ARCHIVES
The mission of the archives is to tell the story of the New Mexico Museum of Art from its inception as the art gallery of the Museum of New Mexico to the present. Our goal is to organize, preserve and make accessible information that documents the museum’s cultural legacy for staff and the public.
The archives contain organizational records and manuscript collections created by or donated to the New Mexico Museum of Art that document how the museum came to be, what it has done and how it has impacted the community. These materials provide information about the museum’s history of exhibitions, architecture, and community engagement since the establishment of the Museum of New Mexico in 1909. It includes the non-current records of the museum preserved because of their continuing institutional value as well as materials about professionals who worked with the museum such as artists, gallery owners, critics and scholars.
The archival collections consist of primary source material, including correspondence, audiovisual recordings, typescripts, reports, photographs, financial records, scrapbooks, diaries, sketches, press clippings, architectural drawings and printed ephemera. Currently, the bulk of the materials are in English and are from the United States.
The archives do not contain the museum’s personnel or financial records that are property of the State Records Center and Archives or Museum of New Mexico Foundation.
Records documenting the registration and tracking of objects in a curated museum exhibit or display are kept with the Registrar’s exhibition files and available to the public by appointment only. This may include loan agreements, insurance documents, shipping documents, copies of contracts, courier information, object values, correspondence with conservators, and acquisition forms concerning artwork in the permanent collection.
Paper finding aids for most collections are available in the museum library.
A limited number of finding aids can be found at New Mexico Archives Online. The folllowing finding aids can also be downloaded and searched for keywords using Control F:
