Tag Archives: palace of the governors

USS New Mexico’s Bell Finds a Permanent Home

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By the time the USS New Mexico battleship was decommissioned in 1946, her bells had rung out alarms of attacks and tolled the grief felt by those who survived as they buried at sea the shipmates who had given their lives. The “Queen of the Fleet,” commissioned in 1918 and christened with both champagne and the waters of the Rio Grande, had served as the finest battleship of the Pacific fleet and endured attacks by kamikazes and bombers. For her World War II service, the ship received six battle stars and is still recalled with awe — even though she was sold for scrap in 1947.

The story might have ended there but for those bells — one of which arrived on Friday, Nov. 16, at the New Mexico History Museum after a circuitous post-war life. That part of the story goes back to New Mexico Gov. Thomas Mabry, who began working in 1947 on obtaining one of the ship’s two bells.

His correspondence with Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan reflects the state’s desire to spare the bell from the scrapyard. Sullivan shared the goal, but it was a weighty one — 1,100 pounds, according to a Dec. 22, 1947, letter from the Navy chief.

“It was the practice of the Navy to outfit some of the older battleships with two bells, and the U.S.S. NEW MEXICO was so equipped,” he wrote. “It would give me much pleasure to donate the bell of the U.S.S. NEW MEXICO to you on behalf of the State of New Mexico, but before doing so, there are two conditions which must be fulfilled. The first is that Congress must approve all donations. … The second condition is that the State of New Mexico must agree to defray all expenses incidental to packing and shipping.”

Our correspondence file includes Mabry’s request to obtain the portion of the ship’s bulkhead that held a painted record of how many Japanese planes and shore installations were destroyed by the ship’s guns. If the letters are correct, the bulkhead made it to New Mexico, but we’ve been unable to trace where it went. We do, however, know what happened to the bell.

In 1948, Gov. Mabry and Mayor Frank Ortiz officiated at a dedication ceremony as the bell was placed on the Santa Fe Plaza. (The photo above was taken at the event by Robert H. Martin. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 41320.) It stood on the Plaza for nearly 30 years. An early 1970s Plaza renovation forced its removal, but the Manuel Lujan Sr. building in the state’s South Capitol Complex gladly took possession of it. It hung below a stairway near the building’s vending-machine area until a recent renovation there forced yet another move.

This time, we were ready. We have the storage space, we have a small exhibition dedicated to the battleship and its nuclear-submarine namesake, and we have staffers who feel an emotional tie to the ship and its mates.

“It represents to much,” said Tom Leech, director of the Palace Press and curator of our lobby-area exhibit, A Noble Legacy: The USS New Mexico. “When I think about what that bell has been through — it’s rung general alarms when the ship was under attack. It rang when those guys were buried at sea.”

(To learn more about the ship’s ordeals and heroism, check out this mini-documentary, USS New Mexico BB40: The Drinan Diary, produced by the museum and Michael Kamins of KNME-TV in Albuquerque.)

Getting the bell delivered to our loading dock was one thing. Figuring out how to get it to our lower-level almost-hermetically-sealed collections vault was another.

First, staff members eyeballed it. Warily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, four of our burliest guys tried to move it …

 

 

 

 

 

… but couldn’t even budge it.

 

 

Finally, we resorted to good old hydraulics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for what happened to the second bell, we know that the University of New Mexico acquired it, possibly with the help of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity, but we aren’t certain where it is. Outside the Student Union Building? At the football stadium? Inside the ROTC building? If you know, drop us a line. (And if you know what happened to its clapper, which our records showed “disappeared, mysteriously, during the early 1970s,” we’d be interested in that as well.)

Our hope is to put our bell on display as soon as we polish off some other priorities. One popular suggestion is to place it in the Palace Courtyard. We’ll let you know when that happens. In the meantime, we’re pleased and proud that an important part of New Mexico’s heritage is sharing quarters with so many other artifacts that tell the stories of who we are.

