Library's little-known treasure trove faces uncertain future when arts school closes
With arts college set to close, library’s valuable collection of rare books and art may need new home
Except for the colorful modern buildings designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, there’s not much distinctive about the campus of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design off St. Michael’s Drive.
But inside some of those buildings, oh boy. There are thousands of rare books, photographs by celebrated photographers of the 20th century, oil paintings, Mimbres pottery, even a lithograph by Salvador Dalí and an etching by Pablo Picasso. Some come with particularly good stories, like the Zuni olla donated by an old New Mexico family whose matriarch received it in gratitude after she went to the pueblo and nursed people through a smallpox epidemic in the 1890s.
Many of the items are listed in a 2016 inventory and it’s all owned by the city of Santa Fe. The value is in the millions.
“This is one of those secret Santa Fe treasures that the city needs to pay attention to,” said Andrew Smith, a gallery owner who manages and brokers important photographic collections and who has appraised parts of this one.
It’s future is up in the air, however, since the art school, operated by the for-profit Laureate Education Inc., announced in April that it will close next year because of financial problems.
The announcement, and the disclosure that a deal with a Singaporebased company to take over the school had fallen through, is disrupting the lives of students and faculty and raising more financial troubles for the city, which is still paying off bonds issued in 2009 to finance the purchase of the 60-acre campus and other assets when the College of Santa Fe closed. The city borrowed about $30 million to buy the campus, then sold part of it to the state and leased the rest to Laureate, most recently for $2.2 million a year.
Two city councilors, Mike Harris and Signe Lindell, are leading an effort to find new uses for the campus and its various classrooms, dormitories and other facilities, including theater and studio spaces.
What hasn’t yet been widely discussed is the fate of the city-owned collections of rare books, paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs stored in the Fogelson Library, the Marion Center for Photographic Arts, the Thaw Art History Center, and on the walls and lawns around
the midtown campus.
While Santa Fe houses worldclass art and photography collections at the state-owned New Mexico Museum of Art and the Palace of the Governors, the city itself has no museum of its own and is not in the business of conserving art. And so far there doesn’t seem to be a plan to do so.
Matt Ross, city spokesman, said in an email, “We are being proactive about considering all possible options to achieve a few big goals: Preserve as much of the educational mission as possible, protect the taxpayers from having to cover the costs related to the site, and ensure that the eventual uses comport with the greatest community benefit.”
But neither he nor anyone else connected with the city was able to give any specifics about the possible fate of this exceptional legacy. A lot, to be sure, depends on what becomes of the campus. While some officials hope it can continue to be a center for the arts and education, that is by no means assured.
According to Margaret Van Dyk, director of library services at the university, there are 305,000 holdings in its catalog, some of which are under lock and key. This number includes 126,755 pieces in a range of formats in the general collection of the Fogelson Library and 2,480 items in its rare books collection. It also includes 4,926 items in the Beaumont Newhall library and 6,591 books at the Chase Art History Library.
Van Dyk said that last August the Center for Southwest Research at The University of New Mexico accepted old College of Santa Fe archives assembled by the Christian Brothers, the Roman Catholic order that founded the school in 1874 as St. Michael’s College and later moved it to St. Michael’s Drive in 1947. Van Dyk said she has been selling some materials in Fogelson that are no longer relevant or are duplicated elsewhere.
Debra Garcia y Griego, director of the city’s arts commission, said the inventory was last verified in 2014 and found to be in place and in good condition, but she has not been involved in discussions about what might happen to the artworks and other items.
Those who helped build and use these significant collections, however, have some of their own ideas about what should happen to them. Many are hoping that the works stay together and remains in Santa Fe.
They point to numerous significant holdings.
The rare book collection at the Fogelson Library, opened in 1970 and named for actress and college benefactor Greer Garson’s husband, Buddy Fogelson, includes An Official Record of the Union and Confederate States in The War of Rebellion, published in 1900 by the Government Printing Office, a copy of the Bible in German from 1861, the Illustrated History of Colorado from 1913 and, from 1888, The Story of the Wild West and Camp-Fire Chats by Buffalo Bill, accredited to William Cody. It is illustrated and runs 766 pages.
