August Newsletter

Last Thursday Lecture Series with MoSCA Curator Emerita Robin Gavin, Artists Vicente Telles and Jason Garcia/Axle Contemporary, and MoSCA co-founder Donna Pierce. Engaging, lively conversation followed these fascinating standing-room-only presentations. What a great start to this inaugural Last Thursday lecture series!

SCAS Member Open House/Master Award Ceremony/Horno Unveilingfeaturing this year’s Master Artist Norma Medina and horno chefs extraordinaire Norma and Hutch Naranjo. Over 100 members and artists joined us to celebrate Norma Medina’s accomplishments while enjoying cooking demonstrations and excellent food from our new horno. All while sipping specialty drinks and listening to live music on our patio.

Storytelling with Joe Hayes. Five Sundays all summer long, free and open to the public. Guests of all ages joined Joe on our lovely museum patio for New Mexican folktales and much more. We were glad to welcome up to 300 people per evening to enjoy this special community event! Many visitors even arrived early to enjoy picnics on our beautiful grounds.

Colcha Club. Artist Julia Gomez continued offering colcha classes in our sala each month. Dozens of talented students, from beginner level to highly advanced, gathered in our sala each month, sharing their works in progress as well as being assigned new challenges by Julia. The staff loved stopping in to visit the class and to hear their cheerful conversations about this beautiful art form ring out through the Museum. New students are always welcome!

70^th anniversary Spanish Market and Preview Night—the first Preview Night since 2019! What a joy to see so many people at Preview Night amid all the Market artist talent on display and to celebrate the next two days with our 70^thanniversary of Spanish Market on the Santa Fe Plaza. We were incredibly grateful to our Mayor, City Counselor Renee Villarreal, and State Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez for participating in the Market this year. We were glad to also offer space on the Plaza to our nonprofit partners free of charge, where they were able to raise awareness of their missions as well as recruit new members to their programs—Cornerstones, El Rancho de las Golondrinas, Old Santa Fe Association, and Los Maestros, a traditional arts program for children based in Chimayo.

And all summer long we continued to welcome visitors to our Museum of Spanish Colonial Art (open to the public three days per week without reservation and by appointment) as well as to our library, archive, and collections. It has been especially delightful to welcome group tours from around the country, visitors from Spain, long-time Spanish Colonial Arts Society members, and families who once lived in the magnificent historic home that is now our Museum. We also hosted events and private tours and worked with our stellar volunteers on our archive and library projects. And, of course, we continuously work on being good stewards of our collection: our ongoing projects include condition assessment, gift processing, item loan agreements with museums from around the State, and sharing images and detailed collection information with scholars.

Tuesday, September 21st: Honoring the Sisters of Loretto, who will be celebrating their hundredth year in Santa Fe, and their gift to MoSCA of the spectacular oil painting Our Lady of Light by Miguel Cabrera, the most famous colonial painter of Mexico City in the mid-eighteenth century. Speakers from both the Sisters and the Museum will share history and more. Details to follow.

Thursday, September 29, 12pm: Last Thursday Lecture Series; Cultural Convergence in New Mexico. Join Rick Hendricks, former New Mexico State Historian as he speaks about The Catholic Church in Late Spanish New Mexico: The Bishops of Durango and Secularization of the Missions.  Free to members; non-members pay regular museum admission rates.

And don’t forget Saturday, October 15: Celebration of our Founders and other Supporters! Our Museum of Spanish Colonial Art opened its doors 20 years ago this year. Come join us for this special event to honor those who have been so important to the Museum and the Spanish Colonial Arts Society. Detailed schedule coming soon.

• Visitors enjoy our new picnic area
• Our event in collaboration with Axel Contemporary, featuring Vicente Telles and Jason Garcia
• The museum is in bloom!
• Crowds gather on the Museum patio for Joe Hayes storytelling
• Last Thursday lectures by Robin Gavin in our sala
• With rain comes flowers!
• Letter to the editor from Julia Gomez, thanks for the support Julia!
• Donna Piece during our most recent Last Thursday Lecture
• Those Joe Hayes crowds!
• Norma and Hutch Naranjo firing up our new horno

The return of Preview Award night, which we held free and open to the public at the Santa Fe Convention Center, would not have been possible without the hard work gifted to SCAS by Volunteer Preview Coordinator Angelica Gallegos and her team as well as dedicated MoSCA curator Jana Gottshalk. Because of their efforts, we came together as a community to view the artwork entered for the Traditional Spanish Market Award judging for the first time since 2019. The entire evening was a beautiful experience and strengthened Market’s connection to the public.

Special thanks to Lorna Calles and Miquela Korte for their continued work with Youth Market. The Youth Market program thrives because of Lorna and Miquela’s tireless involvement and has been an incredible opportunity for the youth of New Mexico because of their extraordinary efforts.

Thank you all for another great year!

I greatly appreciate the kindness and patience shown to me by the Market Artist and the greater MoSCA community. It was an absolute honor to facilitate Market 2022, something I will be proud of for the rest of my life. I have grown from this experience and feel more connected to my family roots as a result of interacting with the artwork and Artists. Thank you! I cannot overstate how much I care for the community and hope to help ensure the powerful information Spanish Colonial art forms contain is passed down and celebrated for centuries to come.

I appreciate you all and cannot wait to see you at MoSCA!

Respectfully,
Jessica Rael Thirloway

jessicat@spanishcolonial.org

• Through a generous offer from a patron, we have been able to add Carlos Santistevan Sr.’s 2022 Traditional Spanish Market Best in Show piece “Via Crucis” to our permanent collection.
• The New Mexico State Library has been assisting us to make our library catalog available online. As members of the State’s SALSA Consortium, our catalog of nearly 4,000 volumes will soon be available to view on the Library’s website. Thank you State Librarians for all your efforts in making this project possible!
• Our Museum of Spanish Colonial Art has recently been awarded a grant from the State Historian’s Office that will help fund the beginning of our archiving project. Providing better storage and a finding aid, our archive will be more accessible and useful to scholars, students, researchers, and anyone who has the interest!