 

Picture This: Photo Archives Intern Lauren Gray

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Ask most of us why we work here and “I love history” is sure to be one of the top three reasons. That goes double for Lauren Gray, an intern in the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, former intern in the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, and recent graduate of the University of New Mexico’s master’s program in U.S. history (with an emphasis in Colonial History and a secondary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe).

Since January, Gray has been working as part of a three-year grant to digitize and preserve the photo collections. She has fastidiously and meticulously scanned and archived thousands of photographs, bringing an acute attention to detail, careful handling of fragile photographs and the ability to organize large amounts of data to the job. Her efforts play a very important role in bringing the Photo Archives into the digital age and allowing the public to view photos wherever they happen to be on planet Earth.

Her biggest challenge? Learning how to use new software and restoring old photographs that have been badly damaged by time.  “It’s extremely frustrating to see history deteriorating right in front of you,” she said while scanning a pinhole photograph. “But it’s also really rewarding to be able to preserve these artifacts and even restore them.”

Gray’s appreciation for the museum extends beyond the northeast corner of our campus. Her favorite exhibit was Fashioning New Mexico, the inaugural changing exhibition in the Herzstein Gallery when the museum opened in 2009. “I love tactile things and anything that brings history alive in an interactive and intriguing way.” (See the interactive web version of the exhibit here.)

Her favorite event is the Santa Fe Mountain Man Trade Fair because “mountain men are unique to American history, and it’s fascinating to see people keeping the tradition alive.”

Just how deep is her love for the History Museum? In September, Gray and her fiancée, Christian, were married in the Palace Courtyard. The couple shares a love of history and wanted to make a lifelong commitment there, Gray said, because of its long and diverse history and its beauty – a perfect fit for a happy marriage.

A New Mexico History Museum Brochure from Japan, with Love

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Since the New Mexico History Museum opened on May 24, 2009, nearly 45 percent of all our visitors have come from outside the United States.  Out of more than 320,000 visitors in all, nearly 4,000 came from Japan. One of them was Mitsuhiro Fujimaki, a professor in the Department of International Studies at the University of Shizuoka, southwest of Mount Fuji on Suruga Bay. A longtime fan of New Mexico and a student of Native American life, Fujimaki visited with museum Director Frances Levine earlier in the year with a proposal: As a class project, his students would develop a Japanese-language brochure that would be available online and at our front desk.

How could we say no?

A few months later, he brought a half-dozen freshman students to New Mexico, and we talked with them about our focus and what Japanese visitors might be most interested in seeing while here. Funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the students got to work and, this week, delivered their final product–the Time Travel New Mexico website, with a downloadable History Museum brochure, all in Japanese.

“We’re so impressed what the students have done,” Levine said. “This was a true gift of their talents to the museum and its Japanese visitors.”

Fujimaki explained that the students had to employ some linguistic smarts in preparing the brochure. The direct translation of “history” in Japanese, for example, connotes something boring–“record,” or “archive.” The word “museum” translates as “storage.”  So the students opted to use “stories” and “memories,” imparting a lovely piece of poetic license.

Mindful that this is a new museum in a very old city, the students presented our main exhibition, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now as “a time machine that goes back and forth between the past and the present.”

In a report about the project, Fujimaki wrote:

“We faculty members have recognized that fieldwork is an essential component for the curriculum. And so, we have attempted to introduce an effective program for freshmen as an initiation to our curriculum.  Since the last year, we have been fortunate to receive an educational grant from the Ministry to experiment an introductory fieldwork program for freshmen.  In this program, freshmen engaged in fieldwork are exposed to various cultural experiences in foreign countries.  For example, one group goes to Turkey, while another goes to Australia.  Another group goes to Kenya, and the other Vietnam.  And through that exposure, they are supposed to acquire fundamental skills and knowledge, necessary to prepare themselves for the rest of their academic life in the major of International Studies and for their future career.

“This particular project, by which students have visited Santa Fe is called `Santa Fe Seminar.’  Students have been planning and editing a guidebook to the Santa Fe area.  In the previous year, they edited a booklet that introduces Pueblo culture and mentions the copyright problem of Indian jewelry.  After their trip to Santa Fe in the last year, they took a look at local shops at their home towns, and have recognized how many stores sell `Indian-inspired’ products, which are usually made somewhere in Asia.  So, when they distributed their booklet, they held a workshop to enlighten consumers about the problem in the area.

