nation, New Mexico’s role in the Civil War faded—like the ...

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Gustave Baumann and Friends: Artist Cards from Holidays Past
11/07/2014 – 03/29/2015

Gustave Baumann is one of the most recognized and beloved names associated with the Santa Fe art world in the 20th century. For more than five decades, beginning in 1918, the internationally renowned printmaker cultivated friendships with other artists that were full of colorful, artistic, humorous and small-town flavor—all of it brought to life in holiday greeting cards they made for one another. With guileless good humor and steady craft, the cards captured the personal lives and preoccupations that encapsulate the memories and spirit of their times. In ...

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Before Bataan: New Mexico's 200th Coast Artillery
09/16/2014 – 10/12/2014

In August 1940, talk of war swirled around Camp Luna near Las Vegas, N.M. The 1,800 men of New Mexico’s 200th Coast Artillery Regiment gathered there to train one last time on home soil before heading to the Philippines. A photographer was there, capturing images of youth and dedication, young men unaware of the ordeals they soon would face. On Sept. 16 through Oct. 12, 2014, the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives will mount a special exhibition at the Jean Cocteau Cinema featuring 10 of those images. The exhibit represents a collaboration between the ...

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Painting the Divine: Images of Mary in the New World
06/29/2014 – 03/13/2016

A 1960s’ ecclesiastical wave of urban renewal inspired mission churches throughout the Americas to undergo renovations and, all too often, cast off centuries-old artwork. Charles W. Collier, a cultural attaché to Bolivia, and his wife, Nina Perera Collier, began purchasing and obtaining pieces that eventually formed the backbone of the International Institute of Iberian Colonial Art, once based at their Los Luceros estate in northern New Mexico. In 2005, with the promised construction of spacious galleries and a state-of-the-art collections vault at the ...

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Toys and Games: A New Mexico Childhood
05/25/2014 – 05/31/2015

Museums often focus on how we worked, how we fought, the businesses we built, and the challenges we overcame – the adult side of life. But before we became hard workers, everyone was a child, and every child shaped his or her play-world with toys. From the homemade or passed down to those bought new, toys deeply impact how we fill our childhood worlds. The History Museum collections contain a range of examples of how we played, and in observance of our fifth anniversary, we’ll display some of the most exquisite pieces in an installation in our front ...

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Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography
04/27/2014 – 01/10/2016

In an age when every cell phone can take a respectable picture, cameras as low-tech as an oatmeal box still beguile a legion of practitioners, both artistic and documentarian. With roots in the ancient discovery of the camera obscura, pinhole photography has enchanted artists from the 1880s through today. Opening April 27 through Jan. 10, 2016, Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography, in the Herzstein Gallery of the New Mexico History Museum, explores a historical art form that exemplifies thoroughly contemporary ideals: Do-it-yourself handmade technology with a dash of ...

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Donald Woodman: Transformed by New Mexico
02/23/2014 – 10/12/2014

Beginning with his early years working as a research photographer at the Sacramento Peak Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico, photographer Donald Woodman honed his photographic vision first through stars and clouds and then through sandy soil, majestic peaks and his own interior life. Donald Woodman: Transformed by New Mexico explores that journey through a series of photographs on exhibit February 23 through October 12, 2014, in the New Mexico History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery. Transformed by New Mexico is one of the commemorations of the History ...

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Cowboys Real and Imagined
04/14/2013 – 03/16/2014

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 ...

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Tall Tales of the Wild West: The Stories of Karl May
11/18/2012 – 02/09/2014

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 ...

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Altared Spaces: The Shrines of New Mexico
09/30/2012 – 02/10/2013

As havens of spirit and space, shrines have long claimed hallowed ground in the vast New Mexico landscape. In Altared Spaces: The Shrines of New Mexico, from Sept. 30, 2012, through Feb. 10, 2013, Jack Parsons, Donald Woodman, and Siegfried Halus exhibit their explorations into these special places. The exhibit augments the spirits expressed in the ongoing exhibitions, Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible and Contemplative Landscape in the Herzstein Changing Exhibits Gallery. The photographers kick off the exhibit on Sunday, September 30, with a 2 pm ...

