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Camping Out in Cimarroncita

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Almost anyone who spent part of a summer childhood at camp remembers it with sweet nostalgia—canoeing, shooting arrows, making crafts, and singing around a campfire. Such visions have filled our curatorial heads since November 2014, when Alán Huerta and Minnette Burges approached the museum to gauge our interest in acquiring the contents of their Cimarroncita Ranch Camp for Girls. The couple needed to clear out an archive documenting camp life from 1930–1995—not to mention a lifetime of memories.

“Anytime you acquire a large collection that’s tied to family history, there are opportunities to have many conversations,” said Meredith Davidson, curator of 19th– and 20th-century Southwest collections. “In this instance, the history of the summer camp extends to the 1930s, so there are several generations interpreting the camp’s daily activities and the people who went there.”

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The 1860s Will Never Be the Same

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Hannah_SummerCamp2-72Update: We’re sad to say that we didn’t get enough campers to offer this event, but we’re regrouping and planning our next steps. Stay tuned for some pop-up family events pulled from the summer camp’s curriculum.

Original story: How can you engage your child with history while strengthening their literacy skills and letting them have a ball? Give them the gift of a weeklong trip to action-packed 1863 at the New Mexico History Museum’s summer camp, Time Trekkers. Children 9-11 will enjoy VIP access to the museum and get daily doses of hands-on learning—braiding horsehair bracelets, gathering a picnic lunch at the Santa Fe Farmers Market, practicing calligraphy, roping a calf dummy, hand-stitching their own book, playing old-time games and more. Make new friends, strengthen literacy skills, explore different kinds of artwork and learn how history connects the past to the present.

Time Trekkers takes place 10 am–4 pm, Monday–Friday, June 15–19. Cost is $125 (10 percent discount to children and grandchildren of Museum of New Mexico Foundation members). Space is limited. For info on how to register by June 1, contact René Harris at rene.harris@state.nm.us or Melanie LaBorwit at melanie.laborwit@state.nm.us.

Each day has a different focus—Historical Clothing, Traditional Foodways, Cartography and Calligraphy, Ranch Work and Civil War Life, and a Fantastic Field Day. Scheduled activities include:

  • Try on clothes from the 1860s and master the craft of horsehair braiding.
  • Take a field trip to the Santa Fe Farmers Market to gather fresh fruits and vegetables and help prepare old-style recipes.
  • Go behind-the-scenes at the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and Photo Archives to check out fascinating maps.
  • Practice the art of writing with a quill.
  • Learn how to make a rope, then rope a cow. Be part of a bucket-brigade contest. Make adobe bricks.
  • Step inside the Palace Press to learn a simple bookbinding technique.
  • Play! Participate in historic games such as hoops, marbles, three-legged races and the game of graces.

Art projects are woven into daily activities, and all supplies are included in camp fee. A short playground/snack break is scheduled each day.

Pearly White to Chocolate Brown: The Color of Mud

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SOC-SantaFe-colorWhen Museum Hill properties banded together to create the “Summer of Color,” they asked downtown museums and galleries to mount their own color-based shows. But our galleries were already filled with exhibits (colorful ones, no less), so we were initially stumped.

Then the National Trust for Historic Preservation declared the Palace of the Governors a National Treasure, and a brainstorm erupted. Why not capitalize on the attention being given to the Palace’s maintenance needs by hosting programs about the building and other adobe structures? Thus was born “Adobe Summer,” a series of free events dedicated that most basic of building materials, mud.

The Palace of the Governors, ca. 1915, by Jesse Nusbaum. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 013045.

The Palace of the Governors, ca. 1915, by Jesse Nusbaum. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 013045.

If all goes well, contractors will begin replastering the Palace Courtyard this summer, giving everyone an intimate glimpse into how adobe works. Beyond new plaster and, likely, a few new adobe bricks, the building needs new hardwood floors, a new roof, improved electrical systems, and some type of fire-suppression equipment that won’t imperil the adobe walls. After the structural work is done, we aim to re-do the exhibits to more fully tell the story of the building itself.