“In this year, students have edited the Japanese version of the New Mexico History Museum’s brochure.  After their visited at the Santa Fe area including Los Alamos, San Ildefonso, Bandelier, and so on, they have recognized how diverse and rich in culture and history in the area has been; the U.S. Southwest history is not just about its frontier era, but layered by various actors–Native Americans, Spanish settlers, “Anglos,” nuclear scientists, and so on.  So, making and editing a Japanese brochure of the NM History Museum is an ideal project for them, as they can teach their audience in such a way that their brochure can rectify the monolithic image of the American Southwest into a diversified one, which they believe can attract more visitors to the area. ”

The students’ brochure and those 4,000 visitors aren’t the museum’s only tie to Japan. Among the parts of the museum the students recommended seeing was Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita’s Fragments installation in the second-floor Gathering Space. Yamashita took photographs of everyday New Mexicans across the state, then molded their profiles onto the edges of multi-colored squares of plastic. When a light is shined on them from the side, the profiles appear in shadow.

What a Frame-Up: “Native American Portraits”

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Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry, the new exhibition in the New Mexico History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery, features more than 50 exquisite, original prints taken from the mid-1800s to 1035. What makes them even more arresting are the more than 50 frames surrounding each photo.

How we found them is one of the interesting little back-stories that so many museums have to tell.

The show is hung in what’s known as a “salon style” exhibition, where the groupings look more like what you might see in someone’s living room than the standard march of photos across a wall most common in museums. Given that, curator and archivist Daniel Kosharek, along with exhibition designer Caroline Lajoie, didn’t want a series of identical frames. But they lacked the funds to order up an assortment from your local frame shape.

The hunt was on.

“It started with a few finds at a garage sale,” Daniel said.

Andrew Smith, one of the co-curators of the exhibit and owner of Andrew Smith Gallery, provided three historically accurate frames for the Edward S. Curtis images. The Museum of New Mexico’s Conservation Department helped create several shadowbox-like frames to hold postcard images in a sort of suspended animation, rather than tacking them down.

“It ended with scouring the basement of a local gallery and molding-diving in the storage locker of a framing company,” Daniel said. “The end result? Well, you be the judge.”

 

A Mother’s Day (or Father’s Day) Gift They’ll Always Remember

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Maybe you haven’t heard: Mother’s Day is this Sunday, and Father’s Day isn’t far behind.

You can probably come up with plenty of other reasons to shower Mom and Dad with thanks—not the least of them being how well they put up with your teenage taste in music, cars and hairstyles. If you’re anything like us, you’ve already received reminders to buy flowers, choose a cologne, or order up a boxful of oranges. Nothing against those gifts (we happen to say “yes” anytime someone offers us ripe oranges), but this might be a year to think a little deeper about where our money goes and what it can accomplish.

At the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors, we rely on grants and donations to pull together educational programs for our younger visitors, to offer lectures series and other programs, and to put up new and interesting exhibitions. Since we opened in May 2009, some 350,000 people from all over the world have come through our doors to learn more about the enormous role New Mexico played in the shaping of the American West.

We’re hoping you can help us continue generating that kind of enthusiasm—and we promise you’ll get something in return.

A gift of membership in the Museum of New Mexico Foundation entitles recipients to a year’s worth of free admission to all four state museums in Santa Fe, the six monuments throughout the state, a subscription to the award-winning El Palacio magazine, plus discounts in our museum shops. Besides that, members receive regular updates about what’s going on in the museums and invitations to exhibition openings and other special events.

A variety of “friends” groups exist within the foundation’s membership, and those participants get first crack at invitations to archaeological field trips, visits to artists’ houses, bus tours of historical towns, and other activities. Besides building your brain, our museums build friendships.

Membership starts as low as $30 for students and teachers.

