1 Heat up Nob Hill.

The biggest block party of the season happens when Nob Hill hosts the Route 66 Summerfest on Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Central Avenue shuts down between Girard Boulevard and Washington Street, creating a mile-long pedestrian zone filled with food trucks, artisan booths, kids’ activities, and four stages where bands perform throughout the evening.

The Family Stone, which features founding member of Sly & The Family Stone Jerry Martini, takes the main stage at 8:30 p.m. Performances from local favorites such as Son Como Son, Hillary Smith and Chillhouse, and Silver Sky Blues Band lead up to the final act.

The color purple will be everywhere at the Lavender in the Village festival. Photograph courtesy of Heather Ford. Heather Ford

2 Attend a flowery fêete.

Returning to the Larry P. Abraham Agri-Nature Center, in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, Lavender in the Village celebrates the fragrant purple flowers in bloom on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Shop artisanal goods from more than 120 vendors selling lavender body products, lavender bouquets and starter plants, ceramics featuring the flower, and lavender-infused drinks and eats made. Two music stages host performances from a bands, including the Burque Jazz Bandits and Hello Darlin’. There are also llamas to pet, lectures to enjoy, tile painting classes, and u-pick lavender opportunities.

Francisco Martínez's Santa Rosalia de Palermo will be among the works featured in Saints & Santos. Photograph courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Art.

3 See the origins of Spanish Colonial Art.

The New Mexico Museum of Art debuts a new exhibition, Saints & Santos: Picturing the Holy in New Spain, on Saturday. Through an examination of holy images and how they evolved and propagated in the New World, the exhibition follows the traditional relationship between sanctity and art that continues in the work of New Mexico’s santero artists today. Saints & Santeros , which runs through January 11, features more than 60 paintings of saints, examples of unique materials like corn stalks and feathers, and pieces that demonstrate the changes that happened to iconography as it moved from Rome to Mexico.

The Fiestas de Taos crowned its 2024 royalty earlier this month. Photograph courtesy of Fiestas de Taos.

4 Party in Taos.

The Fiestas de Taos, which were threatened by funding issues, will take place as scheduled beginning Friday at Kit Carson Park. The three-day shindig includes a procession from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, the crowning of fiestas royalty, food, drinks, live music, and vendor booths.

Jazmin Novak (Diné) uses asymmetry in her color palettes to give emphasis to certain parts of desert animals. Photograph courtesy of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

5 Dig into the desert through art.

The artist-led exhibition Desert Stories: The Art of Kelly Freye & Jazmin Novak opens at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center with a reception on Friday from 5 to 7 p.m. Frye (Tesuque Pueblo/Mescalero Apache), a painter with an emphasis on color and geometry, and Novak (Diné), a sculptor of brightly colored foxes, rabbits, and other animals, collaborated to create a cohesive show that interprets the desert, its colors, and its wildlife in their works. See it through October 27.

Read more: For more things to do, check out our online calendar of events.