Join us for Adobe Summer, including these events:

  • Sunday, May 31, 2–3 pm: “Restoring the 1785 Roque Lobato House in Santa Fe.” A panel discussion and book signing with author Chris Wilson, architect Beverly Spears, and Alan “Mac” Watson, vice chairman of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, on the successful renovation of this historic home.
  • Sunday, June 28, 1:30–3:30 pm: Make sand casts of your hands for a family keepsake.
  • Saturday, July 25, 1–3 pm:“Earthen Architecture—Past, Present and Future.” Get a multicultural perspective of how communities preserve adobe structures, featuring Jake Barrow, program director for Cornerstones Community Partnerships; Tomacita Duran, executive director of the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority; and artist Nicasio Romero of the Villanueva Valley.
  • Friday, Aug. 7, 6 pm: “Wars, Revolts, and Defining Collective Memory in the Context of the Great Pueblo Revolt,” a talk by archaeologist and author Jason Shapiro.
  • Friday, Aug. 28, 6 pm: “El Presidio de Santa Barbara: Its Founding, Heyday, Decline, and Rebirth.” Jarrell Jackman, executive director of the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, speaks on the renovation of that city’s 1782 Spanish presidio.

Any day, everyday: Wander the Palace and try to hear the whispers of its past, from its massive walls to its thick vigas to the floor hatches revealing its earliest foundations. Pilar Cannizzaro, preservation planning manager for the state Historic Preservation Division, said she fell in love with the building the first time she walked through in 1984.

“The rich history, the monumental architecture, the fact that it faces the plaza and is such a part of it,” she said. “Every part of it is magical.”

A Fragile Flag Returns to New Mexico

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In 1861, as the Civil War broke out across the nation, General Sibley, a confederate from Texas, signed up with Jefferson Davis in a plan to overtake New Mexico, Colorado and eventually California. The New Mexico Territory braced for a series of battles and sent requests to Colorado for support. Men signed up for war, and the women of Denver responded as well. In August 1861, the Ladies of Denver presented a hand-stitched 34-star flag to the recently formed First Colorado Infantry, Company D. The flag and its bearer advanced to New Mexico and a date with infamy in Glorieta Pass.

Meredith Davidson, curator of 19th– and 20th-century Southwest collections, recently traveled with Registrar Deborah King to History Colorado, which now holds the battle-scarred flag. Thanks to a generous loan, they brought it back to New Mexico, where it will become a cornerstone piece for the Mezzanine Gallery exhibit, Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War, opening May 1.

The exhibit gives the museum a chance to partner with the Santa Fe Opera, which debuts Cold Mountain this August. To pull it off, Davidson joined Palace Press Director Tom Leech and Photo Curator Daniel Kosharek to present various types of artifacts that represent the opera’s story of loss, relationships and memory, all within the context of the Civil War.

4-72-CivilWar_CasedImagesPlusCap-3The flag will share space with cased images, postwar lithographs, journals, weapons and a cross worn by a soldier at the decisive battle in Glorieta. The flag was brought back to Colorado by Michael Ivory, one of the unit’s color-bearers. In the 1960s, it was donated to History Colorado.

“There is something amazing in the way artifacts can carry stories in their very fibers,” Davidson said, “and this flag, with so much physical loss over time reflects the way we as curators and museums must work together to ensure that these totems of memory do not lose those stories.”

The condition of the flag when it was donated to History Colorado led to an initial conservation effort in 1963. Another effort in 1994 noted the flag’s condition had worsened. One area of the description suggests it was, “extremely tattered in some places and generally structurally weak in the star field. Almost 50 percent of that field is lost and shows tattering, tears and detached sections.” The flag may have survived battle, but in the years since its wool stripes and stars were slowly ripping apart,” Davidson said. “Our request to borrow it led to History Colorado undertaking a new conservation effort, this time with more stabilizing, cleaning, and stitching to enable the piece’s long-term display.

Perhaps in error or with the intention to present the flag vertically, the flag was stitched down to a backing with the canton (the part with the stars) on the right. That 1963 choice sealed the fate of the flag for future presentations. Because so much of the blue fabric was lost, the 2014 curators and conservators chose to leave it in place and created a sheer overlay within the canton for extra support.

