Marking its centennial, the Spanish Colonial Arts Society honors its community with an ambitious survey exhibition, new museum branding, and free admission.
Tucked away on Santa Fe’s Museum Hill in a handsome adobe with an undulating roofline and dark-brown painted vigas is the recently renamed Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum. Formerly known as the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, it is the home of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, marking its centennial with an exhibition called 100 Years of Collecting /100 Years of Connecting. Running from February through December 2025, the exhibition features 200 objects selected by curator Jana Gottshalk from a collection of about 4,000 items illustrating several hundred years of human life while also recording the present.
“This is a story-based exhibition,” Gottshalk says. “I needed to tell the story of the Society but I also needed to tell the story of how the Society was collecting. There are personal stories associated with pieces [in our collection] and I saw this as an opportunity to share them, to show the connections that were made through these objects.”
The exhibition begins with a homecoming of the first piece the Society ever collected, an 1840s altar screen from the village of Llano Quemado featuring two rows of saints, stylized botanical imagery, and bold contrasting patterns. The item was acquired in 1928 and has been displayed at the Palace of the Governors on a long-term loan ever since. When the screen was purchased, Society co-founder Frank Applegate mistakenly said the identity of its artist was unknown. It was later recovered: the work is now attributed to master santero José Rafael Aragón.
A default toward open dialogue and collaboration are part of the Society’s DNA, especially as it enters its second century. “Our understanding of the pieces is fluid,” Gottshalk explains. “We learn more as we do research and we’re so open to hearing from community members… It’s not just me sitting in a room; it’s a conversation.”
Along with changing its name, the museum recently expanded access by becoming free to the public, both to encourage broad community engagement and to support the many New Mexican artists they partner with (some of whom have artwork in the museum’s collection) and hope will return to the galleries over and over, with their families and friends.
SCAS is celebrated for events like its annual Spanish Market (in its 99th year this summer) and it’s also deeply embedded in New Mexico’s past in ways that can remain obscure—it was the Society’s 1929 purchase and refurbishment of the Santuario de Chimayó and their gift of the property to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe that helped make the tiny chapel into the religious and cultural landmark it is today. The Society is continuously collecting: Gottshalk estimates about 50 percent of displays are composed of newer work, like the contemporary counterpart to Aragón’s altarpiece, and final piece in the 100 Years exhibition, a retablo by santero Vicente Telles called Nuestra Señora de Tsa’majo/Chimayó (2024).
“We are the only museum in the world exclusively dedicated to collecting and showcasing artwork from this region,” museum director Jennifer Berkley says. As she puts it, “This really is the place.”
