Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum Evolves

The stellar selection for 100 Years of Collecting | 100 Years of Connecting shows how far the Hispanic arts of New Mexico have come, not only in preserving the art of the colonial past but in embracing new forms. The museum’s new name—changed in 2024 from the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts—is a testament to that mission. 

In 2023, Albuquerque-based Atrisco Heritage Foundation took over management of Santa Fe’s annual Spanish Market, which freed the Spanish Colonial Arts Society to focus on continuing its mission to research, collect, and preserve its patrimony. The hope is that the society and its museum, which first opened to the public in 2002, will emerge stronger. The exhibition celebrates the society’s centennial, since being founded as the Society for the Revival of Spanish Colonial Arts in 1925 by writer Mary Austin, artist Frank Applegate, and the Committee for the Preservation and Restoration of New Mexico Mission Churches. 

For the society and the museum board, the museum’s original name no longer conveyed its commitment to living artists, whose work it actively collects. “The name really stopped describing what was in the collection,” says museum director Jana Gottshalk, who curated the anniversary exhibition. 

“About 40 percent of what’s in the collection is by Spanish Market artists,” she adds. In other words, by New Mexicans who are not Spanish Colonial because they’re not colonialists. That era is long gone. It lives through a modern idiom, but only as a style. While artists may emulate its artistic forms, they no longer operate under its governance. They also don’t necessarily identify themselves by terms common to older generations of New Mexicans. The museum’s new name reflects a broader recognition.

“We talked a lot about the words that different generations use, like ‘Hispanic,’ which some younger artists say is their grandparents word and they don’t use it to describe themselves,” Gottshalk says. “But everyone identifies themselves as New Mexican, so that became the common term that we felt was a better fit.”

Artist and museum board member Gustavo Victor Goler, whose work is included in the exhibition, says the name change is about perception, not mission. “Many of us older-school santeros started off along the lines of creating pieces that are very traditional,” he says. “As time has changed and we evolved as artists, we’ve moved into a more contemporary reflection of the contemporary arts.” 

100 YEARS OF COLLECTING PRESENTS A WIDE array of traditional arts of New Mexico, arranged chronologically to demonstrate the evolution of how Spanish Colonial arts in New Mexico evolved. Spanish Baroque–influenced naturalistic styles, for instance, gave way to Indigenous-influenced geometric motifs, often present in retablos, as well as market-driven innovations. 

One such innovation came in the early 20th century with the appearance of unpainted wood carvings that flourished in Córdova, which are exemplified by the work of artist José Dolores López (1868–1937). His ornately carved biblical and religious imagery in plain wood proved popular with collectors and fostered more generations of Córdova carvers.

Contemporary artists continue to synthesize older art forms, paying homage and commenting on the past as part of a continuing dialogue. A contingent of contemporary New Mexico santeros and santeras who immerse themselves in the tradition, including Goler, Vicente Telles, Luis Tapia, Marie Romero Cash, and Arthur López, also take their work beyond mere emulation of traditional art forms. Many of these artists work on commission—for collectors, but also for the Catholic Church—creating elaborate altar screens and figures of martyrs and saints in two- and three-dimensional forms. 

When their work deviates, it remains within the purview of faith, using the same figures (Jesus, Mary, saints, and martyrs) and placing them in contexts that speak to a modern audience. For instance, Goler’s Cruising Heaven, a 2016 Spanish Market Curator’s Award and Purchase Award winner featured in the exhibition, depicts the Holy Family in a red tail-finned lowrider, drifting on a cloud. The imagery is relatable to the many New Mexicans steeped in lowrider culture, who also maintain a deep faith.

“Back in 1925, the society started collecting older antiquities in order to preserve them,” Goler reflects. “It’s not just 100 years of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society but 400 years of New Mexico cultural history, which is something unique to the United States. As part of their process, they’ve gone from historical santeros and santeras and continue collecting within that modernization of the cultural arts.”  

The society’s very first acquisition was the reredos (altar screen) from the Nuestra Señora del Carmen church in Llano Quemado. Created in the workshop of celebrated 19th-century santero José Rafael Aragón, the screen had been on long-term display at the Palace of the Governors in downtown Santa Fe since 1929. Now it dominates the first room of the exhibition. From its stately but conservative and flat, unemotive style, you can draw a line to a century later, with the return to naturalistic styles of wood carving. 

Arthur López, who is self-taught, adapts a more naturalistic style and adds a touch of humor to his San Fiacre y los Patrones del Jardin, which depicts the patron saint, Fiacre, astride a giant praying mantis under an arch of ornamental, hand-carved flowers. But in his retablos, the influence of other rustic folk styles is retained. In his bultos, or sculptures in the round, however, López uses a style more reminiscent of that of Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco (1713–1785), who is credited as the earliest known artist to work in New Mexico. Despite innovations, López’s work remains part of a continuum.

THE SPANISH COLONIAL ARTS SOCIETY collected more than reredos, bultos, and retablos. The rich variety of arts included in the anniversary show span colcha embroidery, tinwork, silversmithing, cabinetry, basketry, and straw appliqué. For context, architectural illustrations depict the extensive plans of architect John Gaw Meem for the institution’s campus on Museum Hill. A rendering of the 1930 Pueblo–Spanish Revival-style museum (used originally as the residence for the director of the Museum of New Mexico’s Laboratory of Anthropology) shows the only example of a Gaw Meem residence that is open to the public.

“The campus was going to be almost like the School for Advanced Research, with a lot of visiting scholars who could be housed there,” Gottshalk says, referencing the longstanding Santa Fe nonprofit for the promotion of creative thinking and innovation in the humanities. “This campus plan was for 38 buildings, I think. Because of the Depression they only completed two buildings.”

The museum houses approximately 3,000 examples of historic and contemporary Hispanic arts, as well as associated archival materials. To underscore that this centennial exhibition is a collection show—one that was created piece by piece over decades by a dedicated staff—the wall text includes notes from former curators about the objects. 

“I went through our collection records and found all these handwritten notes,” Gottshalk says. “So a big part of this exhibit is, ‘Here’s the piece, but here’s something random that someone wrote in the collections record about it.’ ” She points to a damaged retablo, a vertical crack running from bottom to top, quoting one frank observation from the collections record: “Split down the middle. John, I think, sat on it.”

“It’s turning the collection inside out,” she adds. “Reading people’s first impressions of things, where they got it, and their stories, just brought a whole new layer to the collection.”

This personable approach to presenting the museum’s holdings carries over to its mandate: to expand the collection to include works that both connect to New Mexico’s Spanish Colonial past but also look forward to the ways in which these art forms, unique in style to the American Southwest, continue to evolve. Over the next hundred years, the artists of today, whether their focus is on the traditional or the contemporary, will increasingly serve as historic reference points for later generations.  

Along with the name change came a change in protocol: The museum is now offering free admission for the near future. Gottshalk is counting on the surprise factor for the uninitiated who wander in. While those in the know can expect to see world-class examples of historic Spanish Colonial arts, others can simply be dazzled by the exuberant, colorful, pious, and passionate works that greet them inside.  

Michael Abatemarco writes often on Spanish Colonial and contemporary Hispanic arts of New Mexico.