New Mexico Museum of Art Turns 100!

Right now a famous museum is closed for restoration, but on Saturday, Nov. 25th the New Mexico Museum of Art will reopen in a grand way. As the museum first opened its doors on Nov. 25, 1917, now, 100 years to the day, they will re-open for a centennial Birthday Party Celebration!

Through the century, the museum's mission has been to preserve New Mexican art for future generations and foster a love of art in adults and youth alike through their programming. The museum showcases both the astonishing artists who were born here and the legend artists who were compelled to adopt The Land Of Enchantment as home.For a century, the New Mexico Museum of Art has served New Mexican locals and visitors alike, kindling a deeper love of our state through the lens of some of its most creative and thoughtful personalities.They've truly earned this party.

Better yet: all of New Mexico is invited!

Admission will be FREE from 10 a.m. — 5 p.m. and the museum will have special events from 10am — 4pm. The day’s festivities are suitable for all-ages.

Interested visitors should note that the theme of the party is 1910s and 1920s dress. The best dressed visitor will receive an award!

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The museum's day-long party features historical New Mexico artists impersonated by fabulous performers. Will Shuster, Georgia O’Keefe, John Sloan, and others will be on-hand to talk about their lives, their art, and their New Mexico experiences.

The party will also feature a photo booth, free lectures, live music, and theatrical performances by students of The New Mexico School of the Arts.

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The museum will also launch three new art exhibitions!

Shifting Light : Photographic Perspectives: Nov. 25, 2017 — Oct. 7, 2018.From the Museum:

Using portraits and oral histories, the show introduces some of the personalities in New Mexico’s twentieth-century photography scene, such as artist Laura Gilpin and curator Beaumont Newhall. Collectors, another integral part of the photography community, are represented by a changing selection of promised gifts that are pledged as future additions to the museum’s collection. Visitors are invited to write or draw their own memories, favorite photographs, and other responses to the show.

Horizons: People & Place in New Mexican Art: Nov. 25, 2017 — Nov. 25, 2018.From the Museum:

Drawn primarily from the New Mexico Museum of Art’s extensive collection, Horizons shows the wide and dynamic range of styles, personalities, cultures, and forms that visual creative expression took in the 20th century...Experience for yourself some the greatest artists who lived and worked in New Mexico in the last century: Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, John Sloan, Georgia O’Keeffe, Bert Geer Phillips, James Stovall Morris, Victor Higgins, Awa Tsireh, Maria Martinez, Fritz Scholder, Alfred Morang, Cady Wells, Andrew Dasburg, and Gustave Baumann, among many others.

Contact: Local to Global: Nov. 25, 2017 — April 29, 2018.From the Museum:

Contact: Local to Global, like the other centennial exhibitions, highlights the engagement of artists with New Mexico, the Museum of Art with artists and collectors, and New Mexico’s engagement with the national and international arts community. Additionally the exhibition looks beyond those very literal intersections and implicates larger ideas about contact such as our engagement with the land and environment, our communities’ alignment with one another, and more broadly the implications of contact such as the discovery of the New World, and space exploration.

Outside of the museum there will be classic cars, lowriders and the Wonders on Wheels mobile museum.

The day is sure to be unforgettable. We'll see you there!