David Lance Goines: A Master of the Artful Poster Speaks

Posted on April 6, 2011 by admin

A 1983 poster by David Lance Goines. Produced for the Pacific Film Archive (Tom Schmidt), University of California Art Museum, Berkeley. Courtesy of the artist.

Since 1968, graphic artist David Lance Goines has blended whimsy and precision to produce posters for clients as far-ranging Chez Panisse restaurant, Ravenswood Wine, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, poetry readings and nurseries.

On Saturday, April 23, the airplane-shunning artist will arrive in Santa Fe by train for a combination lecture and exhibition, co-sponsored by the Press at the Palace of the Governors, Fisher Press and the New Mexico chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design.

His 2 pm lecture in the History Museum Auditorium, titled “David Lance Goines: A Life in Posters,” costs $10; $5 members of AIGA; free, students with ID. Seating is limited. A 4-6 pm reception at Fisher Press, 307 Camino Alire, in Santa Fe follows the lecture. Copies of his new book, The Poster Art of David Lance Goines, A 40-Year Retrospective (Dover Press, 2010), will be available for sale and signing. The gallery will display the exhibition David Lance Goines: A Life in Posters through May 14.

The book is stuffed full of his work, including 155 full-color posters promoting movies, galleries, restaurants, and concerts. You can get a sneak peek — and have a delightful time — wandering through an online assortment of his designs here.

Mixing influences of artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and J.C. Leyendecker, Goines proves that, contrary to some art historians’ claim, the “golden age” of the poster didn’t end with World War I but has continued through Rosie the Riveter, 1960s Fillmore concerts and more into the 21st century.

Goines has produced hundreds of designs for posters, books and exhibitions featuring his distinctive Arts & Crafts style. In 1968, he founded the Saint Hieronymus Press in Berkeley, California. One of the few graphic artists who designs and prints his own work, Goines uses both letterpress and photo-offset lithography. The Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, and Louvre have collected his work.

As both a museum exhibition about the historic presses of New Mexico and a working print shop that produces award-winning books, posters and other materials, the Palace Press takes as part of its mission to “bring people who are at the top of their field in graphic arts and publishing to share their expertise with the community,” said curator Tom Leech.

The public is welcome to this special event, but come early. Like we said, seating is limited.

(Goines, by the way, is also a 17-gallon blood donor whose other publications include The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960s; and Punchlines: How to Start a Fight in Any Bar in the World.)

Here are two more examples of his fine work:

"Grow What You Eat," 2008, marking the 37th anniversary of Chez Panisse.

"Hillside Club," 2008, for the Hillside Club of Berkeley, Calif.

A Mary Colter Weekend, Part III: What Would Mary Do?

Posted on April 3, 2011 by admin

One of Mary Colter’s shining achievements was her 1929 redesign of La Fonda on the Plaza. Working with the then-much-younger John Gaw Meem, she oversaw details as large as the fountain in an interior plaza (now La Plazuela Restaurant) and as minute as towel racks and bedspreads.

Edward Kemp photo of La Fonda, 1929. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives #046955.

Records show some type of inn standing at the southeast corner of the Santa Fe Plaza since 1610, but its many morphings continued across migrations of Spanish colonists, Santa Fe Trail riders, East Coast railroad tourists and today’s international mix of travelers. The version of La Fonda that Colter and Meem inherited had been in the hands of Rapp Rapp & Henderson who had expanded its footprint but left what Colter called a “dark, dreary and gruesome” interior.

The hotel, now owned the Ballen family, hired Santa Fe architect Barbara Felix in 2007 to inventory what was there and redesign the restaurant, then famous in part for tripping up customers with its unruly floors.

Fueled by an interest in restoring Colter’s complete vision — including that charming onetime open-air interior plaza — Felix said, “I naively asked, ‘Could we just get rid of the restaurant and return the courtyard to a courtyard?'” (The audience at her Saturday lecture during A Mary Colter Weekend, co-sponsored by the New Mexico History Museum and La Fonda on the Plaza, likely laughed just as hard as her bosses did at the time.)

Felix offered participants an overview of her efforts to forensically find the remnants of Colter’s design and modern-day them into a new vision. Down in storage, she found one remaining chaise longue, several blanket boxes and headboards that held a tale. Purchased for a Florida mansion from an antiques dealer in Spain, they were nearly destroyed in a hurricane during their overseas journey and later auctioned off to a sharp-eyed Colter.

Working with Colter’s correspondence with Meem, old photographs and whatever other documents she could find, Felix pieced together a few facts. Among them: The beloved painted window panes found throughout the hotel were not a Colter touch at all, but something added in the 1980s.

PaintedWindows “They’ve become such a beloved icon of Santa Fe that we didn’t want to remove them,” Felix said. “And frankly, I think I would have gotten lynched if I had.”

