Other museums queue for cash
In addition to the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Centennial Campaign, slated to last through 2019, the Museum of New Mexico Foundation is contemplating future capital campaigns for the other institutions it supports in the state museum system. All the initiatives will need the approval of the foundation’s board. “We started this process with the Shape the Future campaign for the
New Mexico History Museum,” said Jamie Clements, the foundation’s president and CEO. That campaign was to help build the History Museum, which opened in 2009. “Everyone at the foundation at the time agreed that, once that campaign was completed and knowing that the Museum of Art centennial was on the horizon, [the art museum] would be next.”
After making improvements to the Museum of Art, the foundation will start a campaign to renovate the interior of the Palace and its permanent exhibitions. In the meantime, the foundation is pressing the state to fund structural upgrades at the Palace. “That’s about $1.5 million,” Clements said. “We got $680,000 in the last session, and we’re hoping to receive the balance over the next two sessions.” The funds would pay for a new fire-suppression system, exterior stucco work, roof fixes, and refinished floors.
The foundation is also asking the state to continue funding a renovation of the Museum of Indian Art &
Culture’s permanent exhibit Here, Now and Always, for which the foundation received about $665,000 from the state in the last legislative session. A portion of that was matched with $300,000 in private funds. “We’re going to continue to advocate for state funding. That whole project is somewhere around $2 [million] to $2.5 million,” Clements said.
The Museum of International Folk Art, meanwhile, is working with Gail Lord of Lord Cultural Resources on a master plan for a new textile center that would require a physical expansion of that museum. But the foundation is years away from starting a capital campaign for what will undoubtedly be an expensive project at MOIFA.
Currently, Santa Fe Botanical Garden, also located on Museum Hill, is seeking $1.5 million to fund the second phase of its development, Ojos y Manos (Eyes and Hands), for a new ethnobotany center. — M.A.