A Free Evening with Cuban Literary Superstar Pablo Armando Fernandez

Posted on December 1, 2010 by DCA WEB

Pablo Armando Fernandez

Thanks to the generosity of the Lannan Foundation, what was to be a $20-a-head fund-raiser for the Palace Press is now a free evening of poetry and conversation with renowned Cuban poet Pablo Armando Fernandez. Come to the museum at 6 pm, Friday, Dec. 3, to enjoy this legendary writer. Attendees will receive a keepsake version of one of Fernandez’s poems, specially printed by the Palace Press.

Other sponsors include the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Museum of New Mexico Foundation, and the Information Trust.

Known in his country simply as “El Poeta,” Fernandez has an enormous reputation and a distinguished career as a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, editor and diplomat. His works have been translated into French, Italian, Polish and English. His 2001 work, Parables: Selected Poems,featured an introduction by Margaret Atwood. He received the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1996 for lifetime accomplishment, and formerly served as the Cultural Counselor to the Cuban Embassy in London.

Born in a Cuban sugar factory in 1930, he came to New York to study as a teenager, catching the eye of famed author Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, among other gems). That encounter didn’t seem fortuious, at least at first, as recounted in an online journal about Fernandez’s 2000 visit with San Francisco Poet Laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

At age fourteen Pablo arrived in New York City from Cuba to attend school, where he studied English literature and by age seventeen wrote his first lines. By chance, he was taken to the home of famous writer Carson McCullers, who recognized at once that these lines were poetry. “You are a poet,” she told him after first serving him a potato salad whose illusive taste he has never forgotten. Pablo fled in tears. He felt misunderstood. His words, he insisted, were prose. How could this important writer with a play on Broadway call his work “poetry”? He felt that calling his work “poetry” was to disrespect it. Pablo went for comfort to his Cuban friend, Manila Hartman, then also living in New York City. “I’ve always told you, you were a poet, Pablo,” she said. Finally, she convinced him and he accepted his literary fate.

Fernandez soon became part of America’s literati, returning to Cuba in 1959 after the revolution.

Among his published works are the poetry books Salterio y lamentaciones (1953), Nuevos poemas (Nueva York, 1955), Toda la poesía (1961), Himnos (1962), El libro de los héroes (1962), Un sitio permanente (Madrid, 1970), Campo de amor y de batalla (1984), El sueño y la razón (1988) and Pequeño cuaderno de Manila Hartman (2000); and the novels Los niños se despiden (1968), El vientre del pez (1989) and Otro golpe de dados (1993).

“What makes me truly Cuban,” he has said, “is its history, the men and women who handed in their fortune in order to make Cuba a sovereign country. You will find this in poetry from Heredia to Guillén. To be part of that generation consolidates my being.”

Fernandez

Photo Archives Discovers a Rare Photo of Navajo Leader Manuelito

Posted on November 29, 2010 by DCA WEB

Boxes filled with photographs, negatives and more line shelves that reach ceiling-high in the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives. To the three-person staff responsible for archiving the contents, the process must sometimes feel like bailing out the ocean with a bucket. At high tide.

So you can understand how mysteries might lie hidden for years, decades even. But the promise of a new discovery keeps the archivists pulling the boxes down, tugging open their lids and hunting through their contents.

Last May, Daniel Kosharek had one of those dreamed-of a-ha moments.

Navajo war chief Manuelito (seated) with another Navajo war chief, identified in the photograph as Cayetanito, ca. 1870s.

In a box holding part of the Henry T. Hiester/Melander Brothers Collection, Kosharek discovered a previously unknown photo of famed Navajo leader Manuelito, taken around 1870 and given to the archives 50 years ago. The photo graces the cover of the new edition of El Palacio, the scholarly magazine of the Museums of New Mexico, and is catching the attention of journalists across the nation. El Palacio carries a story about the discovery by Mary Anne Redding, director of the Photo Archives, and a sidebar by historian Charles Bennett Jr. on Manuelito’s history and lasting impact. An excerpt from Redding’s piece:

The Photo Archives is full of undiscovered treasures like the Manuelito portrait. With a collection of more than 800,000 images and an antiquated cataloguing system, which the current staff of three is rapidly working to update, there are wonderful gems still hidden away in boxes and cabinets, waiting to be discovered. … Each box is like a gift waiting to be opened on a special day.