Getting the nine-foot-long flag to Santa Fe required packing it into a box truck that then weaved back through the Cimarron Pass the flag likely traveled once before. “It is hard to imagine a young soldier, flag in hand, carrying the piece through the landscape and holding it high as a color bearer during the battle itself,” Davidson said. “Museums are places to tell stories, but they are also places to keep what remains once the stories told orally pass. Artifacts are gateways into these stories, and sometimes they just need a little help.”

Smart Girls Know: This Museum Rocks

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Girls inc girls learn about camera obscuraSince February, Friday afternoons have been enlivened by the weekly presence of young girls interested in learning more about the technical aspects of the Poetics of Light exhibit and the imagery in the Painting the Divine exhibit. Museum educators paired with Santa Fe’s Girls Inc. program to devise a new after-school program set to be repeated this month.

In a series of visits with girls of different ages, the educators took them into the exhibits and then to the classroom, engaging them with hands-on projects. The 11- and 12-year-old girls made heliographs using photosensitive fabric paints, while the 9- and 10-year-old group made cyanotypes. Eight year olds made camera obscura tubes and the really, really young ones learned about light-and-dark by crafting silhouettes.

“Everyone toured the Poetics of Light exhibition and got really excited about photography,” said Educator Melanie LaBorwit.

Participation varied from nine to 15 girls per week—a total that could grow as the program moves forward.

“This is a pilot program, and we are definitely thinking about continuing it,” LaBorwit said. “We have developed a good working relationship with Girls Inc.”

The Girls Inc. organization is dedicated to offering programs for girls that inspire them to be smart, strong and bold.

The Palace Portal Hits the Bricks

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HenryTrujillo2Who knew an expanse of stained and rumpled bricks could evoke history. Or that smoothing out their rumples would require such careful work.

Steve Baca and Henry Trujillo (pictured, at left) of the History Museum’s facilities staff are learning that and more as they improve the Palace Portal’s brick walkway.

“It has big humps in it from people walking on it over the years,” Baca said. “Everything’s pushing back toward the building. We’re leveling it off so water runs off toward the street instead of toward the building.”

That’s critically important for an adobe building that was recently named a National Treasure. Should the Palace’s adobe walls wick up standing water, they could suffer grievous damage. But the bricks are considered historic, so the fix required careful work.

Baca and Trujillo block off a section at a time, pull up the bricks, and clean each one. They add new sand, level it, then replace the bricks. Not enough bricks are worth replacing, so the museum negotiated replacements from a stash that once bedecked city streets—and are keeping their eyes open for other possibilities.

“I hope it’s only a month to do the whole portal,” Baca said. “But it looks like longer.”

As for what’s fun about that hard work? “Nothing,” he said, laughing.

 

The Movement of People, Through Time and Through Dance

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PhotoWallMusic, dancing and learning about history blended on March 27 inside the Telling New Mexico exhibit. The History Museum and New Mexico School for the Arts Dance Department developed “The Borders Project Workshop” as part of the museum’s Routes and Roots program. René Harris collaborated with Adam McKinney, Dance Department chair, and teachers Micaela Gardner and Sarah Ashkin, to devise a means for turning thought into action. Students exploredquestions related to the themes of immigration and the movement of peoples, then used movement and dance to help process that information.

The school’s 9th–12th grade students started in the museum classroom to ponder what it means to be a New Mexican, how boundaries or borders are created, and who draws the lines. They then moved into the exhibit to create dance steps in response to prompts related to borders, immigration, identity and homeland in four areas of the gallery. They reconvened in the classroom to discuss how “dancing the exhibit” helped the illuminate the questions that were posed and showed their respective compositions. A short video will be produced to document the experience.

Map“This collaboration is a fresh and creative way to approach exhibit interpretation in a history museum,” said René Harris, collections and education programs manager. “Students have a chance to develop skills in collaboration, improvisation and self-expression. I appreciate the commitment of NMSA’s staff to develop this project with us.”

McKinney said the program “puts Santa Fe on the map of a national conversation about the ways that dance groups and museums can work together to inform audiences about our rich regional and national cultural histories.”

