New Mexico Museum of Art

Famed as much for its building as for the art it contains, the New Mexico Museum of Art
(107 W. Palace Ave., 505/476-5072, www.nmartmuseum.org [1], 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Tues.–Sun., $8, free 5–8 p.m. Fri.) is dedicated to work by state artists.

Built in 1917, it is a beautiful example of pueblo revival architecture, originally designed as the New Mexico pavilion for a world expo in San Diego [2] two years earlier. The curvaceous stucco-clad building is an amalgam of iconic pueblo mission churches: The bell towers, for instance, mimic those found at San Felipe. Inside, the collection varies from Gerald Cassidy’s Cui Bono?, a perpetually relevant oil painting that questions the benefits of pueblo tourism (it has been on display since the museum opened in 1917), to contemporary video installations.

Look out for an excellent collection of Awa Tsireh’s meticulous watercolors of ceremonial dances at San Ildefonso pueblo, alongside work of other local American Indian artists.

On your way out, don’t miss the adjacent St. Francis Auditorium, where three artists adorned the walls with art nouveau murals depicting the life of Santa Fe’s [3] patron saint. It’s rare to see a secular style usually reserved for languorous ladies in flowing togas used to render such scenes as the apotheosis of Saint Francis and Santa Clara’s renunciation, and the effect is beautiful.