Manuelito’s monumental role in Navajo life includes his 1866 surrender to the Bosque Redondo reservation (and his subsequent escape), an 1868 meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant in Washington, D.C., and an 1880 meeting with President Rutherford B. Hayes in Santa Fe. On the Navajo reservation, his name is carried by the Manuelito Navajo Children’s Home, the Manuelito Chapter House, and the Chief Manuelito Scholarship.

The photo Kosharek discovered shows Manuelito sitting beside another Navajo war chief identified as Cayetanito. Historians know of only a handful of Manuelito portraits, taken by photographers Charles M. Bell, George Ben Wittick, and possibly William Henry Jackson and John Gaige.

The History Museum has begun the process to put the “new” photo on display, perhaps in the permanent Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now exhibition. Until then, you can get a gander at some of the archives’ holdings without even leaving your chair. Click onto the archives’ digitized collections, and you can keyword-hunt for the portion of images the staff has been able to upload. (Warning: Highly addictive Web site.)

You can also pick up the latest El Palacio for $8 at any of the Museum of New Mexico shops (Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, New Mexico History Museum, Museum of International Folk Art, and New Mexico Museum of Art), or for $10 (postage added in) by calling 505-476-1126 or e-mailing elpalacio@state.nm.us. Here’s a not-so-subtle hint: You can support scholarly research at our museums and deepen your knowledge of New Mexico’s art, history and culture by springing for a subscription. Do I hear jingle bells?

A Modern-Day Gutenberg at the Palace Press

Posted on November 11, 2010 by DCA WEB

Bobcat_72 Johannes Gutenberg would be so proud.

So is Tom Leech, curator of the Palace Press.

His newest addition to the Press’s collection of 10 major presses — still awaiting formal acceptance — is a Bobcat Press built in the 1970s by Cedar Crest’s Richard Hicks, a machinist turned sculptor who’s spent much of his adult life building replicas of early presses.

The new star of the Palace Press Show is one of about 30 Hicks built out of hand-worked mahogany and poured-brass fittings. He built this one for the Albuquerque Children’s Museum (now called Explora). It was later transferred to the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System’s Center for the Book, which donated it to the Palace Press.

“It’s just a sweet, solid thing,” Leech said of the Bobcat. “It’s a work of art in itself.”

He described the Bobcat as a scaled-down version of the model invented by Gutenberg, who completed the world’s first movable-type press in 1440, revolutionizing the distribution of literature (including the Bible), literacy, and today’s still-existent joy of curling up with a good book. (Or, say, a blog.)

“This has been on – for lack of a better word – my hit list of presses I wanted to acquire, ones that are important to New Mexico printing history,” Leech said. “This almost completes what I’m looking for in terms of printing presses.”

The Palace Print Shop and Bindery, as it’s formally known, is both a New Mexico History Museum exhibit of the state’s publishing history and a working press crafting small batches of books. Its most recent publication is former Santa Fe Poet Laureate Valerie Martinez’s This Is How It Began, featuring marbled-paper covers created by Leech and a calligraphic title page by Santa Fe artist Patty Hammarstedt.

Housed in what were once the stables for the Palace of the Governors, the Palace Press features a recreation of famed artist Gustave Baumann’s print studio, a variety of historic presses and more than 200 fonts of type commonly used in 19^th-and early 20^th-century publications.

Printing on the Bobcat requires sopping ink onto the printing plate with a large, leather-covered printer’s ball. (In the day, pressmen were known to use the phrase “Sop up your balls” in reference to that activity.)

Each piece of paper was individually slipped into the tympan, which was then lowered onto the plate. The package would be literally pressed by pulling a handle that engages a large wooden screw, thrusting the platen downward.

Though it’s a tad messy and needs a bit of strength to operate the lever TomBobcat2_72 , the Bobcat could be – ahem – pressed into service as soon as Dec. 10 during the annual Christmas at the Palace event. Traditionally, visitors are invited to produce a holiday card using a press from the collection.

“It’s a size that’s kid-friendly,” Leech said of the Bobcat.

Hicks, one of the heroes of the Battle of Iwo Jima, was still pulled by his love of building presses as recently as 2006, when he told Pamela S. Smith, author of Passions in Print: Private Press Artistry in New Mexico 1834-present, that he just might have to get out his wood-working tools again.

“I’d like to build one more press,” he said, “so that I could print into eternity.”