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Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry
05/18/2012 – 11/04/2012

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 »

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47 Stars
01/06/2012 – 11/25/2012

From January 6 through November 25, 2012, the New Mexico History Museum commemorates New Mexico’s 1912 entry into the Union with 47 Stars, a collection of exhibits that includes the officially unofficial 47-star flag. 47 Stars includes long-term exhibits and a tongue-in-cheek front-window installation to help celebrate the state’s Centennial.

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Between the Lines: Culture and Cartography on the Road to Statehood
01/05/2012 – 05/04/2012

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 ...

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The Letter, the Word & the Book
11/18/2011 – 05/13/2012

Set on our mezzanine level, The Letter, the Word & the Book is a small exhibition that complements Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible by highlighting other 20th- and 21st-century practitioners of a centuries-old craft. Using calligraphy, engravings, enameling and more, the artists featured put a  contemporary twist on documents ranging from handbills to Bibles.

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Illuminating the Word: The Saint John's Bible
10/23/2011 – 12/30/2012

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 ...

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Contemplative Landscape
10/23/2011 – 12/30/2012

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 ...

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From a Distant Road
09/16/2011 – 05/29/2012

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 ...

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Home Lands: How Women Made the West
06/19/2011 – 09/11/2011

The storybook history of the American West is a male-dominated narrative of drifters, dreamers, hucksters, and heroes—a tale that relegates women, assuming they appear at all, to the distant background. Home Lands: How Women Made the West upends this view to remember the West as a place of homes and habitations brought into being by the women who lived there. From ancient pueblos to modern suburbs, women have shaped the Western landscape through choices about how to sustain home, family, and community. Home Lands, organized by the Autry National Center of Los ...

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Heart of the Home
05/27/2011 – 11/27/2011

The kitchen has long been called the heart of the home.  From cooking one-pot meals over an open fire to microwaving a pre-packaged dinner, the kitchen is the focal point for family gatherings. Heart of the Home, an installation in the front window of the History Museum features the hearth’s importance in our daily lives over time, using kitchen-related items from our collections. The exhibit joins the museum’s Women of the West summer celebration, highlighted by the exhibit Home Lands: How Women Made the West in the second-floor Albert and Ethel ...

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New Mexico's African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable
05/15/2011 – 10/09/2011

Since the 1860s, African Americans have been a significant presence in our state. The exhibition, New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital and Valuable, highlights the contributions of African Americans to New Mexico. Focused on Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and the brief, 19th-century community known as Blackdom, the exhibit reveals the iridescent threads African Americans have woven into this state’s cultural quilt. Curated by Clarence Fielder and Terry Moody, along with Brenda Ballon Dabney and Rita Powdrell, with graphics by Charlie Kenneson, ...

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Ranch Women of New Mexico
04/15/2011 – 10/30/2011

In conjunction with Home Lands: How Women Made the West, the museum’s Mezzanine Gallery will feature the work of Albuquerque photographer Ann Bromberg and Raton author Sharon Niederman, who have documented the lives of 11 ranch women who have "cow-girled" or owned ranches in the state over the past 50 years. Through black-and-white photographs and essays, the often-underestimated role of women in the West comes to life through the women’s dynamic contributions to the environment, their multicultural families, and their economic survival in a "boots on the ...

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Broadsides from the Al-Mutanabbi Street Project
03/04/2011 – 05/01/2011

On March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 30 people and wounding over 100 others. Al-Mutanabbi Street was for centuries the center of Baghdad bookselling, the heart and soul of Baghdad’s literary and intellectual community. The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, formed in April 2007, sent out a call to letterpress printers to craft a visual response to this attack. The response was immediate, and over 40 printers, including three from New Mexico, enthusiastically answered that first call with a powerful edition of ...