If you want to make a bigger splash, consider sponsoring or supporting an upcoming exhibition or a public program. (Gifts of $1,000 or more will place the name of you or a loved one on the wall of an exhibit.) You could pay for a bus to bring your children or grandchildren’s class, Scouting troop, or campmates to the New Mexico History Museum. You could sponsor a special event that brings history to life.

Gifts to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation are tax deductible. We encourage you to consider giving a gift that will last at least a year and help us continue kindling our visitors’ interest in the stories of our lives.

 

 

Letters, We Get (New Mexico Centennial) Letters

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When we launched the Centennial Letter Writing Project on Jan. 6, 2012 (the 100th anniversary of New Mexico statehood), some of us at the New Mexico History Museum wondered aloud whether we’d eke out even 200 letters over the next 12 months. Well, it’s early March, and we’re about to zoom past that total. The stack at left? That’s just today’s haul.

Students in the Upward Bound college-prep program in Roswell have written by the dozens. So did a class at St. Michael’s High School, members of a creative-writing group in Taos, and individuals of all ages in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and elsewhere.

(We sure could use some voices from western and southern New Mexico — hint, hint.)

Our request was simple enough (though it seemed a bit of a burden to the Twitter generation): Tell us about your life in the year 2012 so that historians in the year 2112 might have some first-person accounts told by rank-and-file residents. We want to hear what your neighborhoods are like, your houses, your career, what you worry about and what gives you hope. Think about what someone 100 years from now might want to know about you. The type of car you drive, its color, what it can and can’t do. The stores you shop at and what you buy there. Do you visit a farmer’s market? Describe the vendors and their produce. Tell us how you make your family’s favorite holiday food and where you get the ingredients. Do you work out? Where? Do you ride bikes or go hiking? Describe the route.

Over the next few months, we’ll post excerpts from some of those letters here on the blog. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we have. And we hope that you, too, will put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard; computer printouts are A-OK) and tell us about your life.

Where, pray tell, might you send your missives? Here:

(Isn’t that handwriting about the prettiest thing you’ve seen all week?)

Onto some samples from a few of our friends in Albuquerque. (We’ll only use first names and leave out writer’s addresses.)

Evelyn wrote:

“In this centennial year for New Mexico, I am 80 years old. I live in the Northeast Heights in a house purchased in 1958 for $10,500. It was built in 1954 … one block from Morris St. There were no buildings at that time from east of Morris St. to the mountains…just a dirt road named Juan Tabo. My house has 3 bedrooms, one bathroom and a one-car garage. Every home then had clotheslines and I still use mine. …As a single mother of four children, I taught sewing classes as my own business in fabric stores for 30 years. Most women work outside the home today so sewing is more of a hobby than a necessity. However, young people are becoming more interested in sewing because of a TV program called Project Runway. Sewing classes have been phased out in schools. …”

Joanne wrote:

“I am a native New Mexican, born in 1940 on North Fourth Street in Albuquerque. My father came to NM in 1907 from Kansas as a homesteader in Edgewood when he was 18 years old. His father and eight brothers each received 160 acres but later most of them lost their land because of drought and moved to Albuquerque. My mother came in 1912 when she was 12 years old because her father had TB. I was a teacher at Grant Jr. High and Manzano High School. …

“In 2010 I decided to remodel my house, the original part of which was built in 1947. it was cold in winter, hot in summer, a typical uninsulated, flat-roofed house. I decided to insulate it by wrapping the entire house with straw bales. With the stucco on the outside it looks like an adobe house. I also wanted to see the mountains so I added a second floor bedroom and bath with a deck. I remodeled the house to make the garage into an art studio and added a solar green house on the south side of the house. I added solar panels that produce more energy than I use, giving me great satisfaction, especially when I get a refund every month from the electric company. It makes me so happy to know that I am producing energy for someone else to use as well without polluting our beautiful earth. I am trying to have a garden for produce, fruit trees, flowers and foliage without using too much water so I installed rain-water collection tanks. I think of my house as a demonstration of what one can do with an old house to make it really energy efficient. …”

Suzanne, a 71-year-old Albuquerquean, included details of a friend’s upcoming surgery that, in 100 years, may seem like a commonplace procedure. Not today:

“Dear friend Emily … announced she will have deep brain surgery Mon. Jan. 9 to harness and correct hand tremors she’s suffered for several years. This is not experimental but cutting edge. She will be in intensive care two nights, then rehab after having a tiny computer implanted in her chest to maybe take the place of the part of her brain that is malfunctioning. She is frightened and excited. I think she is so brave but she needs to reclaim her life so she can paint and sew and make jewelry again.”

