Looking for Old Spain in New Mexico: Culture and Politics in the Southwest

Abstract

Santa Fe is a town seemingly obsessed with its past. Around every corner are reminders that the founded Santa Fe as a colonial capitol ten years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. The adobe architecture and narrow winding streets maintain an Old World image that contrasts with the sprawl of most Sunbelt cities. Much of its tourist appeal rests on its ability to showcase ancient cultures and historical charm. Moreover, Santa Fe must contain the most museums of any city of 62,000. No less than eleven crowd its plazas, including the Museum of New Mexico, the Indian Arts Museum, the Museum of International Folk Arts, and the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. In the summer of 2002, yet another museum opened its doors. The Colonial Arts Museum displays traditional art made by New Mexican craftspeople between the seventeenth and the twenty-first centuries. Sponsored by the Colonial Arts Society, which writer Mary Austin helped to found in 1925, the new museum is the first in this southwestern tourist destination dedicated exclusively to Spanish art and culture. In a state that broadly advertises its tri-cultural heritage-Indian, Spanish, and Anglo-the Colonial Arts Museum seems long overdue. Why, in a city so dependent upon its history and so eager to open museums, did this one show up just now? Charles Montgomery's The Redemption explains the history of northern New Mexico's cult of remembrance and much more.