Museum holiday goodies

cultural creatives

Mark Maggiori, Buffalo Dancer, 2021, Oil on linen, 40” x 28”

COURTESY OF COUSE-SHARP HISTORIC SITE

Taos museums keep holidays and traditions alive and well. Be sure to check out the marvelous art and culture of Taos, so important to the holiday season, as well as all seasons of every year.

Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte

“Through the Eyes of Fechin” Through Jan. 9, 2022 The work of renowned artist Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955) is on full display at the Fechin House this season. For over a century, artlovers have been drawn to Fechin’s work for its unique use of color and lines. Primarily featuring paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs from private collections not previously exhibited in Taos, this exhibition provides a unique opportunity to experience Fechin’s world through his keen eye.

The Taos Art Museum Store’s Holiday Sale runs from Nov. 16 to Dec. 24. Enjoy a 10 percent discount on everything in the store! In addition, members receive a 20 percent discount.

For online orders please enter JOY10. The Taos Art Museum at Fechin House is located at 227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte. Any questions, call 575-758-2690 or email museumstore@taosartmuseum.org.

Harwood Museum of Art

238 Ledoux Street, Taos

Remote Possibilities: Digital Landscapes from the Thoma Foundation Collection Through Feb. 27, 2022 This exhibition brings together six of the world’s foremost contemporary artists to engage the tradition of landscape art. John Gerrard, Kent Monkman, Bruce Nauman, Jennifer Steinkamp, Leo Villareal, and Marina Zurkow use digital technologies to search for meaning in the natural world.

Gus Foster: Panoramic Photographs of Northern New Mexico Through Apr 17, 2022 Gus Foster’s large-scale panoramic mountain photographs lead spectators on a pilgrimage to the rarified air at the top of the world. Gus Foster: Panoramic Photographs of Northern New Mexico includes works beginning from the artist’s first years in Taos in the 1970s working with antique panoramic cameras using black and white film, and moves through the 1980s-2000s when he began using cameras with new technology, color film, a unique enlarger for the large negatives, and a custom color darkroom of his own design and fabrication for 16-foot long photographic prints. The exhibition concludes with Foster’s recent digital camera work, no longer panoramic in format, but still exploring themes of time and space over 45 years of photographic work.

Millicent Rogers Museum

1504 Millicent Rogers Road, Taos

New Mexico A-i-R: IAIA Artist Residents in Visual Dialogue Through Jan. 29, 2022 Featuring the work of 10 Native American artists based in New Mexico who have participated or are currently participating in the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) Artist-in-Residence (A-i-R) program. A collaboration between IAIA and the Millicent Rogers Museum, New Mexico A-i-R considers the cross-cultural and interspecies connections in the ways that this group of artists reflects their relationships to their homes in artworks created in a variety of media. As the first installment of the Millicent Rogers Museum’s “New Mexico Artists” series, the exhibition offers a unique opportunity for direct dialogue between the visual languages that these artists use to convey concepts about both their complex identities and their place-based exchanges.

Curated by Dawning Pollen Shorty, an IAIA alumna of Taos Pueblo, Diné, and Lakota heritage, aynd Michelle Lanteri, MRM Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.

Couse-Sharp Historic Site

146 Kit Carson Road

Joseph Henry Sharp: The Life and Work of an American Legend Through Dec. 31, 2021 Open by appointment and during open houses. The first permanent exhibition dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the artist J.H. Sharp and the vision and compassion he shared with the world. This exhibition, installed in the free-standing studio Sharp built in 1915, covers the artist’s entire career and includes numerous works of art, correspondence, and Native American artifacts that he collected and which appeared in his paintings. Sharp was one of the founding members of the Taos Society of Artists (TSA), comprised of E. Irving Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, W. Herbert Dunton, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips.

Resurgence: Mark Maggiori Portraits from E. I. Couse’s Pueblo Photos Through Jan. 8, 2022 Inaugural exhibition in the new Lunder Research Center. Noon-4pm TuesdaySaturday and by appointment. Dean Porter Gallery, The Lunder Research Center, Couse-Sharp Historic Site. In 2020, painter Mark Maggiori inquired about studio space at Couse-Sharp Historic Site. Because the site was closed for months due to the pandemic, it was a great opportunity to pilot an artist-in-residence program. Maggiori painted in the 1915 Sharp Studio, continuing a longstanding tradition; the space had often been rented as live/work space to artists after Sharp’s death in 1953. Harold Joe Waldrum, Victor Goler, and Randy LaGro are a few of those fortunate enough to create art in the Sharp studio.

Taos Historic Museums E.L. Blumenschein Home and Museum

222 Ledoux Street, Taos

Located on historic Ledoux Street in downtown Taos, it iis maintained much as when the artist and his family were alive. The home is filled with a superb collection of the Blumenschein family’s art, a representative sampling of works by other famous Taos artists, fine European and Spanish Colonial style antiques, and the family’s lifetime of personal possessions. The home beautifully illustrates the lifestyle of Taos artists in the first half of the twentieth century.

Hacienda de los Martinez

708 Hacienda Road, Taos

The Hacienda de los Martinez is one of the few northern New Mexico-style, late Spanish Colonial period “Great Houses” remaining in the American Southwest. Built in 1804 by Severino Martin (later changed to Martinez), this fortress-like building with massive adobe walls became an important trade center for the northern boundary of the Spanish Empire. The Hacienda was the final terminus for the Camino Real which connected Northern New Mexico to Mexico City. The Hacienda also was the headquarters for an extensive ranching and farming operation.

Severino and wife Maria del Carmel Santistevan Martinez raised six children in the Hacienda. Their eldest son was the famous Padre Antonio Martinez who battled the French Bishop Lamy to preserve the Hispanic character of the Catholic Church in the territory. The Padre was a dynamic social reformer who created the first co-educational school in New Mexico and brought the first printing press to Taos.