“It has been a wonderful venture to approach learning in the exhibits in innovative ways,” he said. “Placing students at the center of learning, our hope is that this is the first of many collaborations between New Mexico School for the Arts and New Mexico History Museum.”

Routes and Roots was developed as part of a series of National Dialogues on Immigration affiliated with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, which funded this program. The coalition is a worldwide network of museums, historic sites and initiatives commemorating struggles for justice of human rights.

 

Photo Archives Obtains Rare Photo of New Mexico Frontiersmen

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4-72-PA_CarteDeVisite_Wooten-StVrain-ValdezThe Palace of the Governors Photo Archives has acquired a rare carte de visite depicting Ceran St. Vrain, Dick Wootton and José Maria Valdez. Photo Curator Daniel Kosharek obtained the ca. 1865 image from Cliff Mills, a photographer, collector and dealer who has sold his own and historical images on the Santa Fe Plaza for 20 years.

“I come from an old Taos family,” Mills said. “I’m pretty sure Valdez was a relative. This is a picture that came down to me through the family.”

Carte de visites were an early phenomena of photography. Mounted on cardstock, they could be given to friends or guests. That ease helped create a Victorian craze—“cardomania.” This particular carte de visite represents the first original photograph that the Photo Archives has of St. Vrain, a legendary frontiersman, military leader and wheat magnate. The museum has one small original photograph of “Uncle Dick” Wootton, and none of Valdez.

“This is very early for photography in New Mexico—very early,” Kosharek said. “So very little exists from that time period. It is rare when a photograph of historical significance on New Mexico becomes available.”

Mills considered offering the photo to a wider market, but chose the Photo Archives, he said, in part because “I like Daniel and Tomas” Jaehn, of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library.

Brief bios on the men in the picture:

Ceran St. Vrain (1802-1870), standing in the center of the photo, was a frontier entrepreneur and close associate of Territorial Gov. Charles Bent and Kit Carson. In the 1820s, he traveled from St. Louis to Taos, becoming a trapper and trader. In the 1830s, his partnership with Bent blossomed. With Charles’ brother, William, the men built Bent’s Fort in Colorado, headquarters of a mercantile empire and an important stop for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. In 1855 he was part of the “St Vrain’s battalion” during the Indian Wars and in 1861 was a Captain and later a Lt. Colonel in the New Mexico Volunteers. St. Vrain built the first grist mill in the Taos Valley and others in Mora, Santa Fe and Peralta. He became wealthy selling flour to the troops at Fort Union and Fort Craig. He also invested in sawmills, became involved in banking projects and railroad speculation, dabbled in politics and owned a share of The Santa Fe Gazette. He was buried at the Mora Presbyterian Church. His mill still stands in the town, though in an endangered condition.

Dick Wootton (1816-1893), seated at left in the photo, was also a frontiersman, born in Virginia, who hired out to Bent and St. Vrain at Independence, Mo., in 1836. He later gained infamy for building a toll road over Raton Pass and, for 13 years, charging travelers to use it.

José Maria Valdez, seated at right, was born in La Joya (now Velarde) in 1809. He married Maria Manuela Jaramillo in Taos in 1834 and was a witness at the wedding of his wife’s sister, Maria Josefa Jaramillo, when she married Kit Carson in 1843. (Another sister, Maria Ygnacia Jaramillo, married Charles Bent). He served in the Territorial Legislature and in 1859 was one of the petitioners for the Mora Land Grant.

The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives contains an estimated 1 million items, including historic photographic prints, cased photographs, glass plate negatives, film negatives, stereographs, photo postcards, panoramas, color transparencies, and lantern slides. This collection includes material of regional and national significance, dating from approximately 1850 to the present, covering subject matter that focuses on the history and people of New Mexico and the expansion of the West; anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology of Hispanic and Native American cultures; and smaller collections documenting Europe, Latin America, the Far East, Oceana, and the Middle East.

