Imagining New Mexico

Over the past century artists have imagined and reimagined New Mexico through their work. The New Mexico Museum of Art presents an exhibition of work from the collection that investigates how artists in New Mexico have responded to key themes as they relate to the state’s identity. New Mexico, like all places, is as much an idea as it is a geographical location. This exhibition considers how the states identity was formed by various, sometimes fantastical and often contradictory interpretations of the areas land, traditions, and histories. Imagining New Mexico does not presume to be a complete survey of the history of the state, but instead a collection of fantasies about what New Mexico has come to mean for artists over time.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Light, Landscape and the Creative Quest: Early Artists of Santa Fe is a highly acclaimed, award-winning book set (2012 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards) including a 272-page hardcover book, Light, Landscape and the Creative Quest: Early Artists of Santa Fe, introducing the artists who made up Santa Fe's original art community in the early days of the 20th century, and is published with an 88-page accompanying booklet, Walking in the Path of the Artists, a series of walking tours that take the reader past the homes of Santa Fe's early artists. 

Beautifully illustrated, the books include 120 color images of artwork - the majority from private collections - and 49 black and white archival photographs. Suzan Campbell, PhD, art historian, curator and author wrote: "This excellent and engaging new study of the early artists of the Santa Fe art colony offers fascinating and important new scholarship along with a wealth of gorgeous illustrations, many of them never before published." A reader's comment: "The book arrived and it is absolutely fantastic - visually gorgeous too. It provides such a sense of place - 'terroir,' to borrow a wine term. Bravo!"

Light, Landscape and the Creative Quest: Early Artists of Santa Fe