We’ll close out today (don’t worry, we’ll share plenty more in the weeks ahead) with Olivia, a fourth-grader from Hubert Humphrey Elementary School, whose optimism just may be catching:

“N.M makes me feel special because everyone is different and no one is mean or disappointed because this is the Land of Enchantment. Special things can happen, and that’s why I love New Mexico. What I worry about is people doing dangerous stuff. What gives me hope is seeing people happy and people encouraging me.”

Good News: “The Saint John’s Bible” Earns an Extended Engagement

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As the monks of Saint John’s Abbey might themselves say: Hallelujah!

The popularity of Illuminating the Word: The Saint John’s Bible, combined with the delighted approval of the exhibition’s design from the monks of Saint John’s University, has led to an extension of the show’s run. Previously set to close on April 7, The Saint John’s Bible will now be on exhibit in the History Museum’s Herzstein Gallery until December 30, 2012.

“The installation of the folios in the New Mexico History Museum presents The Saint John’s Bible in one of the most beautiful and faith-filled exhibitions of this Bible done to date,” said Tim Ternes, director of The Saint John’s Bible. “The contemplative environment artfully shares the story, work and process of this monumental project in a setting that compels the guest to slow down, relax and reflect.

“Saint John’s is very pleased to be able to extend this exhibition in the Santa Fe area, a place where art, faith and culture have been harmoniously blended for centuries.”

Commissioned by the monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minn., The Saint John’s Bible represents a remarkable achievement in the book arts. In 2000, Donald Jackson, senior scribe to Queen Elizabeth, and a crew of artists and calligraphers began the first of the Bible’s 1,150 vellum pages—from Genesis to Revelation. Last May, the project achieved completion when Jackson wrote the word “Amen” on the final page of the Book of Revelation. All of the pages will eventually be bound into seven volumes for use and exhibition at Saint John’s Abbey, but in the meantime, 44 pages from two of its Old Testament volumes–Prophets and Wisdom Books–are on exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum.

More than 26,600 people have come to the museum to see the Bible and take part in the activities and lectures that accompany it.

“Faith is part of the history of New Mexico, one that you can see in ancient petroglyphs, mission churches, Jewish temples, the Sikh community and more,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the History Museum. “Besides being part of the state’s history, faith is part of the history of the book, and this exhibit takes the book back to its medieval origins, when the Bible was `the first book.’ In Saint John’s, that first book meets modern technology, contemporary artists, and interpretations that blend modern-day events with centuries-old scripture.”

Tom Leech directs the Palace Press, a working exhibit that celebrates the book arts. He helped bring this contemporary masterpiece to Santa Fe to help visitors experience how profoundly beautiful and moving an illuminated manuscript can be.

“The Saint John’s Bible is installed in a way that gives people a quiet, secular space to unplug and de-stress. The work speaks to us in many different ways,” Leech said. “We’ve even included a sort of meditation space in the center of the gallery where visitors can let what they’ve seen sink in.”

Also on exhibit in the gallery is Contemplative Landscape, featuring the work of photographers both past and present who have interpreted the ways that people of many faiths have found a home in New Mexico. (Find out more about Contemplative Landscape by clicking here.)

Accompanying the exhibits are lectures, performances and hands-on calligraphy workshops. We’ll be adding a few events with the extended run of The Saint John’s Bible, including talks by Tim Ternes. As soon as details are firmed up, we’ll let you know. All events are free and in the History Museum Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. The remaining schedule:

Saturday, February 25, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom: “Oh My Gouache,” calligraphy workshop by Diane von Arx, special treatment artist for The Saint John’s Bible. This event is sold out.