Royalty with a Hint of Mystery Comes to the Chávez Library

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Letitia (Tish) Evans Frank held a rightful place in Santa Fe royalty. Her grandparents included Mabel Dodge Luhan, the famous Taos personality; artist and architect William Penhallow Henderson; and poet Alice Corbin Henderson. Daughter of Alice Henderson Rossin and Josh Evans, Tish became a dancer, earning a master’s from Vermont’s Bennington College, then working with Martha Graham’s dance troupe at the Juilliard School of Music. Though she claimed residences in New York and Maine, Santa Fe was home, and her service to this community and to our museums was tremendous.

A trustee for the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, she also served on the Women’s Board and the International Folk Art Foundation board, and was chairperson for the School for American Research’s board of managers, 1981–83. She helped persuade legislators to create the Hispanic Heritage Wing at MOIFA, build the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s permanent exhibition and, most precious to us, create the New Mexico History Museum.

After her death in 2009, her nephew Nat Mauldin (son of famed cartoonist Bill Mauldin) began overseeing her estate, which included boxes of correspondence and other ephemera that he gave to the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library. Included in the gift were two compelling portraits.

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One is a 1958 painting of Tish by Sidney Simon, a sculptor and founder of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. (His works are held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Art Gallery, among others.) The other portrait was a detailed sketch of a man that was signed by Gerald Cassidy, one of the early members of the Santa Fe Art Colony.

But who was the man? Librarian Tomas Jaehn couldn’t place him, so he reached out to the library’s Facebook fans, his Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture regulars, and a history-based Listserv. A few names were suggested, including author Oliver La Farge. But the likely answer turned out to be the most logical one: Paul Frank, Tish’s husband.

“It makes perfect sense,” Jaehn said.

The collection still must be sorted, so for at least a little while, you can see both portraits by visiting the library. We honor Tish’s generosity to us by sharing her memory with you.

 

Star Trek Technology Meets a Spanish Colonial Map

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Since joining the Palace of the Governors’ collections in 1977, an 18th-century map painted by Bernardo Miera y Pacheco has slowly but surely revealed its secrets. Thanks to the Museum of International Folk Art’s upcoming exhibition, The Red that Colored the World, we’re learning what types of red paint the master artist/cartographer/politician used.

We’re honored that our painting will join the exhibit. Before it does, though, Mark MacKenzie, director of the Museum of New Mexico Conservation Department, wanted to find out what the various reds contained—cochineal, vermillion, iron?

72-IMG_1418In January, he took aim at small portions of the painting with a device that looked like it belonged on the Starship Enterprise. (More on that resemblance in a minute.) The handheld Bruker XRF spectrometer—a cream-of-the-crop instrument—was recently upgraded for conservation with funding from Don Pierce’s generous bequest to Department of Cultural Affairs entities. The device enables researchers to study the elemental composition of things like paint on a canvas without disturbing even a speck of that paint.

MacKenzie was most interested in the red on the map’s compass rose and the hint of it on the arm of a cherub. Pointing the gun-like tool at the compass rose, he held it still for 30 seconds as the X-rays did their work, then watched as a computer screen revealed EKG-like spikes denoting what elements it had found. “Ooh, big iron spike,” he said.

That finding involved a field of vermillion red, which begins with the mineral cinnabar and normally appears on canvas as a scarlet red. On the painting, though, the red has a different cast. MacKenzie traveled in time to Miera y Pacheco’s palette, saying, “The painter wanted a slightly different hue. He started with vermillion, then added a little bit of iron red for his vision of the compass rose.”

On the cherub, he anticipated the glaze-like red to report back as cochineal, which comes from a cactus beetle rather than a mineral.

“Vermillion is not as opaque as lead red or iron red, but it’s not as translucent as cochineal,” he said. “When you see flesh in a painting, often you have a glazing layer on top, and that’s likely a cochineal-rich paint.”

72-IMG_1416As for that Star Trek device? It was invented by a scientist intent on recreating the tricorders used aboard the fictional Starship. Rather than coming up with a device that can only diagnose health problems, though, he produced something more along the lines of a directed-energy weapon.

“He was challenged to build a tricorder, and he came up with a phaser,” MacKenzie said. “How Trekkie is that?”