(The windows were created not by a local artist but by a La Fonda employee, Ernest Martinez, who only recently retired at 80-some-years-old. Throughout the hotel, you’ll spy his whimsical Native American motifs and flora and fauna along corridor walls, on guest room furniture and even in the hotel’s parking garage. Felix assured Mary Colter Weekend participants that he painted a few extra window panes before retiring “because, as we all know, glass breaks.”)

Determined to restore the restaurant’s fountain, Felix did her best to find tiles she considered appropriate, order them, wait for delivery and prepare for restoration to begin. The surprise came when workmen began removing the flagstone floor that had long covered the spot. Underneath it, they found the shattered remnants of the original fountain.

“They had literally back-filled it into itself,” she said.

Too late to reconsider her tile choices, she went ahead with her plan, but held onto a shard of Colter’s tile as a memento.

restaurant Though sheltered with a sturdy roof, La Plazuela today carries the feel of an open-air plaza (not to mention some of the tastiest meals in downtown Santa Fe).

Throughout her work, Felix said she kept in mind one of Colter’s aims: to be tactile. “She wants you to touch the railings, the walls,” she said.

Felix worked with local artists and artisans, including Steve Dulfer, Klaus Messerer, Gunther Worrlein, Ward Brinigin, Mark Knutsen and Vivian Nichols.

Walk around La Fonda today, and the combined spirit of their efforts and those of artisans over the decades is evident in…

WallLight

…charming light fixtures…

mask

…artwork…

tiles

…walls filled with handmade tiles.

As part of the Mary Colter Weekend, La Fonda compiled a guide to the architectural-historical highlights of its interior — the onetime carriage house that’s now a parking garage; Colter’s last architectural assignment, a cantinita that’s now the French Pastry Shop; original paintings by Gerald Cassidy; and the classic Colter masterpiece of the Santa Fe Room.

CheckingOutHotel One of the joys of the weekend was watching participants wander through the hotel, the guide in hand, checking out the glories.

Our humble blog posts barely skim the surface of what we covered during A Mary Colter Weekend. If you’re interested in more, there are no better places to start than with the books by two of our speakers: Arnold Berke’s Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest; and Stephen Fried’s Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built an Empire that Civilized the West.

In concluding her lecture, Felix asked whether Colter was still relevant. She cited Colter’s knowledge about how materials and culture work together, how she set the standard for National Park system architecture, and about her timeless sense of design. In a haunting question that she left participants to answer, Felix asked:

Are we building structures today that will still be relevant, let along standing, in 100 years?

A Mary Colter Weekend, Part II

Posted on April 2, 2011 by admin

Noted Southwestern author Frank Waters once referred to Mary Colter as having “a tender heart and a caustic tongue.” She could write the sweetest notes to the child of her onetime mentee, and scathing ones to architect John Gaw Meem, with whom she worked on La Fonda. (In one of the notes, she asked him precisely where he thought he might end up when he died.)

Those were among the tidbits of a grand life shared this morning by Arnold Berke, the biographer of Mary Colter (Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest) at this morning’s continuation of A Mary Colter Weekend. During his research, he found few blueprints, which aren’t built for survival to begin with; few original documents revealing anything of her love life (if any); and, as the years pass, fewer and fewer examples of her iconic architecture and designer’s eye.

Those were signs, he said, of a woman who was not appreciated in her own time, nor after her own time. That’s all the more sad when you consider she was alive at the same time as Frank Lloyd Wright and Julia Morgan, William Randolph Heart’s architect. (And no, Berke said, he found no evidence that Colter ever met either of them. And yes, he’s asked that question every time he speaks.)

Only in recent years, Berke said, has interest in Colter risen, particularly among Grand Canyon aficionados. Colter’s buildings along the South Rim and Phantom Ranch at the canyon’s bottom pioneered a style of architecture now used by most national and state parks. It’s called National Park Service Rustic, and Colter was, Berke said, “truly a pioneer of this idiom.”

A master builder as well designer, Colter married rock, tile, timber, glass, and wrought iron, employed a keen eye for talent in hiring artists like a young Fred Kabotie, and brewed up buildings that grew out of rock ledges, or simply appeared on a forest floor, complete and natural, as if they had always been there. Take a gander at two strikingly different models. The Pueblo-meets-Spanish style of La Fonda on the Plaza’s softly stuccoed and stacked curves (Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir once called La Fonda”The most beautiful hotel in America, perhaps the most beautiful hotel I’ve seen in my life.”):

La Fonda, Santa fe

And the seemingly haphazard collection of rocks that make up the very stable Hermit’s Rest at the Grand Canyon:

Hermit's Rest, Grand Canyon

Nothing about Colter’s designs was haphazard, Berke said. First-time visitors to her buildings would appreciate seemingly antique furniture that craftsmen had just built, along with soot marking the walls above brand-new fireplaces. “You can’t imagine how difficult it was to make that look old,” she once said.

