AWASH IN THE ARTS Santa Fe Offers an Alumni Adventure

 

 By Hal Higdon

Heading up Canyon Road on a tour of art galleries, we met a mailman wheeling a load of letters. He recognized us as tourists and offered a friendly greeting: "Enjoy your day."

Indeed, we were doing just that as members of an "Alumni Adventure" from Carleton College, my alma mater. Fifty of us--graduates of that institution, spouses and friends--had gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a weekend of art, opera and education. We would visit the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. We would go to performances of Carmen and Idomeneo. We would attend lectures by Carleton professors to broaden our education. We would feast on Mexican food and cruise galleries and shops for art treasures and souvenirs. And I would do some running.

Just before meeting the mailman, my wife Rose and I had invested $25 in an objet d' arte: a wood carving we hoped to attach to a bathroom wall in our Long Beach home to compliment some parchments acquired years ago in Mexico. Depending on which of us you listened to, the objet was either an angel or a crucifix. "Angel," claimed Rose. "Crucifix," I countered.

Rose would win that argument despite my credentials as a Carleton art major. While art had been my major field of study during four years in that Northfield, Minnesota institution, I followed the suggestion of a roommate, who was a music major, and signed up for an elective course in Music Appreciation my senior year. Much to his consternation, I aced the class with an "A." More important, I developed a love of classical music to go with a love of fine art, so when the alumni association announced a summer trip to Santa Fe combining both loves, I immediately reserved two places. Lucky, because the trip quickly sold out.

Dream Destination

Santa Fe is a dream destination regardless of your tastes as a tourist. The town of 60,000, an hour's drive north of Albuquerque, contains 4,700 hotel rooms, 225 restaurants, 70 jewelry shops and 13 museums. Its 250 galleries reportedly rank Santa Fe third in importance as an art center among American cities behind New York and Los Angeles. "Santa Fe is awash in the arts," stated Dale Haworth in an introductory lecture. The retired chairman of the art department, he was one of two professors assigned to further our continuing education. He shared the podium with Lawrence Archibold, music professor and college organist.

Santa Fe has more to offer than art and music; it is equally rich in history. Among the early settlers of New Mexico, Haworth informed us, were the Anasazi, who around 900 AD built cliff dwellings and multi-story buildings. Their villages contained several thousand people. They produced ceramics, jewelry, weavings. The Anasazi vanished from the area around 1300 for reasons not entirely understood. The Spanish explorer Francisco de Coronado passed through the area seeking gold in 1542, only 50 years after Columbus's discovery of America. Franciscan missionaries arrived in 1598, seeking souls. The Indians drove these religious tormentors out during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, but a dozen years later, the Spaniards returned in force. Established in 1609 or 1610 as the provincial capital of the Spanish colony of Nuevo Mexico, Santa Fe remains the oldest capital city in the United States. Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, prompting the establishment of the Santa Fe Trail to bring goods and settlers from the Northeast.

After the U.S. claimed New Mexico in 1846, more settlers arrived, crowding out the Native American population. One early commander of the area was James Henry Carleton (no relation, apparently, to the founder of Carleton College). According to the caption under a picture of Carleton in the Palace of Governors: "His Indian policies were a source of political friction in New Mexico." The railroad arrived nearby in 1880. New Mexico became a state in 1912. Soon after, artists began to congregate in Santa Fe. Georgia O'Keeffe made her first visit during the summer of 1929. Her flower paintings and dessert landscapes inspire many followers. During World War II, the U.S. Army welcomed scientists in Santa Fe, before sending them to nearby Los Alamos to develop the first atomic bomb. In 1957, the Santa Fe Opera was founded as an added attraction for summer visitors.

Add to that hiking in summer, skiing in winter. The dry climate (40 percent average humidity) is pleasant: rarely too hot in summer or too cold in winter. Two of my three previous visits had been to Santa Fe Ski Area, atop a mountain outside town. The area's peak elevation of 12,000 guaranteed good snow conditions, then at the end of the day you headed back to town for amenities not usually found at most ski resorts: not only luxurious hotels and fine restaurants, but museums and shopping.

Rose liked that last option best. A decade ago, she had purchased a silver necklace from one of the Native American craftsmen who exhibit their wares daily at the Plaza. Rose, however, failed to bring her necklace with her. She explained: "I didn't have anything to wear with it." (Was she offering a hint?)

Continuing Education

Shopping may have interested Rose, but I was drawn more by a desire to further my continuing education, something Carleton College is good at. One of the other alumni adventures this summer included a trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. Next summer, the college plans to organize a trip to Spring Green, Wisconsin with a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's studio nearby. Each fall when the Art Institute of Chicago mounts a major exhibit around an artist such as Monet, Degas or Cassatt, that offers the local alumni group an excuse to schedule an event. We meet at a club near the Institute for drinks, hors d' oeuvres and a slide lecture by one of the Carleton art professors, then attend the exhibit. Rose and I love these evenings of art, one reason Santa Fe was an easy sell to us.

