story and photos by Kayte Deioma
Across the street on the north-west corner of the Plaza is the Museum of Fine Arts. Built in 1917 to house the Museum of New Mexico’s art collection, the Pueblo Revival structure is a blend of Native American and Spanish colonial design. The collection focuses on painting, photography, works on paper and sculpture created in or related to New Mexico and the Southwest.
The museum’s heavily beamed auditorium features murals depicting the life of the city’s patron, St. Francis of Assisi, designed by Donald Beauregard. The murals were finished by Carlos Vierra and Kenneth M. Chapman after Beauregard’s death. Murals around the courtyard depict Native American culture in the New Mexico landscape.
The current exhibit Who’s Who? And What’s What? : New Mexico Connections is an interesting collection of portraits representing the
complex relationships among of the New Mexico arts, social, philanthropic and political communities. It brings into focus the small-town environment of the Santa Fe and Taos arts communities , where anyone of note is likely to know everyone else. New Mexico Connections runs through January 9, 2006. A related exhibit, Self Portraits from the Permanent Collection, shows self portraits of some of the artists in the other exhibits, including Donald Beauregard who painted the murals in the auditorium. It runs through June 12, 2005.
June 10 through October 10, 2005 the Museum will open a new exhibit featuring the bronze horses, dancers and women of French artist Edgar Degas along side new bronze works from New Mexico’s artists and foundries inExplorations in Bronze: Degas and New Mexico Sculptors.
The pilgrimage to the Museum of New Mexico continues: The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture , the Museum of International Folk Arts, and The Palace of the Governors.
For more information, visit www.mfasantafe.org.