She designed the interiors of Kansas City’s, Chicago’s and Los Angeles’ Union Stations and created the Mimbres-influenced dishes once used on the Santa Fe Railway and now sold for hundreds of dollars per teacup. She did so at a time when women were not architects, or if they were, they didn’t climb rock monuments to study their composition. Berke said her success was likely due to a combination of nature and nurture — a naturally strong-willed person with an artistic bent, she was raised in the heartland of America at a time when “going West” was the place to go.

By the time she died in 1958, Colter had seen her time come and go. El Ortiz in Lamy, NM, was torn down in 1943. El Navajo in Gallup was destroyed in 1957, along with the monumental sand paintings Colter had persuaded Navajo artisans to create. She outlived Albuquerque’s Alvarado, but only barely. Torn down in 1970, it’s still mourned by lovers of architecture.

The resurgence of interest in her inspired Berke to propose what some might consider a fool’s quest. He referenced the exquisite collection of Native jewelry she had amassed and eventually bequeathed to Mesa Verde Museum, where most of it, like most museum collections, is in storage. Maybe, he said, some enterprising museum type could work out a loan and put the jewelry on exhibit?

To the hearty applause of Berke’s audience, New Mexico History Museum Director Fran Levine said that, yes, she would be that person.

A Mary Colter Weekend, Part I

Posted on April 1, 2011 by admin

What could inspire some 150 people to travel from Arizona, Pennsylvania and other parts to Santa Fe? Well, plenty of things, when you think about. Mountains, art, great food, a unique mix of cultures. But this weekend, for these particular 150-some people, it was the memory of Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter.

An 1893 portrait of Mary Jane Colter by Arthur Mathews, one of her professors. Photo by Tom Alexander, courtesy of the Pioneer Museum, Flagstaff, and the Arizona Historical Society.

Starting Friday evening and continuing through Saturday, experts on the life and times of the Fred Harvey Co.’s “starchitect” are rubbing shoulders and ideas with railroad buffs, fans of history and an admirably large number of Harvey family members.

The event is co-sponsored by the New Mexico History Museum and La Fonda on the Plaza, one of the hotels where Colter left her design mark — along the way developing a version of Southwest style that lives today. The event is a fund-raiser for the History Museum, and we’re gratified to say, we’re sold out.

We began with a reception in the New Mexico room of La Fonda, where margaritas, tortillas and guacamole held court and folks started getting acquainted. A few glimpses:

millingStephenKatherine

milling1

milling3

Beyond food and conversation, we took note of the exquisite architectural details, like this eagle carved into a viga:

EagleViga

And this ceiling lamp:

lamp

Our generous sponsors then retired to the Santa Fe Room — the one room in La Fonda that retains about 90 percent of Colter’s original arts-and-crafts-meets-Native-American style — for dinner. Architect Barbara Felix delivered an amuse bouche of what participants will learn when our speakers hold court on Saturday. A Santa Fe architect, Felix oversaw the renovation of La Fonda’s restaurant, La Plazuela, taking care to restore what she could of Colter’s original intent for a room that, in her time, was an open-air plaza.

Among the difficulties that Felix encountered was the discovery that not all of Colter’s efforts were as solid and lasting as the sculpted terra-cotta mantels of German artist Arnold Ronnebeck, from whom she commissioned several pieces still inside the hotel.

Instead, some were piled in a storage room, where more than a few La Fonda honchos think they should stay. Not quite as well-made, they nevertheless held the charm of hand-crafted items, like the hanging lamp with hand-painted glass panels and an iron ashtray shaped like an antelope.

“It’s a little crude,” Felix said of the lamp. “It’s a little whimsical. It’s a little folk-arty.”

And then there was…this metal palm tree to the right of Felix.

Before the event, as a worker wheeled it into the banquet room, one hotel employee sighed in apparent disappointment. But for those of us who troll eBay and Craigslist, it was a find like no other.

Kind of like Mary Colter.

Starting at 10:30 am Saturday, we’ll learn more about her many legacies, which include the magical buildings along the south rim of the Grand Canyon, Phantom Ranch at its bottom, and the onetime grand interior of Los Angeles’ Union Station. Speakers include Colter biographer Arnold Berke; Harvey biographer Stephen Fried; and Felix.

We’ll keep you posted with updates throughout the day. If you can’t attend, don’t despair. In honor of the event, we added items from the Fred Harvey legacy to our display in the museum’s Mezzanine level, including a Collier magazine ad urging readers “Let’s eat with the Harvey boys”; a meal ticket; and a poster of the Harvey Co.’s Indian detours.

We hope you’ll come visit.

Beyond the Marlboro Man

Posted on March 31, 2011 by admin

When we think of the American West, our minds tend to conjure images of gunfighters, Indian wars and cattle barons. If we think of women at all, it’s most likely a saloon girl or Calamity Jane.