One advantage of going with a tour organized by the college is meeting fellow alumni. Two on the tour were from my class. Another had been a freshman my senior year. One younger graduate said her father knew me. I sent email messages to others swapping information on restaurants where we might eat and trails that I thought I might want to run, since I was training for a marathon. (See: Cyberdates and Santa Fe.)

While most of the group were staying at the Hilton, we had chosen a Bed & Breakfast, the Casa del Toro, only a block away from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Rose and I weren't trying to be snobs; we simply wanted a bit more ambiance than we expected to find in a generic hotel. (I discovered the Casa del Toro by surfing the Internet: www.santafe.org.)

The Casa del Toro contained four rooms and was run by a young couple named Jarrod and Tamara Reed. Tamara nursed their young child in the sitting room outside our room and chatted with us when we returned from sightseeing and shopping. Our room contained a wrought-iron bed covered by a comforter. There was real art on the walls and candles that you could light before going to sleep. No TV either, a plus in my mind.

The breakfasts were bountiful: pancakes, cheese puffs, quiches, with ample glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice and hot coffee. We ate with the other guests, most who also were attending opera performances. We showed one couple the objet we had purchased, asking their opinion as to its identify.

"Angel," said the husband.

"Crucifix," said his wife.

Your Ordinary New Mexico Sunset

Friday afternoon, we attended the opening reception for the Alumni Adventure. In his opening lecture, Professor Archibald prepared us for the two operas we were about to see on successive nights: Bizet's Carmen and Mozart's Idomeneo. The latter was classic 18th century, the former romantic 19th century. Mozart wrapped his music around a mythical Greek tale; Bizet's more popular drama had undertones of race, class and gender, we learned. (See: Now About That Promise to Neptune.)

Undertones aside, I was more overcome by the spectacle while attending Carmen that evening. It was the setting as much as the performance. Arriving early, Rose and I purchased glasses of wine then hung over a parapet bordering the open lobby, mesmerized by the Sangre de Cristo mountains on the horizon. The recently roofed opera house was an architectural masterpiece; it offered individual translation screens at each seat. An opening to the rear of the stage framed the setting sun. "Just your ordinary New Mexico sunset," shrugged Professor Haworth. And the music: I knew castanets would echo in my mind for months to come.

Art replaced music on our schedule the next morning. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum offered insight into a unique 20th century artist of the Southwest, whose colorful close-ups of flowers serve as signature works. I found myself, however, drawn as much to several colorless canvases, shaded only in blacks, whites and grays. One I particularly liked at the end of one corridor featured a black square as its focal point with gray dashes below. Without color as distraction, you could appreciate O'Keeffe's skills at line and design.

Equally interesting was the Museum of International Folk Art, which required a drive several miles out of town. It featured the greatest collection of small items I had encountered: 125,000 dolls and toys and hand-carved figurines, more than you could see in a week of browsing. And no labels to identify each piece's origin. The items were to be enjoyed for their own value, not where they came from or how valuable they might be. I found that egalitarian approach very reasonable.

An evaluation sheet in the packets we were handed on arrival asked, "What was your favorite part of the weekend?" Despite all the activities planned for us--the art, the music and the education--I enjoyed most sneaking away for two hours and wandering with Rose up Canyon Road with its dozens of galleries featuring everything from paintings to pottery, giant sculptures to tiny carvings. In one gallery, the wife of the artist was there to greet me and show me his work. Many of the galleries are artist-owned, showcasing the work of a single artist.

While much of Santa Fe's art is seriously southwestern: paintings of pueblos, horses, cowboys and Indians--not all of it fits that mode. We encountered everything from portraits of Japanese geishas to Aborigine art from Australia. In addition to the carving, we also purchased a pot for our home, but another painting that Rose admired proved out of our price range. It was a black painting with a narrow white horizon and the silhouette of four horses: $40,000. I promised Rose that when we got home, I'd use my skills acquired during four years of art study at Carleton College to paint her a nearly identical canvas for free.

The alumni adventure ended too soon. Sunday, we flew home still not knowing whether that carving was an angel or a crucifix. I guess I'll accept Rose's assessment of it as the former. That seems more in keeping with our having experienced an enjoyable weekend awash in the arts of Santa Fe.

See also: Now About That Promise to Neptune... / Cyberdates and Santa Fe

Copyright © 1999 by Hal Higdon. All rights reserved. Requests to reprint will be considered.