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A Passionate Light: The Polaroids of H. Joe Waldrum
01/30/2011 – 04/10/2011

A Passionate Light: The Polaroids of H. Joe Waldrum is a special exhibition shared by two museums – The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History and the New Mexico History Museum. On view at The Albuquerque Museum and in the Mezzanine Gallery at the New Mexico History Museum from January 30 through April 10, 2011, the exhibition explores Waldrum’s own exploration of SX-70 Polaroid monoprints, including his studies of northern New Mexico’s adobe churches.

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A Noble Legacy: The USS New Mexico
01/23/2011 – 05/09/2011

The proud history of the USS New Mexico stands front and center in La Ventana Gallery through May 9, with A Noble Legacy: The USS “New Mexico.” The special exhibition includes a hand-crafted model of the New Mexico (BB-40), a battleship that saw significant action in World War II; items related to the new USS New Mexico (SSN-779), a nuclear submarine; photographs from both ships; and a short documentary by KNME-TV telling BB-40’s dramatic story.

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El Hilo de la Memoria: España y los Estados Unidos
10/17/2010 – 01/09/2011

The New Mexico History Museum and Department of Cultural Affairs proudly announce that El Archivo General de Indias (the General Archive of the Indies) in Seville, Spain, has chosen Santa Fe for the American debut of El Hilo de la Memoria  (“The Threads of Memory”) an exhibit of rare documents, illustrations and maps detailing Spain’s early presence in North America. The exhibit – nearly 140 documents spanning Ponce de León’s first contact in Florida through New Mexico’s incorporation as a U.S. Territory – will ...

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Imagining Mexico: From the Aztec Empire to Colonial New Spain
10/01/2010 – 01/23/2011

In 1519, Hernán Cortés and a small group of Spanish soldiers made first contact with the Aztecs. The stories they sent back to Europe detailing the wealth and sophistication of the Aztec empire astonished their countrymen – and fed 300 years of efforts to write and re-write the story of the Mexican Conquest. From Oct. 1 through Jan. 23, 2011, the History Museum’s Triangle Gallery will present Imagining Mexico: From the Aztec Empire to Colonial New Spain, an original exhibit featuring books, prints and maps from the Fray Angélico ...

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Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton
05/23/2010 – 05/08/2011

Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton dedicates itself to telling the often overlooked story of the conservationist, author, artist, lecturer and co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America. Ernest Thompson Seton’s impact on America’s conservation movement was immeasurable but, today is largely forgotten. Wild at Heart: Ernest Thompson Seton sets out to change that.

A yearlong set of workshops and lectures supports the exhibit.

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Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time
11/20/2009 – 08/01/2018

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 ...

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Fashioning New Mexico
05/24/2009 – 04/11/2010

"Fashioning New Mexico," the inaugural exhibition in the New Mexico History Museum’s Changing Gallery, explores the clothes we wore over nearly two centuries of life’s milestones -- christenings, weddings, military service, opera openings and more. A variety of interactive stations challenge visitors to tie a corset or check out a virtual image of themselves in one of the collection’s outfits. The clothing and accessories have been collected for the last century. This exhibition marks the first time they have been on display.

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Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe
11/21/2008 – 10/25/2009

The Palace of the Governors is partnering with Santa Fe Community College on the exhibition, Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, as their contribution to Santa Fe’s celebration of its 400th anniversary.

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Treasures of Devotion/Tesoros de Devoción
07/20/2008 – 08/01/2018

Treasures of Devotion/Tesoros de Devoción contains bultos, retablos, and crucifijos dating from the late 1700s to 1900 which illustrate the distinctive tradition of santo making in New Mexico introduced by settlers from Mexico.

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Old Spanish Trail
05/25/2008 – 10/26/2008

The Old Spanish Trail was primarily a horse and mule pack route linking the village of Santa Fe to the Pueblo of Los Angeles. The trail evolved from a network of indigenous trade routes and exploratory routes that crossed the modern states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California.

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El Favor de los Santos
06/15/2007 – 04/20/2008

Divine intercession, miracles, blessings, and gestures of appreciation: retablos and ex-votos were a main form of devotion to saints and the Holy Family for nineteenth-century Mexican families.

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