Historians know that’s hardly the distaff story of the West. From Native women who oversaw corn production and the building of adobe homes to Hispanic weavers, artists and property owners, to Anglo businesswomen, physicians and environmental stewards, the female side of the story of the West too often seems to fade into the Victorian wallpaper.

Up to now, that is.

Spanish American Woman plastering, Chamisal, New Mexico, photograph by Russel Lee, 1940. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF33-012823-M5

This summer, the New Mexico History Museum begins filling in the historical gaps with four exhibitions focused on women past and present. Let’s round ’em up:

1. Home Lands: How Women Made the West, June 19-Sept. 11, a traveling exhibition from the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, features additional materials from the History Museum’s collections. The largest of the summer’s four exhibits, it sweeps across the centuries in three regions: the Rio Arriba of northern New Mexico; Colorado’s Front Rage; and the Puget Sound.

Evelyn Fite Tune, a longtime rancher outside Socorro, NM. Photo by Ann Bromberg, courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives.

2. Ranch Women of New Mexico, April 15-Oct. 30 in the Mezzanine Gallery, highlights 11 women in this excerpt from an exhibit originally prepared by photographer Ann Bromberg and writer Sharon Niederman.

3. New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable, May 15-Oct. 9 in the second-floor Gathering Space, tells the stories of the families who planted their roots and created a home in the Land of Enchantment following the Civil War.

4. Heart of the Home, May 27-Nov. 20 in La Ventana Gallery, spotlights historic kitchen items from the History Museum’s collections.

(Yes, they open at different times; that’s a reality of what it takes to mount an exhibition.)

“Since its opening in 2009, the New Mexico History Museum’s exhibits have included the stories of men, women and children – a conscious effort on our part to broaden the telling of history,” said museum director Frances Levine. “This summer’s exhibits highlight that commitment by focusing squarely on the contributions made by women that don’t begin and end with popular Western stereotypes.”

So you won’t find Miss Kitty or Calamity Jane or even Santa Fe’s own legendary madame, Dona Tules, in any of the exhibits. Instead, their shared focus is the universal desire to set down roots and create that place called “home.” That seemingly simple act is “a potent way of changing the world,” say Home Lands curators Virginia Scharff and Carolyn Brucken. Home Lands puts women at the center of that focus for a simple reason, the women write in their companion book: “Seeing women in history makes history look different.”

Among the women you will see in the exhibits:

Fabiola Cabeza de Baca in front of New Mexican schoolhouse, photographer and date unknown. Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert Photograph Collectioon, Center for the Southwest Research, University of New Mexico

Fabiola Cabeza de Baca. A Las Vegas, NM, native, this teacher and writer elevated both the art and science of homemaking from the Depression forward, blending traditional practices with modern-day conveniences. Beginning in the 1950s, her expertise went global when she started home-economics programs in Central and South America for the United Nations and became a trainer for the Peace Corps. Her story is included in Home Lands.

Legendary cowgirl Fern Sawyer. Photo by Ann Bromberg, courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives.

Fern Sawyer. New Mexico’s best-known cowgirl spent 77 years living up to her motto: “Do all you can as fast as you can.” An inductee into the Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame, Cowgirl Hall of Fame and National Cutting Horse Hall of Fame, Sawyer passed away in 1993, still with her boots on, still in the saddle. Ranch Women of New Mexico includes her story.

Clara Belle Drisdale. Photo courtesy New Mexico State University Archives.

Clara Belle Drisdale Williams. In 1937, she became the first African American to graduate from New Mexico State University. After a career of teaching others, she received an honorary law degree from NMSU in 1980, along with an apology for how she was treated as a student. You’ll find her story in New Mexico’s African American Legacy.

Other New Mexico women in Home Lands: Pueblo potter Maria Martinez; painter Pablita Velarde; photographer Laura Gilpin; archaeologist Bertha Dutton; santera Gloria Lopez Cordova; Santa Clara Pueblo artist Nora Naranjo Morse; and poet and playwright Joy Harjo.

The Autry drew on its extensive collections to organize the exhibit, but also purchased must-have items, including Pablita Velarde’s monumental mural, Green Corn Dance. It’s impressive even in a computer-screen’s small scale:

GreenCornDance_72_3x10

Artifacts range from a 1,200-year-old Mogollon metate to a 20^th-century station wagon, textiles, clothing, pottery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, books, and an art piece made of computer components by contemporary artist Marion Martinez.

To kick things off, the Museum of New Mexico Foundation is holding a $200-a-person party called Celebrate on Saturday, June 18. Put on your fancy Western wear and enjoy fine wines and creative cuisine in the Palace Courtyard. Learn more, including how to buy tickets by clicking here.