Sunday, February 26, 2 pm: “Special Treatment Illuminations for The Saint John’s Bible,” lecture by Diane von Arx.

Sunday, March 11, 2 pm: Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery perform in the History Museum Lobby.

Sunday, March 25, 2 pm: “Endangered Texts: Preserving Ancient Books the Benedictine Way in the 21st Century,” lecture by Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John’s University in Minnesota.

Sunday, April 29, 2 pm: Contemplative Landscape photographers panel discussion; Kirk Gittings, Ed Ranney, Janet Russek, Sharon Stewart and Don Usner.

Friday, June 1, 6 pm: “Fragile Faith,” lecture by Contemplative Landscape photographer David Robin.

Friday, June 8, 6 pm: “Landscape and Memory,” lecture by artist and calligrapher Laurie Doctor.

Saturday and Sunday, June 9 & 10, 10 am-4 pm, NMHM Classroom: “Landscape and Lettering: Before the Separation of Drawing and Writing,” calligraphy workshop with Laurie Doctor. Cost is $200. Limited seating; call (505) 476-5096 to register.

Friday, July 13, 6 pm: “Poetry & Photographs,” discussion and poetry reading with Contemplative Landscape photographer Teresa Neptune and poet Miriam Sagan.

Sunday, October 14, 2 pm: “Ritualized Naming of the Landscape through Photography,” lecture by John Carter, photography curator at the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Sunday, November 4, 2 pm: Red as a Lotus: Letters to a Dead Trappist, poetry reading by Lisa Gill; and Compassion Rising, a film about Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama.

Sunday, December 2, 2 pm: Sacred choral music by Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe and the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery.

The 2012 Statehood History Conference

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Outlaws, Rough Riders, classic restaurants and a possible spy will come to life at the 2012 New Mexico Statehood History Conference, May 3-5, in Santa Fe. Presented by the Historical Society of New Mexico and the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors, this Centennial version of the Society’s annual conference includes a special treat: A daylong free symposium, open to the public, plus free admission to the History Museum on May 3.

The conference, May 4 and 5 at the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Center, is held in collaboration with the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance, which is having its annual conference at La Posada that weekend. Details, including special hotel rates and how to register for all or part of the Statehood History Conference, are at the Historical Society’s web site.

“Whether you’re interested in the Centennial or New Mexico history in general, we’re gathering writers and historians you’ll enjoy meeting and whose research is sure to enlighten you,” said Mike Stevenson, president of the Historical Society. “Holding this year’s event in the capital city, where lawmakers worked so hard to move the Territory toward statehood, means we’ll be surrounded by history indoors at the sessions and outdoors strolling the streets of Santa Fe.”

The symposium’s keynote address, “New Mexico Statehood, An Earlier Perception,” will be given by Dr. Robert W. Larson, author of the authoritative and classic New Mexico‘s Quest for Statehood, 1846-1912.  Other speakers include Dr. David Van Holtby, “New Mexico’s Rough Road to Statehood,” Robert Torrez, “Law and Order and the Quest for New Mexico Statehood,” and Henrietta Martinez Christmas, “New Mexico’s Icons.”  Dr. Richard Melzer will introduce and moderate the symposium. (Seating in the museum’s auditorium is limited; first-come first-served.)

The statehood theme continues May 4 and 5 at the Society’s conference, with topics ranging from traditional foods in Native American communities, land-grant studies, Western characters like Kit Carson and Wyatt Earp, and controversial New Mexico politicos such as Thomas Benton Catron, Bronson Cutting, and New Mexico’s first Territorial Governor (and possible U.S. spy) James S. Calhoun. The conference’s 24 sessions and nearly 70 presentations include:

  • “Juan Dominguez de Mendoza: Soldier and Frontiersman of 17th-Century New Mexico,” by historians Marc Simmons and José Antonio Esquibel.
  • “The Changing Character of New Mexico Statehood as Reflected by the Santa Fe Fiesta Celebration,” by Andrew Lovato, assistant professor of speech communications at Santa Fe Community College.
  • “Butch Cassidy in New Mexico: His Winning Ways, Dancing Feet, and Postmortem Return,” by free-lance writer Nancy Coggeshall.
  • “U.S. Army Nurses at Fort Bayard,” by Cecilia Jensen Bell, a researcher with the Fort Bayard Historical Preservation Society.
  • “La Matanza: Conserving Identity through Food in Los Lunas,” by Daniel Valverde, an anthropology student at New Mexico State University.

