Museums & Galleries in Enchanted Hills

A cinematheque, gallery, and educational center all in one, the Center for Contemporary Arts champions a diverse range of art forms, from digital media and performance art to independent and animated films, as well as Oscar-nominated documentaries. Culled from various artistic backgrounds, the art center's staff gained experience in various aesthetics by studying fine art, producing films for Sundance, and trying to calm down the guy from Edvard Munch's The Scream. Using their acquired knowledge, staff members educate guests during art exhibitions, movie screenings, and lectures.

Kim Martindale helped coordinate the Santa Fe Antique American Indian Art Show when he was only 16 years old. Local photographer Blake Hines’ work has appeared in publications, album covers, and hotels. John Morris was a production manager at the original Woodstock music festival. Despite their disparate backgrounds, these organizers and artists pooled their talents to host the annual Santa Fe Show Objects of Art, which gathers more than 70 exhibitors of historical and contemporary art.

The six-day event fills the bright orange and yellow rooms of El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, nestled in the city’s Railyard District. Visitors navigate paintings, sculpture, furnishings, books, jewelry, and textiles from around the world, including tribal and folk art from American Indian, African, and Asian cultures. Local experts punctuate the two-weekend festival with curated exhibitions such as an exploration of 19th-century children's toys and art; shield design from Africa, Indonesia, and New Guinea; and pages from Pablo Picasso's middle-school diary.

With four museums and six monuments, the nonprofit Museum of New Mexico Foundation keeps the state's artistic and cultural heritage alive with enthralling permanent collections, exhibits, and events. Art aficionados can marvel at more than 20,000 works by artists with strong ties to the state in the New Mexico Museum of Art, check out more than 1,300 artifacts in the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, and attempt to tape their “lost cat” flyers to more than 100,000 items culled from 100 countries at the Museum of International Folk Art. Meanwhile, the New Mexico History Museum’s 30,000-square-foot exhibition space covers topics ranging from the Santa Fe Trail to World War II through art, maps, and photographs.

After each museum visit, guests can stop by the Coronado State Monument, which marks the spot where Coronado and his crew entered the Rio Grande Valley in search of the Seven Cities of Gold and their lost car keys. The foundation's sextet of monuments also includes the stone ruins of a 500-year-old Indian village at Jemez and exhibits on frontier and military life at Fort Selden.

Lauded for its inimitable art scene set against a stunning desert-dotted backdrop, Santa Fe can be seen as the ideal place to hold an art fair. Peppered with works from its 240 city galleries and pieces from international exhibitors, Art Santa Fe also buzzes with an opening night gala and Saturday's keynote speaker, Barbara Rose. An art critic and historian, Rose shares the expertise she has built over six decades writing about modern art in Spain, lecturing at Yale, and coining the term "minimalism".