Throughout the summer, we’ll have special lectures, workshops and symposiums to further deepen your knowledge of women in the West. All these events are free and in the History Museum auditorium unless otherwise noted:

Sunday, June 12, 2 pm: Symposium on “The Journey of the African American North,” including stories from Santa Fe and Española.

Sunday, June 26, 2 pm: “Captive Women in the Slave System of the Southwest Borderland.” Lecture by James F. Brooks, president of the School for Advanced Research and prize-winning author of Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.

Sunday, July 10, 2 pm: “Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and The Good Life.” Lecture by Tey Diana Rebolledo, regents professor at the University of New Mexico.

Sunday, July 17, 2 pm: “Moving Around to Settle In: Women of the Plains and Range.” Lecture by Virginia Scharff, co-curator of Home Lands and director of UNM’s Center for the Southwest.

Monday, 9 am to 4:30 pm, and Tuesday, 9 am to 12 pm: “Planting Seeds: Home, Healing and Horticulture.” Conference in collaboration with the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. $25. (Details pending.)

Sunday, Aug. 7, 2-5 pm: “Homespun: Northern New Mexico Spinning and Weaving Techniques.” Members of the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center demonstrate Pueblo, Navajo and Spanish techniques in the Palace Courtyard.

Friday, Aug. 12, 6 pm: “Through Her Eyes: An American Indian Woman’s Perspective.” Lecture by Eunice Petramala, park ranger at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.

Sunday, Sept. 25, 2 pm: Symposium on “Entrepreneurship in the African American Community,” from barbers to caterers, mechanics to artists.

Home Lands is generously supported by Cam and Peter Starret, Ernst & Young, Eastman Kodak Company, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Unified Grocers, Wells Fargo, KCET and the Friends of the Autry. Local support is provided by Stanley S. and Karen Hubbard, Dr. Ezekiel and Edna Wattis Dumke Foundation, the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, the Palace Guard and the Montezuma Ball.

The “Threads of Memory” Sews Up Big Numbers

Posted on March 4, 2011 by admin

Whether in person or online, it seems, you like us. You really, really like us.

During the Oct. 16-Jan.9 run for The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: España y los Estados Unidos), the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors welcomed 19,337 visitors. That number included 22 school groups of 813 students from around the state, and an additional 1,054 children who came through with friends and families, or schools that did not use our school registration site.

The French Ship La Belle, 1684. Sevilla. Archivo General de Indias. MP-Ingenios y Muestras, 9.

The exhibition’s lectures and performances attracted another 848 visitors.

The herculean efforts of staffers to create an online exhibit paid off: Since Oct. 17, the Threads of Memory web site accounted for 16,414 page views. Although we can’t claim a direct causality, during the exhibit’s 11-week run, the web site saw:

• A 21 percent increase in visitors

• A 49 percent increase in pages viewed

• A 23 percent increase in the average number of pages per visit

• A 13 percent increase in the average amount of time on site

We were honored to be chosen by the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies) for the exhibit’s U.S. debut and delighted to work with our international partners, including the Fundación Rafael del Pino, the State Corporation for the Spanish Cultural Action Abroad (Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, or SEACEX), and Spain’s Ministries for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and Culture.

The web site remains a valuable tool for teachers and others interested in the roots of Spanish life in the United States. And if you weren’t able to see the exhibit while it was at the History Museum, it’s at the El Paso Museum of History through April 24; then at the Historic New Orleans Collection May 10 – July 10, before heading back to Spain.

Mary Jane Colter’s Legacy of Southwestern Style

Posted on March 4, 2011 by admin

An 1893 portrait of Mary Jane Colter by Arthur Mathews, one of her professors. Photo by Tom Alexander, courtesy of the Pioneer Museum, Flagstaff, and the Arizona Historical Society.

In 1910, a young architect named Mary Jane Colter was hired by the Fred Harvey Co. and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Over the decades that followed, she created some of the most iconic buildings along the railway and at the Grand Canyon.

Today, 11 of her buildings are on the National Registry of Historic Places; five are designated National Historic Landmarks. A maverick and a visionary, she broke with European architectural tradition, blending Mission Revival, Spanish Colonial and Native American elements. She embraced the Arts & Crafts Movement’s simple but sophisticated designs and exquisite craftsmanship. She methodically researched indigenous art, architecture and building techniques. As one writer observed: “She could teach masons how to lay adobe bricks, plasterers how to mix washes, and carpenters how to fix viga joints.”

On April 1 and 2, the New Mexico History Museum joins with La Fonda on the Plaza — itself housed in a building she elevated with her interior designs — to explore Colter’s life and legacy. “A Mary Jane Colter Weekend: The Shaping of Southwest Style” is an exclusive event featuring lectures by noted experts and special dinners prepared by La Fonda’s Executive Chef Lane Warner.