Sons of the American Revolution Visit “The Threads of Memory”

Posted on November 10, 2010 by DCA WEB

The New Mexico History Museum today played host to a contingent of accurate-to-the-period-dressed representatives of the Sons of the American Revolution. The group arrived eager to see the new exhibit The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: España y los Estados Unidos), in particular for its final section’s depiction of Spain’s role in helping the revolutionaries win their war against Great Britain.

That they did so in period style enthralled — and sometimes perplexed — other museum visitors, many of whom did the first thing any modern American thinks of in such situation: Pull out the cell phone and snap a pic.

George C. Garcia, Charles Martinez y Vigil and Gene Tomlinson

Why did they pick today for a visit? With the group’s national president, David Sympson, in town, the time seemed right to see firsthand some of the documents that form their heritage. So, after lunch at the Osteria restaurant, they strolled over to the museum, having stashed their 9-foot lances in a room at the eatery.

“(Deputy Director) John McCarthy told us beforehand, `Don’t bring any weapons,'” said SAR New Mexico President Gene Tomlinson.

He was joined by the Santa Fe Chapter president, Charles Martinez y Vigil, and George C. Garcia. With their brass-buttoned knickers and Zorro-style hats, they were authentic from their 1780 Santa Fe Presidio garb down to their personal DNA. Tomlinson claims an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution; Martinez y Vigil and Garcia claim ancestors who contributed to Spain’s bankrolling of war against the Redcoats.

“If we were to walk in the front doors of the Palace of the Governors,” Tomlinson said, “these uniforms probably haven’t been worn there since 1790.”

Curator Josef Diaz (left) with George C. Garcia

A primary goal of Threads of Memory is to deepen Americans’ knowledge of just how much muscle Spain exerted in the Americas in the centuries that are often taught from an East Coast perspective. From the earliest explorers in the 1500s, through the establishment of Santa Fe in 1610, the colonization of today’s New Mexico, Florida, Texas and California, and the multi-nation efforts in the American Revolution, Spain has made Americans far more Spanish than many believe they are.

That’s also a goal of the Sons of the American Revolution, which has been reaching out to descendants of all Spanish soldiers to research their lineage and apply for society membership. From the NM Patriot website:

When the American colonies waged a war for independence against England, King Carlos III of Spain sought opportunity to regain land Spain lost to England at the end of the Seven Years War in 1773. Spain agreed to join France as an ally and beginning in 1776, covertly shipped arms, munitions, cattle, uniforms, medicine, blankets, and money to the American colonies using France as the go between. Spain declared war on England in June 1779

In March of 1780, Carlos III decreed that to sustain the war against England, “his vassals in America” were to contribute a one-time donativo (donation) of one peso (approximately $30 by year 2002 standard) per Indian and other castes and two pesos per Spaniard and noble. Collectors (such as alcalde mayores or military commanders) went to towns and pueblos in the New World and collected one peso per Indian over 18 years old and other castes, and two pesos from each Spaniard. Donativos were collected from soldiers and citizens throughout Cuba and Spain’s hard-pressed North American colonies, including the provinces of California, New Mexico, and Texas.

–Robert H. Thonhoff, The Vital Contributions of Spain in the Winning of the American Revolution: An Essay on a Forgotten Chapter in the History of the American Revolution, 2000, (2), self published

The SAR recognizes a variety of ancestral involvement in the war as worthy of membership: service in the Spanish military, the militia, or as Indian auxiliaries; donating money to defray expenses of the war; Spanish cowboys (in Texas) who drove cattle to feed the American colonial troops; and mission priests who led public prayers on behalf of Spain’s support of the American Revolution.

Upon entering the exhibit, the SAR contingent proved themselves true students of history by becoming engrossed not only in the exhibition’s final section, but by creeping through its length, magnifying glasses in hand. We were delighted to welcome them — and just as delighted to give our unsuspecting other visitors an interesting dinner-table tale to share later.

A Voice from the Governor’s Office Past Offers Wisdom for Today

Posted on November 4, 2010 by DCA WEB

On Tuesday, New Mexicans elected the nation’s first Hispanic woman governor. Regardless of your personal political leanings, that’s a historical milepost and, given that we’re in the business of celebrating our history, we’re taking the opportunity to remember another Hispanic who made history as governor of New Mexico.

