Blast off! SCAS | NMHA Blog Has Launched.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I wrote to many of you earlier this summer about our 2025 Summer Centennial Fundraising Campaign and am happy to send a big public thank you to all who have responded in support and acknowledgement of this profound moment in history for the Spanish Colonial Arts Society (SCAS) as we celebrate our 100^th anniversary.

I am especially glad to share with you that to further commemorate SCAS’s founding year 1925, we have received a $25,000 gift in honor of the Society’s very first purchase of José Rafael Aragόn’s circa 1840 Altar Screen now on display at SCAS’s museum for the first time! The donor is hoping this gift inspires others to match it in full or as a multi-year pledge—if you or anyone you know might be interested, we would love to hear from you!

Now slightly more than half-way through our centennial year, we have been featured in countless electronic and print articles with local, national, and international distribution, podcasts, invited lectures, and so much more. In every instance the unique value of SCAS and its contribution to the community over the past century has been underscored. We know SCAS is special, and we know you do, too. We hope during this year-long celebration of what many consider to be one of New Mexico’s most important arts and culture organizations, this feeling is translated into action with gifts of support, pledges, and planned estate gifts that will sustain SCAS and its museum long into its second century.

We have made significant strides over the past five years from facing permanent closure in 2020 due to lack of funding and other support to celebrating our 100^th anniversary this year with a 250% increase in our endowment and reserve funds. But we need more, much more, to continue in our work as the only museum of its kind in the country exclusively devoted to collecting, exhibiting, and programming around the Hispano arts and heritage of New Mexico and its global context.

If you have not already, please join us today in generously supporting SCAS | NMHA to help ensure our mission and commitment to a dynamic and responsive understanding of the artistic and cultural heritage of New Mexico and its global context—past, present, and future—serves generations to come.

As a privately funded nonprofit organization, our work cannot continue without your support.