“The research that these scholars have accomplished is truly impressive,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum. “Visitors can start their weekend history immersion by seeing the maps, paintings, photographs and artifacts that we use in our main exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now. If you’re not already a fan of history, the symposium and conference will make you one.”

Founded in 1859, the Historical Society of New Mexico is the oldest historical society in the West. Its collections were incorporated into the original Museum of New Mexico, created in 1909 in the Palace of the Governors, and today represent an important part of the New Mexico History Museum’s holdings. The society’s photographs, documents and books, collected from 1885 on, became the core of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors. The Society began its annual conferences in 1974, and also publishes award-winning papers and news of history around the state in La Crónica de Nuevo México.

Society members who register for the conference by April 23 will get a specially discounted rate of $95, which includes the Thursday evening opening reception at the History Museum, lunch on Friday, and the Statehood Centennial Banquet on Friday evening at the Convention Center (a total value of $125).  The closing Cinco de Mayo reception at the Governor’s Mansion will feature the annual Historical Society of New Mexico Awards presentations.

The conference includes a silent auction as well as a book auction. Items will include artwork, jewelry, historical maps, rare books, and statehood memorabilia. If you’d like to donate an item, e-mail Mike Stevenson at mgsalp@newmexico.com.

Gotta Dance

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The museum’s Collections Committee had its monthly meeting this morning and, among other businesses, accepted a piece of 1927 ephemera from Gov. Richard C. Dillon’s Inaugural Ball.  It’s a neat little six-page affair, about 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, with an honest-to-goodness sign-yourself-up dance card in the middle.

(Whoever the previous owner was, he wasn’t exactly Fred Astaire. Only four of 24 dances were taken, two One Steps, one Two Step and one Foxtrot. Left undanced were, among others, the Varsoviana, the Valencia, the Spanish Waltz and the Charleston.)

Nancy M. Tucker, an Albuquerque resident, provided the inaugural program to us via her regular wanderings about the offerings on the Internet. We have a number of “angels” like Nancy out there, some of the bona fide pickers, some of them folks who just have an interest in history and particularly New Mexico history.

Dillon’s Inaugural Ball was held at the Palace of the Governors and the National Guard Armory, a building that used to be north of the Palace and is now occupied by the New Mexico History Museum. According to the program, some of the luminaries involved in the organization of the event were Gov. Arthur T. Hannett, Arthur Seligman, Miguel A. Otero Jr., Nathan Jaffa, and Archbishop A. T. Daeger. Decorations festooned the Palace and Armory, along with the Capitol (today’s Bataan Building), and the Museum of Fine Art. Norman L. King served as the parade’s grand marshall.

To anyone familiar with New Mexico history, the plethora of names listed among the other committeepeople who helped with the inaugural reads like a who’s who of 1920s Santa Fe and New Mexico. Among them: John Meem, Oscar Huber, Mrs. Ashley Pond, Mrs. N.B. Laughlin, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dendahl, and Mr. and Mrs. John N. Zook.

Dillon, a Republican, was the eighth post-statehood governor of New Mexico. According to the National Governors Association, he “was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 24, 1877. His early education was attained in the common schools of his native state. He later attended the public schools in Springer, New Mexico, where his family moved in 1889. Before entering politics, Dillon worked as a railroad laborer and a merchant.

“In 1924, he won election to the New Mexico State Senate, a position he held two years. Dillon next secured the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and was elected governor by popular vote on November 2, 1926. He was reelected to a second term in 1928.