A photo of Donaciano Vigil, taken by Albright Art Parlors, 188-82?. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, No. 011405.

Donaciano Vigil was the first native New Mexican Hispanic to serve as New Mexico governor after Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny raised the American flag over the Palace of the Governors. According to the State Historian’s web site: “(H)e was undoubtedly the most important native Hispanic leader in the transition of the Territory from Mexican to American government. His decision to support the American annexation of the New Mexico territory and join the new American sponsored government in 1847 helped ensure the status of New Mexico in the American nation and to assure the participation of Hispanos in that system. ”

In its July 3, 2010, edition, the Santa Fe New Mexican singled out Vigil as one of eight people critical to the preservation of the city’s heritage:

Born in Santa Fe in 1802, Donaciano Vigil chose when he turned 21 to make the military his career. After U.S. conquest of New Mexico in 1846, Vigil’s acceptance of American rule influenced other Hispanos to recognize the reality of the federal presence and calm largely political unrest in the territorial period. During the earlier Spanish colonial period, government and church officials were careful to preserve historical records. After arrival of the Americans, however, it fell to Vigil to champion the cause of saving historical records. As New Mexico’s first civil governor, Vigil organized archival records and made it his cause to preserve New Mexico’s history.

In its newsletter, distributed today, the Historical Society of New Mexico features a remembrance of Vigil by HSN President Mike Stevenson, who quoted a passage from Vigil’s speech to the first Territorial Legislature on Sept. 24, 1847. Stevenson thought, and we agree, that Vigil’s words have only grown more powerful in the 163 years since, as advice to those who would lead us and to we who are choosing those leaders:

If our government here is to be republican—if it is to be based upon democratic republican principles—and if the will of the majority is one day to be the law of the land and the government of the people, it is evident, for this will to be properly exercised, the people must be enlightened and instructed. And it is particularly important in a country where the right of suffrage is accorded and secured to all, that all should be instructed, and that every[one] should be able to read to inform himself of the passing events of the day, and of the matters interesting to his country and government. This is the age of improvement, both in government and society, and it more particularly becomes us, when commencing as it were a new order of things, to profit by and promote such improvements, and they can only be encouraged and promoted by diffusing knowledge and instruction among the people…All that the legislature can do in the cause of education for the people is most earnestly pressed upon them and will meet with my hearty approval and cooperation. (Emphasis added.)

The Threads of Memory Weaves its Magic

Posted on October 15, 2010 by DCA WEB

ExteriorSign5x7 Opening this weekend, The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: Espana y los Estados Unidos) weaves the story of Spain’s first 300 years in the Americas. The History Museum marks the U.S. debut of 138 rare and precious documents, maps, illustrations and paintings — but it’s only here until Jan. 9, 2011, so get it on your calendar. (You’ll also enjoy the 12 weeks of lectures, concerts and Chautauqua performances accompanying it; every one of them is free.)

On Thursday, we took a small group of journalists through the still-under-construction exhibit for a sneak peek. And we figured you deserved to ride along.

WorkersGeoWashington5x7 Here, the installation crew buzzes in the part of the gallery where we’ve hung Giuseppe Perovani’s 1796 portrait of George Washington. Many Americans are unaware of the critical role Spain played in helping to win the Revolutionary War. Perovani lived for several years in the United States and, in 1801, with the prestige he had earned, went to Cuba on contract with Archbishop Espejo to help decorate the Cathedral of Havana. He also worked as a teacher there and, afterward, moved back to Mexico, where he became an academic of merit and second director of painting in the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos.

This portrait was likely commissioned by Jose de Jaudenes y Nebot, Spain’s representative in Philadelphia. Jaudenes knew Washington through Thomas Jefferson and had also been consulted on the negotiation of borders.

FranwDeAnza5x7 Dr. Frances Levine (left), director of the museum, points to and talks about one of her favorite pieces in the exhibit,a 1786 agreement, hand-written in the Palace of the Governors, between Gov. Juan Bautista de Anza and Comanche Captain General Ecueracapa. The agreement laid out how much help de Anza would receive from the Comanches in an action against the Apaches.

Dr. Levine says that when she first saw the Threads of Memory exhibit in Sevilla, Spain, this particular document not only brought her to tears but convinced her to lobby for its American debut in Santa Fe. The fact that it was written in the same building that she works in every day carried special meaning, along with a deeper knowledge of the conditions that both colonists and Native peoples lived with.