Tickets start at $100 ($50 tax-deductible); $200 for the events plus an April 1 sponsor dinner ($100 tax-deductible). The Museum of New Mexico Foundation is co-hosting the event with La Fonda on the Plaza. Proceeds benefit the New Mexico History Museum. Call 505-988-1234 or log onto www.TicketsSantaFe.org for tickets. Act now: Space is limited.

Once called “the best-known unknown architect in the national parks,” Colter is nearly revered for her buildings at the Grand Canyon, including Phantom Ranch, the Watchtower, and Bright Angel Lodge, among others. In 2008, the magazine of the National Parks Conservation Association published a lovely biography of her. (Find it here.)

The Mary Jane Colter Weekend begins with a wine-and-appetizers reception at La Fonda on the Plaza, one of the most iconic buildings on the Santa Fe Plaza. Sponsor-level participants will then enjoy an exclusive dinner in La Fonda’s Santa Fe Room, an old-world setting that most distinctively captures Colter’s design aesthetic. Large terracotta tiles surround the entry door. A fireplace Colter commissioned by Arnold Ronnebeck promises to keep you warm. Elsewhere, you’ll see a beautiful latilla ceiling and paintings by Gerald Cassidy. You’ll have a chance to meet our weekend’s presenters—Arnold Berke, Stephen Fried and Barbara Felix, and hear Felix speak about what she learned of Colter during her own renovation of La Fonda. (We’ll also have a special bag of goodies for each of our sponsors, including a pair of New Mexico CulturePasses and a book of Harvey House recipes compiled by Stephen Fried.)

On April 2, all participants will take in a series of lectures, a La Fonda dinner and an Actors Studio-style discussion of Colter’s legacy led by Dr. Frances Levine, director of the museum.

“Mary Colter’s vision of the Southwest created a style that was simple and yet grand,” Levine said. “She left a magnificent legacy in regional architecture and interior design that we cherish today as much as in the past.”

South Portal of La Fonda Hotel (1925-45?), designed by Mary Jane Colter. Photo by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, No. 054316.

The weekend’s speakers:

Arnold Berke, award-winning author of Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest (Princeton Architectural Press), will bring his meticulously researched book to life, revealing Colter in the social and historical context of her time. “By steeping her buildings in the culture, history, and landscape of the Southwest,” Berke said, “Colter both charmed American travelers and taught them about the region she loved. Her pioneering works delighted the eye and engaged the mind.”

Stephen Fried, author of Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire that Civilized the Wild West, will present the colorful Harvey House history of La Fonda on the Plaza. “The opportunity to spend a weekend exploring Mary Colter’s contributions to life in the Southwest – as design guru for the Fred Harvey Company – will be a rare treat,” Fried said. “I’m also looking forward to discussing the Harvey family women of that era who were vital supporters of Colter’s pioneering work.”

Santa Fe architect Barbara Felix, who was instrumental in the 2009 renovation of La Plazuela, La Fonda’s dining room, on “Preserving the Architectural Fabric of a Santa Fe Icon.” “Colter’s work has inspired me to be passionate about craftsmanship, the use of natural light, regional materials and the transformation of the ordinary into the magical,” Felix said.

The schedule:

Friday, April 1

6 pm: La Fonda, Welcome reception with hosted wine and light hors d’oeuvres.

7 pm: Santa Fe Room, La Fonda, Sponsor dinner

Saturday, April 2

Breakfast on own

10:30 am: NM History Museum, lecture by author Arnold Berke

Lunch on your own

2 pm: La Fonda, lecture by architect Barbara Felix

4 pm: La Fonda, lecture by Stephen Fried, author

7 pm: La Fonda, dinner and Colter discussion with Frances Levine, Arnold Berke and Stephen Fried

“This will be a wonderful weekend for anyone who has visited any of Mary Jane Colter’s extraordinary buildings or been fascinated by this profoundly talented woman who was so ahead of her time,” says Jennifer Kimball, chairman of the board of La Fonda on the Plaza. “We are so proud to be part of the Mary Jane Colter legacy and to share in the sponsorship of this vibrant weekend with the New Mexico History Museum.”

A limited number of special room rate of $109 a night is available for out-of-town guests. Call (800) 523-5002, ext. 1, or (505) 954-3500.

Al-Mutanabbi Street: Poets and Printers Respond to a Casualty of War

Posted on February 18, 2011 by admin

On March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 30 people and wounding more than 100. Named after the famed 10th-century classical Arab poet, Al-Mutanabbi, the street was for centuries the center of Baghdad bookselling, the heart and soul of an ancient city’s literary and intellectual community. From its wreckage came the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, which sent out a call to letterpress printers worldwide: Craft a visual response to the attack.

Artist Garrett Queen, Charlottesville, Va.