“During his tenure, the Carlsbad Caverns were declared a national monument by the federal government; and the state government was managed in an efficient, business-like method. After leaving the governorship, Dillon retired from political life. He stayed active in his business career, and eventually established the R.C. Dillon Company. Governor Richard C. Dillon passed away on January 5, 1966, and was buried in Encino, New Mexico.”

I am an american!

The Golden Rule is my rule!

In humility and with gratitude

I acknowledge my undying debt

To the founding fathers

Who left me a pricess heritage … (it goes on for another 24 lines and four exclamation marks.)

Among the other artifacts the Museum is fortunate to have in its collections from Gov. Dillon’s time are an oil-painted portrait, a suitcase, and a 1929 yellow-and-red NM license plate with a big number 1 on it, below the word “Governor.”

The museum is grateful to the many people who keep us in mind when they come upon items that help us tell the story of who we were and who we are. If you think you might have something of interest, give us a call and let’s have a chat.

Do Something Radical for New Mexico’s Centennial: Write a Letter

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By Dr. Frances Levine, Director, New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors

This morning, January 6, the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors will host a First-Day-of-Issue event on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service and its New Mexico Centennial stamp. That we’re kicking off a year of Centennial activities at the History Museum with a stamp-related event delights my historian sensibilities by inviting New Mexico’s citizens to take part in a letter-writing project.

To tell the stories of our past, historians gather information from many sources. They use photographs, documents, and artifacts, like the 47-star flag now on display downstairs in the New Mexico History Museum. But what they treasure more than anything are journals and letters – written accounts of what was happening just as it was happening and told by participants in the events.

As we prepared to mark the Centennial in our exhibitions with an installation called 47 Stars, we discovered that the historians who preceded us had left out some of the accounts we would have loved to use. That got us wondering about what we’re leaving for the people who will one day mark New Mexico’s 200th year as a state.

These days, hand-written accounts of our lives are in short supply. We all rely on e-mails to communicate, but I bet few of us print them out and save them in a box under the bed. Many of us mark the mileposts of our lives with short Facebook updates that go – where? Who knows?

Some historians say all this electronic communication will provide a bounty of material for future historians. Others say something will be sorely missing, that holding a letter written by a person who participated in the historic events as they happened and reading the thoughts they considered important enough to put on paper is truly what makes people connect across generations and throughout history.

Lew Wallace finished writing the novel Ben Hur while he was a Territorial governor in New Mexico, and he left this account of what it was like to work on the book inside the Palace of the Governor’s thick adobe walls.

My custom when night came was to lock the doors and bolt the windows of the office proper, and with a student’s lamp, bury myself in the four soundless walls of the forbidding annex. Once there, at my rough pine table, the Count of Monte Cristo in his dungeon of stone was not more lost to the world.

The ghosts, if they were ever about, did not disturb me; yet in the hush of that gloomy harborage, I beheld the Crucifixion, and strove to write what I beheld.

I can feel the surface of his rough pine table. I can imagine the chill of a supposed ghost when a viga creaked or loose page fell to the floor. Those are special details to historians and help us bring the past to life.

Each of us has a gift to leave for tomorrow’s historians: A written account of our lives today. So all of us at the New Mexico History Museum have a radical proposal: Write us a letter. That’s it. Just a letter. Tell us a bit about what your life in the year 2012 is like.

Update: The letter need not be hand-written if you’d rather print it out.

Describe your house, your neighborhood, the businesses you like to visit and why. What games do you play? Where do you go to enjoy the outdoors and what does it look like today? What kind of job do you have and what’s the status of that industry? What do you worry about? What gives you hope? What is it about New Mexico that makes it your home place and heart place?

Fold it up, put it in an envelope, address it, and then mail it – maybe using one of those beautiful Centennial stamps. We’ll collect them and share them throughout the year but, most important, we’ll put them into a safe place to spend a few decades gaining perspective. When 2112 rolls around, New Mexico’s historians will delight in the treasure trove you helped create.

Send your letters to: Centennial Letter Writing Project, New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Ave., Santa Fe, NM, 87501.