Some of the media members who came to our preview was the EFE News Agency of Spain, which is preparing a story for distribution across that nation this weekend.

Among EF’s interviews was one with Santa Fe Mayor David Coss. The city of Santa Fe, celebrating the 400th anniversary of its founding by Spanish colonists, played a key role in bringing the exhibit to life here.

Dr. Levine and Josef Diaz, the museum’s curator of Southwest and Mexican Art and History, examine an illustration of La Belle. The image is the main “brand” of the exhibit; see it above as part of the exhibit title.)

La Belle, a ship, was part of an attempt by France to displace the spreading power of Spain on the lower Mississippi and what is now the American Southwest. The expedition was led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who left France with four ships to claim and colonize the area around the mouth of the Mississippi for France. En route, one ship was lost to pirates, one ran aground, its cargo taken by local natives, and one returned to France. La Salle continued to sail La Belle but missed the Mississippi by some 400 miles, landing on the Gulf Coast, not far from what is now Corpus Christi. The ship was later lost in a storm with about 20 survivors, including La Salle. In 1995, less than 12 feet deep, the remains of the ship were discovered and recovered by the Texas Historical Commission.

At 2 pm on Dec. 19, Eric Ray, a maritime archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission, will deliver a lecture about La Belle in the History Museum Auditorium.

Finally, meet part of the people responsible for bringing the exhibit here. From left, Falia Gonzalez, Spanish curator of the exhibit from the Archivo General de Indias; FaliaJosefMayorFran1_5x7 Josef Diaz; Mayor Coss; and Dr. Levine.

Please join us for this weekend’s activities — Saturday’s private reception (tickets $100 at the Lensic) and Sunday’s grand opening. Each week through Jan. 9, we’ll have The Threads of Memory Lecture Series — all of it free with museum admission. (Remember: Children 16 and under are always free; Seniors free on Wednesdays; NM residents free on Sundays; and everyone free 5-8 pm Fridays.) Bring your family and enjoy learning more about our rich Spanish roots.

NEH Teachers Take Up NM Crafts

Posted on June 24, 2010 by DCA WEB

NEH teachers - retablos 2 The Palace Courtyard was cool, with a reasonable amount of shade this morning — a far cry from the lightning storm predicted for later today. A perfect time, in short, to try out a little plein air painting, New Mexico-style. The teachers participating in this week’s NEH-UNM program, “Contested Homelands: Knowledge, History and Culture of Historic Santa Fe,” ditched the lecture tables in favor of some hands-on activities: creating retablos and punched-tin frames, under the guidance of two notable New Mexico artists.

Santero Gabriel J. Vigil is a Raton native who gave up dreams of professional boxing to build an artist’s career in Santa Fe. Winner of multiple awards for his retablos and bultos at Spanish Market, he hasn’t forgotten his roots and regularly works with children, passing along his art skills to them. Thanks to that experience, he likely had a few tricks up his sleeve when he set out to teach our teachers. He gave them a few hints, provided some drawings for them to work off of, then set them loose.

The results? Soulful and stirring.

A group of teachers in the NEH-UNM workshop enjoy painting retablos on a cool Santa Fe morning.

A sacred heart design takes wing.

Inside the Palace, another group of teachers created a din usually reserved for construction sites. Cleo Romero, a Nambe-based artist, showed them a selection of her punched-tin work — which, in 2006, won top honors in Santa Fe’s Spanish Market. With the assistance of some patterns, nails and hammers, she let the participants work off any potential aggressions by pounding out their own creations.

Using a paper pattern, one of the teachers lines up her punched-tin design.

With Romero's works for inspiration (hanging, at right), teachers get to pounding.

If any of that got you inspired,take note: Cleo will teach a free tinwork class next Wednesday from 10 am to 2 pm at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts. (Call 982-2226 for details.) For further inspiration, check out the online version of Treasures of Devotion; Tesoros de Devocion, the exquisite exhibit in the Palace of the Governors celebrating the work of New Mexico’s legendary santeros.

Whose Homeland Is It Anyway?

Posted on June 21, 2010 by DCA WEB

“Place is more than a museum. Place is more than stuff in a case. Place is an experience that is shared through connections with people over time.

