New Mexico Museum of Art Fiscal Year Feats
$243,000
received for special projects, including $200,000 to restore the pipe organ in Saint Francis Auditorium
$21,000
raised for exhibitions
$21,000 raised for education
$154,000
in endowment payouts
$12.5
million Centennial Campaign completed
Museums will always matter A Year of Milestones
Mark A. White, the new executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Art, has committed to memory what attorney Frank Springer said at the museum’s opening more than a century ago. “While the past may teach us, it is the future that calls and beckons us,” Springer told a crowd at the dedication of the 1917 museum building. At the close of fiscal year 2020 (July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020), with construction in progress on the Vladem Contemporary building in the Railyard, the call for the future of the museum is upon us. With two buildings representing a unified vision, White says the institution is setting its sights on providing a “forum for the ongoing dialogue regarding where we come from, what we are, and where we’re going.” White’s appointment to the museum directorship was announced in April, weeks after the building closed to the public due to COVID-19. Despite the slowdown, the Museum of New Mexico Foundation raised $505,000 for the art museum in FY2020. And as the Centennial Campaign reached its capital funding goal, work began on the next goal, says Museum of New Mexico Foundation President/CEO Jamie Clements. “A major milestone for the Museum of Art in FY2020 was the completion of the $12.5 million Centennial Campaign,” says Clements. “With the capital funds in hand to construct the Vladem Contemporary, we now look to raise over $1 million in the next two years to support exhibition development and educational programs at the 1917 building on the Plaza as well as during the Vladem’s 2022 inaugural year.”
“What matters more than ever is the collection and the public engagement with it.” Considering the Collection During the closure of the downtown Museum of Art, head of curatorial affairs Merry Scully declared, “What matters more than ever is the collection and the public engagement with it.” That philosophy was translated by museum staff into participation in the #NMTwinning competition, in which social media users presented their own interpretations of artworks in the museum’s collection.
12 museumfoundation.org