The response was immediate. More than 40 printers, including three from New Mexico, enthusiastically answered that first call with a powerful edition of broadsides. Since then, the number has grown to 130. A complete set will be donated to the National Library in Baghdad. Two other sets are traveling for exhibition.

The Press at the Palace of the Governors pays homage to the effort with a new exhibition in the John Gaw Meem Community Room and with a special reading from the broadsides at 6 pm on Friday, March 4, in the History Museum auditorium.

Readers include poets Anne Valley-Fox, Lisa Gill and James Thomas Stevens, bookstore owner Dorothy Massey, poet and bookstore owner Leo Romero, and poet-publishers Janet Rodney, JB Bryan and John Brandi. Many of the readings will be translations of work by Iraqi poets. New Mexico printers who contributed to the project are Suzanne Vilmain of the Counting Coup Press, Janet Rodney of Weaselsleeves Press, and Tom Leech of the Palace Press.

The event is free. From March 4 through April 30, the Broadsides from the Al-Mutanabbi Street Project exhibition is open by appointment. Call Tom Leech at (505) 476-5096.

Artist Nadia Chalabi, London

“The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition is not an anti-war project, nor is it a healing project,” said Beau Beausoleil, San Francisco bookseller, poet, and founder of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. The coalition feels that until we truly see what happened on this one winding street of booksellers and readers, on this one day in Baghdad, until we understand all the implications of an attack on the printed word and its writers, printers, booksellers and readers, until we see that this is our street, until then, we cannot truly move forward.”

The Arthur and Matta Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University has more information about the project on its website.

The coalition offers copies of the broadsides for sale. Proceeds benefit Doctors Without Borders, a nonprofit agency working to relieve suffering in Iraq and other troubled areas of the world.

“We hope the books created will use al-Mutanabbi and its printers, writers, booksellers, and readers, as a touchstone,” Beausoleil said. “We hope that these books will make visible the literary bridge that connects us, made of words and images that move back and forth between the readers in Iraq and ourselves. These books will show the commonality of al-Mutanabbi Street with any street, anywhere, that holds a bookstore or cultural institution.”

Artist Heinz Stefan Bartkowiak, Germany

Download high-resolution versions of the above images by clicking here.

Still Cooking: New Mexico’s Historic Diners, Chile Joints, and Burger Bars

Posted on February 18, 2011 by admin

Wanderlust and the love of a great green chile cheeseburger drive Cheryl Alters Jamison and her husband and cookbook-writing partner, Bill. Literally, drive them. All over the state (and, sometimes, the world).

cherylandbilljamison On Feb. 13, Jamison spoke to a packed crowd in the History Museum Auditorium, regaling them with tales of some of New Mexico’s oldest and most beloved family-owned restaurants. Her lecture, “Still Cooking: New Mexico’s Historic Diners, Chile Joints, and Burger Bars,” dovetailed with her work for the state Tourism Department on two fronts: A catalog of the state’s culinary treasures and another of the best green chile cheeseburgers from Lordsburg to Dulce, Portales to Gallup.

We can’t give you a chile joint-by-chile joint account of her lecture (really, you had to be there), but wanted to share a few of her highlights. To borrow Jamison’s words: “Are you ready? We’re going to hit the road.”

It’s All Greek to Us

Trust an ancient culture with a mouth-watering culinary tradition to set up shop in New Mexico. Some of the state’s oldest and most renowned eateries have been brought to us by Greek immigrants. And a few might surprise you.

Those tummy-warming breakfast burritos at Tia Sophia’s in Santa Fe? The full-blown New Mexico chile dream that is Tomasita’s? The luscious steaks at Santa Fe’s Bull Ring and Albuquerque’s Monte Carlo Steakhouse and the Western View Steakhouse and Coffee Shop?

Greek, Greek, Greek.

As she began researching her upcoming book, Tasting New Mexico: 100 Years of New Mexican Cooking (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2012), Jamison said she kept stumbling across names like Mariol and Razatos. “I thought it was interesting,” she said.

After the turn of the last century, the first Greek restaurant appeared in Albuquerque, Mecca. By 1917, the city could count seven Greek cafes, including the Court Cafe and Liberty Cafe.

StoreFrontPlazaCafe In 1929, Jim and Spiros Ipiotis turned the Eagle Cafe (estd. 1918) on the Santa Fe Plaza into the Plaza Cafe. Dionysis (Danny) Razatos bought it in 1947, but it took until the 1980s for his sons to convince him to add Greek food to the menu. (The restaurant suffered a serious fire recently and is closed for renovations, but the Razatos brothers run the Cowden Cafe sandwich shop in the History Museum, and a relative runs the Plaza Cafe Southside in Santa Fe.)

In the 1930s, Jim Pappas, an immigrant who raised sheep and made cheese and possibly moonshine, opened Pappas Sweet Shop in Raton. Still there, its rooms boast a museum’s worth of collectibles and the intoxicating aroma of fresh-baked bread.