With that, Erica Garcia, chief educator at the New Mexico History Museum, today began one of what will become many lessons for 40 kindergarten-through-high-school teachers. Gathered from across the nation at the museum this week (like a similar group last week), the teachers are studying the history and interactions between Native Americans and European settlers in a city where those peoples’ descendants still make history.

Erica Garcia (left) introduces teachers to the NM History Museum.

It’s also an education in how the settlement of America is not a story focused on familiar names like Jamestown and the Mayflower.

Contested Homelands: Knowledge, History, and Culture of Historic Santa Fe is a special program offered at the museum by the University of New Mexico’s College of Education. Funded by a $160,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Contested Homelands consists of two weeklong workshops held at the museum, with field trips around Santa Fe and Taos.

“Getting a chance to learn about New Mexico’s history in a place that saw so much of it makes this workshop unique,” Garcia said. “The Palace of the Governors is a living testament to the resiliency of New Mexico’s people and cultures. You can tell people about the history, but something special happens when they stand in its footprint.”

Contested Homelands aims to strengthen the teachers’ knowledge of pre-colonial America and stretch their understanding about the scope of European Colonial America – a topic that too often is taught as an east-to-west migration, overlooking the contemporaneous movements of Spanish colonists from south to north. Besides hearing distinguished scholars discuss topics ranging from historic sites to El Camino Real, participants get to try their hands at cultural creation, hammering out tinwork and designing their own retablos.

Garcia talks about the design of the Palace of the Governors during a walk around the Santa Fe Plaza.

As this week’s session began, Garcia led the teachers on a tour of the Santa Fe Plaza and the Palace of the Governors. Standing at the corners of Lincoln Avenue and San Francisco Street, she noted that the corner, once the terminus of El Camino Real, is now “a great place to get ice cream.” Moving down the sidewalk to the corner of Old Santa Fe Trail and San Francisco Street, she told the teachers they had just reached the end of the Santa Fe Trail.

The Plaza that connects the trails, she said, has been the heart of Santa Fe life for four centures, with wedding, executions, protest rallies, military enlistments and, just this weekend, a few nude cyclists.

Sprinkled in were stories of the Spanish colonization and its harsh encomienda system that led to the Pueblo Revolt; the technology of building with mud; and a nod to the Palace’s uniquely colonial security system: Anyone intending to storm the place was forced to simultaneously stoop through a low door while stepping up, thereby making themselves a slower and better target of inhabitants.

This week’s teachers hail from places as far from one another as Maine and Oregon, with Iowa, Chicago, the Carolinas, New Jersey, New York and San Antonio thrown in.

Among the questions participants will ponder: What are homelands? How do homelands stretch, shrink and shift over time? What happens when homelands overlap with one another? How does (perpetual) colonization, conquering, and resistance transform homelands and create new ones? What is the spiritual story of a homeland? How do the artistic products and structures of a homeland tell a story? What connections do people have to a homeland and how are these connections manifested in history and in present-day? And importantly, for the purpose of this workshop, how do the Camino Real and the Palace of the Governors exemplify the unfolding of homeland in an area that already had a vibrant system of Pueblo communities prior to European Settlement?

Using what they learn, the teachers will leave the workshop with something they can use in their classrooms – a lesson, a Power Point Presentation, an informational booklet to share with their students, a lecture.

Besides UNM and the museum, the program received support from the Office of the State Historian, Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Wells Fargo Bank, Albuquerque Historical Society, New Mexico Humanities Council, New Mexico Council for the Social Studies, National Geographic, La Montañita Coop, Dr. Thomas Keyes, Dr. Quincy Spuirlin, Dr. Rebecca Sánchez and Albert and Christine Sánchez.

While the workshops coincide with Santa Fe’s 400^th anniversary, they make the point that the area’s history stretches centuries before that.

“Vibrant communities flourished in this place long before European exploration and later settlement,” Assistant Professor Rebecca Sánchez told UNM Today. “ As this region moved toward statehood, the United States inherited the memory and material creations of the region. When it became part of the U.S., the country had to incorporate this history into the national narrative of American history. The place is itself a homeland with a larger story.”

The NEH’s “Edsitement” arm has also selected Santa Fe for this month’s virtual excursion, an online opportunity for teachers and, really, anyone to learn more about this place where so many trails converged.

