CORPORATE PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Blue Rain Gallery

Neighbors in Art and Community

When Blue Rain Gallery first partnered with the Museum of New Mexico Foundation in 2005, they were neighbors located a couple doors down from each other on Lincoln Avenue in downtown Santa Fe.

“We had this great big parking lot in the back of the gallery,” remembers Denise Phetteplace, Blue Rain’s executive director. “A lot of the Foundation board members who were going to meetings would park in the lot. They’d come and look at art in the gallery and then go to their meeting. And then, they’d come back and look again on their way out. Relationships just kind of build that way.”

Beginning as a Business Council member, Blue Rain became a Corporate Partner of the Foundation in 2021, contributing at the $5,000 leadership level. “You figure out the lay of the land,” Phetteplace explains, “and then your purposes dovetail inevitably.”

The mutually beneficial relationship has allowed Foundation and museum staff, in addition to board members, to acquaint themselves with Blue Rain’s diverse roster of contemporary artists working in various mediums, including paintings, sculpture, glass, ceramics and jewelry. It helps that gallery founder and owner Leroy Garcia is a former Foundation trustee who now sits on its advisory board.

“There’s an open line of communication there,” Phetteplace says, adding that Blue Rain has helped build awareness for Foundation education- and exhibition-related development projects. “Over the years, we’ve hosted a number of events that have promoted learning in terms of the artwork we show and the different artists we work with,” she says.

During its long affiliation with the Foundation, Blue Rain has contributed through membership and the Annual Fund and to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s education programs and annual Native Treasures event. Their passion for representing Native artists in their gallery extends to their museum support, including helping to secure a number of pieces for the Clearly Indigenous glass exhibition, on view through June 16 at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

The gallery’s contributions to the future Vladem Contemporary further reflects their commitment to promoting contemporary Indigenous artists in their gallery and beyond.

“The Foundation is a vital organization in our community,” says Phetteplace. “I don’t know where we’d be as an art community without the umbrella of museums we enjoy.”

Interior of Blue Rain Gallery. Photo courtesy Blue Rain Gallery. For information on becoming a Corporate Partner, contact Mariann Lovato at 505.216.0849 or Mariann@museumfoundation.org.