A veritable network of Santa Fe’s favorite dining places actually began in Albuquerque’s Atrisco neighborhood, when a young Greek widow, Sophia Mariol, opened the Central Café to support her four children – each of whom eventually opened restaurants in Santa Fe. They had Mariol’s Cafe on the site that now boasts Cafe Pasqual’s. Son Jim opened Tia Sophia’s. One day, daughter Georgia Mariol stumbled onto a little-visited restaurant called Tomasita’s, then on Hickox. (The site later became Dave’s and, still later, Dave’s Not Here, because, well, Dave left.)

Tomasita’s chile was so good that it reminded Georgia of eating in her neighbors’ kitchens in Atrisco. She bought the café by assuming the debt and, it turns out, by assuming Tomasita Leyba, the cook. She moved it to a bigger location in a then-rundown part of Santa Fe known as the railyard. These days, expect to wait up to an hour for a table, but the crowd will keep you entertained.

A Few Hidden Gems

Sometimes the best food is where you least expect it. A few of Jamison’s discoveries:

Johnnie’s Cash Store in Santa Fe. On Camino Don Miguel off of Canyon Road, Johnnie’s expects you to pay for your sundries by cash or check – and to pick up one of the self-service tamales and enjoy it at a picnic table outside. How good is it? Good enough to win accolades from the Washington Post, which wrote:

Johnnie’s mixes soup, cereal, detergent, pet food — and a few baseball trophies from his sons’ youthful triumphs — in a few aisles of low, unglamorous shelves. The main draw sits near an old-time cash register, in the spot most convenience stores reserve for endlessly spinning wieners. “TAMALES,” the hand-drawn sign on a well-worn aluminum warmer shouts out, tempting customers who have dropped by for water or gum to reconsider their restaurant reservations.

They should. Even in New Mexico, where tamales are ubiquitous — and the bar for them is as high as the elevation above sea level (7,000 feet, for anyone who’s counting) — the husk-wrapped packets of pleasure at Johnnie’s stand out as ideals.

“It’s the last of a dying breed,” Jamison said of Johnnie’s Cash Store. “If you haven’t been there, get there while Johnnie’s is still with us.”

El Paragua in Española. Started in 1958 as little more than a drive-up taco stand, El Paragua now serves fine Mexican food in an impressive and rustic stone building – once the tack rooms of a family home. (Ask to see the photo of a young Dustin Hoffman, fresh off of filming The Graduate, when he ate there.)

Leona’s Restaurante in Chimayo. All Leona Medina-Tiede intended to do was offer food to Easter pilgrims to El Santuario de Chimayo. Thirty-four years later, her restaurant is still on the small side (think outdoor picnic tables and don’t bother with a reservation) but beloved by those who appreciate succulent carne adovada, hand-held burritos, posole, chile stew, frito pies, nachos and biscochitos.

Hit the Road

Besides sharing some of the more delicious portions of New Mexico’s history, Jamison’s lecture had an ulterior motive: To entice the audience (and, by extention, you, dear reader) to begin your own culinary wanderings. The Tourism Department’s web sites, linked above, are a great place to start.

Take the scenic drive to the historic Dust Bowl community of Pie Town and sample the Kathy Knapp’s pecan-oat pie at the Pie-O-Neer Cafe. (“A little slice of heaven,” Jamison said.)

Wander over to Clovis and Portales, where the Taco Box restaurants have served as the “Hometown Tacotorium” since 1969. While in Clovis, check out the Foxy Drive In and imagine the days when Buddy Holly and the Crickets took a break there.

In La Mesa, you simply must eat at Chope’s, which has, Jamison said, “the best chile rellenos in the state.”

And then there’s the hippies-meet-bikers Ancient Way Cafe in Ramah; the Laguna Superete, where your 20- minute wait will be rewarded with an extraordinary green chile cheeseburger (or a Kool-Aid Pickle. Don’t ask.); and Lucky Boy Chinese Food and Hamburgers in Albuquerque.

“Yes, you have to see it to believe it,” Jamison said of Lucky Boy. “It’s the only place in New Mexico, and I would wager anywhere, that you can get a green chile cheeseburger with an egg foo yung patty on top of it.

“My husband says it’s pretty good.”

Wanted: Your Opinion on “The Threads of Memory”

Posted on January 28, 2011 by admin

ElHiloXbt Did you take a spin through The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: España y los Estados Unidos)? If so, we could use your help.

With a little help from Survey Monkey, we’ve devised eight short questions that will help guide us in future exhibits and satisfy some requirements for grants and the like.

It’s fast. It’s easy. And it’s a way of doing your part for a museum we know you love. Click here to get started – and thank you from everyone who toiled away on the exhibit.

New Mexico History Museum Blog

Get Into it!

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