New Mexico Turquoise Meets Tiffany’s Fabulous Blue Box

Posted on June 3, 2010 by DCA WEB

tiffany box For as long as people have called New Mexico home, they have pulled gems and minerals from its soil. Today, that tradition yields oil, gas, coal, uranium, and always, the gems that decorate our jewelry. Primary among those gems is a a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminum known worldwide as turquoise.

For that part of the story, head with us to the hills of Cerrillos, south of Santa Fe, where a once-vibrant mining district held a special allure to famed jewelry company Tiffany’s. All because of a particular type of turquoise and that fabled Tiffany Blue box.

The Cerrillos mining district has seen activity since 600 A.D., first from Native peoples, then Spanish colonists and, later, American mining companies. But the history of turquoise mining wasn’t always a cherished one. From the Cerrillos Hills web site:

During the Spanish Period the pueblos continued to mine turquoise for their own use and trade with the unconquered tribes around New Mexico. The Spanish considered turquoise worthless and laughed at the Indians for mining it. Consequently, Spanish documents … ignore the continued mining of turquoise by the Indians. Only a few Spanish documents even mention the continued use of turquoise by the pueblos.

Late 1800s documents make references to Santo Domingo and Cochito Puebloans traveling to the Cerrillos Hills to collect turquoise. With the arrival of the railroad in 1881 and the development of tourism, travelers began snapping up Pueblo turquoise jewelry. A fad was being born.

In 1889, George F. Kunz, Tiffany & Co.’s renowned gemologist, won an award in Paris for a collection that contained a sample of New Mexico turquoise. In 1892, Kunz announced that certain colors of turquoise had come to be considered “gem quality” – namely, the Tiffany Blue color.

tiffany pendant According to a New York newspaper: That is a turquoise far and away the finest in America, and it came from these new mines in New Mexico. It is worth $4,000. … (I)t is probable that gems to the value of $200,000 a year may be obtained from this mine. Kunz recognized the possibilities of further branding the Tiffany Blue color by maintaining almost-exclusive rights to the turquoise he had made suddenly valuable.

That year, James P. McNulty came to Cerrillos to mine turquoise, eventually landing with the American Turquoise Company, which owned the claims to a number of mines. The ATC sold almost all of its turquoise directly to Tiffany & Co., where designer Pauling Farnham (regarded by some as “Tiffany’s lost genius”) crafted some $2 million worth of it into jewelry.

McNulty died Jan. 26, 1933, and is buried in the Masonic section of the old cemetery on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe.

Herculano Montoya at the Tiffany mine(1937). Palace of the Governors Photo Archives

Today, the Tiffany Mine and with five other mines in Cerrillos are owned by Doug Magnus, a Santa Fe jewelry designer whose Santa Fe 400^th line is available in the Spiegelberg Shop at the New Mexico History Museum.

Magnus says the mines are, in all likelihood, played out. Still, he was able to obtain several specimens of the raw ore “that had been hoarded for 80 or 100 years by the man that did all the mining for the American Turquoise Company.”

Despite such difficulties, Magnus said, turquoise seems to be enjoying new verve. “I’ve been working with it since 1972, and I’ve watched it become the single most popular semi-precious gemstone in the realm of semi-precious gemstones. And that’s worldwide.”

Magnus will talk about the mines and about the use of turquoise in jewelry-making at the 5^th annual Palace of the Governors Gem & Mineral Show, 9 am-5 pm, June 18-20, in the Palace Courtyard. The event is free via entrance through the Blue Gate south of the History Museum’s main entrance at 113 Lincoln Avenue.

Miners, merchants and jewelers will display (and sell!) specimens ranging from raw ore to polished finery.

Guest speakers at the event:

Garrick Beck, “The History of Fakery in Gemstones,” 11 am Saturday

Beck’s Santa Fe company, Natural Stones, specializes in genuine, natural stones that are not dyed, synthesized, “stabilized” or “enhanced.

Doug Magnus,”The Cerrillos Mines,” 2 pm Saturday

Magnus, a Santa Fe jewelry designer whose Santa Fe 400^th line is available in the Spiegelberg Shop at the New Mexico History Museum, has owned the six mines in Cerrillos, N.M., including the fabled Tiffany turquoise mine, since 1988.

Sandy Craig,”The Opals of Ethiopia,” 1 pm Sunday

Craig’s Orca Gems and Opals of Littleton, Colo., carries specimens, rough, rubs and cut stones from Nevada, Mexico, Honduras, Ethiopia, Lightning Ridge, Lambina, Mintabi, Yowah and Koroit.

Lila with crystal 5x3 72 The Gem & Mineral Show, in conjunction with the Palace of the Governors Native American Artisan Program, allows gem and mineral dealers and Native American artisans to tell their unique stories about the historical relationships that have existed between Native silversmiths and jewelers, miners, and gem and mineral traders.

Exhibitors will include: Garrick Beck; Orca Gems and Opals; Roadrunner Mining and Minerals; Bright Star Gemstones; and Will Steerman.

Come to look, come to touch, come to buy, but most important, come to learn more about the historic interplay between miners, mineral traders and the artisans who bring life to these fruits of the earth.

A Walk Through Time

Posted on May 7, 2010 by DCA WEB

Plaza merchants shook their stores from slumber as city workers swept the square, their conversation a melodic Spanish carried by the spring breeze. Huddled in the morning chill, we were walkers from St. Louis, New Jersey, Maine, Florida, New York and Michigan, led by a woman from California who was about to bring aboard a few folks like Napoleon, Willa Cather and a Native American saint.

pat “The Italians did not have tomato sauce,” declared Pat Kuhlhoff. “The Swiss did not make chocolate. And there was never a potato famine in Ireland until Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas.”

With that, Kuhlhoff began one of the downtown Santa Fe historic walking tours she has conducted on behalf of the Palace of the Governors for 17 years. She and other volunteers rotate responsibility for the tours every Monday-through-Saturday from mid-April through mid-October.

It’s an informal start: Gather at what we museum folks know as “The Blue Gate” – a wooden gate on the east side of Lincoln Avenue that divides the Palace of the Governors from the New Mexico History Museum.

Tours cost $10, last up to two hours (depending on how many questions you ask), don’t require reservations, rarely achieve a pace more strenuous than an amble, and provide a stop for drinking fountains and restrooms. (The museum guides, by the way, do not accept tips.)

Kuhlhoff begins her tour by drawing connections between visitors’ home states and the American Southwest. “All of King George’s Red Coats got their red from Mexico,” she tells an East Coaster. In a way, she’s subverting the standard U.S. educational view of American history, as something that started back East and eventually pioneered its way to a desolate West.

In fact, Kuhlhoff tells her dozen walkers, Santa Fe’s history began some 14,000 years ago with Native peoples who farmed, tamed turkeys and dogs, fought with one another, and then fought with European settlers, before reaching accommodations that led to today’s Southwestern melting pot and its still-distinct ethnic ingredients.

Standing in the Plaza, Kuhlhoff points to the obelisk commemorating those who died in the so-called Indian wars. She tells of how the word “savage” was chiseled out of its inscription – an oft-told story – but drops in something new: Napoleon saw obelisks used as memorials in Egypt and brought the idea back to France, where it took root and spread.

(We can also thank Napoleon for Southwestern punched-tin decorative arts, Kuhlhoff says. The general decided tin cans were the best way to move goods across long distances. Once goods made it all the way to Santa Fe, throwing away the cans they came in was deemed wasteful, so they were recycled into objects that now typify Santa Fe style.)

Kuhlhoff makes me see, for the first time, the gargoyle heads atop the Catron Block building at Washington and Palace.

She leads us into the Rainbow Man Courtyard on East Palace and points to the office where scientists for the Manhattan Project once learned of their top-secret orders.

palace ave architecture On the corner of Cathedral and Palace, she compares and contrasts Territorial, Pueblo, Mission and Romanesque architectural styles.

Near the river, she stops at a bed of native plants and deftly IDs yarrow, poppies, aspens – before noting that, just upstream, nuclear secrets were exchanged, a crime that led to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

On the steps of St. Francis Cathedral, she introduces visitors to the statue of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the first female Native American to attain beatification, and tells a bit of the history of Bishop Lamy, noting drily that Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is “not historically accurate, but popular.”

The walk includes information on the railroad era (with a timely restroom break at La Fonda) and on the use of acequias to move the desert’s most precious natural resource: water.

“You’re with these people such a short time and you don’t get to know them, so I try to make it really broad,” Kuhlhoff said afterward. “If you go into too much detail, people don’t have a basic framework.”

Getting that basic framework to them is easier said than done: “With the docent training we get,” Kuhlhoff said, “I could have these people out there for four days.”

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