There are also bowls, carved figures, effigies, rattles, fiber bags, jars, statues and a wood block print by Gustave Baumann.
The Chase Art History Library in the Thaw Art History Center contains pre-Columbian Mesoamerican and South American art, Andean, Native American, Spanish colonial and modern Latin American art.
The Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Library at the Marion Center for Photographic Arts includes the private research libraries of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall and James Enyeart and Roxanne Malone with artists’ monographs, journals, posters, calendars, ephemera, audio and video tapes and correspondence.
The photo collection includes a $20,000 print by Richard Avedon, the late fashion and portrait photographer; works by the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado valued at as much as $6,000 each; numerous prints by American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith including 22 little contact prints worth $75,000; four photographs by Alfred Stieglitz; work by American photographer Paul Strand, including a portfolio of the cities of New Mexico at the end of the 20th century; work by photographer Eliot Porter including eight prints of birds in flight valued at $40,000; many photographs by Marion Post-Wolcott, who worked for the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration; a couple of prints by documentary photographer Dorothea Lange valued at a total of $25,000; pieces by Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans and Edward Curtis, the photographer and ethnologist; and a large collection of work signed by Paul Caponigro valued at up to $10,000 per print.
Photographer and scholar James Enyeart, founding director of the Marion Center, said he plans to have a conversation with the mayor about his own materials in the Newhall Library with the idea of them remaining “intact” and given to another institution. “I wanted more information to come out and be digested, to see what the plan is for taking care of those collections,” he said.
While he said the city probably is not eager to see the complex utilized for something other than an arts school, he hopes it is pursuing “vigorously” a plan for the collections, because, “Time will get away from everyone and millions of dollars is at stake.”
Besides himself, a large number of other donors, he said, “would have an interest in seeing there is some continuity.” Enyeart also pointed out that there is a library and archive named for him and his wife at The University of New Mexico and if all else failed and the city was unable to keep the collections in Santa Fe, he would like to see some of the material go there.
Allison Colborne, who helped set up the Chase and Newhall libraries, called them “rare and valuable.” The reading room, she said, had every book published by the Santa Fe-based Twin Palms, a well-known publisher of art and photography books.
Colborne, who now works for the Laboratory of Anthropology Library, said she kept those noncirculating libraries open 35-37 hours a week with the help of students until she left in 2008, but hours have been reduced greatly since then.
“There’s stuff in there that [the city] could make a lot of money off of,” she said. “There is some sentiment about the materials coming to some of the state museum libraries. But that’s a moot point until something’s worked out.”
Khristaan Villela, founding director of the Thaw Art History Center and now director of the Museum of International Folk Art, said he is not aware of any official discussions about the future of the collections, although the issue was raised in 2009 by city officials.
The state museums, he pointed out, have collections policies that bar collecting certain archaeological materials as well as items that duplicate work in their collections, are in poor condition, or for which there is no room.
Mary Anne Redding, former chairwoman of the photography department at the university, called the Marion Center holdings “a hugely valuable collection.”
“My feeling is that it should not be broken up,” she said. “If a university is not going to be there it should go to the History Museum or an art museum.”
Redding said she hopes that whatever happens, people have access to the collection and its databases and that the materials are used in exhibitions.
“A nice thing for the city to do would be an exhibition at one of the museums,” she said, adding, “I know the city needs money, but there are all kinds of things that can be done to honor this legacy. I don’t think it should be sold.” Moreover, she said, “The collection came to Santa Fe so I think it should stay in Santa Fe.”
The first step, Redding said, is to bring together all the stakeholders who have the best interests of the collection at heart.
Those who should be at the table, she and others said, include academic librarians, local museum leaders, the Center for Southwest Research at UNM, as well as representatives from the community college, the Institute of American Indian Arts and the city library.
“If this isn’t going to continue,” Van Dyk said of the use of the campus for higher education, “someone should spearhead the re-homing of the collection so that it lives.”
Peg Johnson, a former Fogelson Library director now at the Santa Fe Community College, agreed. “I believe that Fogelson and the other two libraries hold a treasure trove of knowledge that should be retained in Santa Fe. … The city of Santa Fe should certainly take a long and hard look not just at the campus and its building but at the contents of those buildings. … To lose these materials or have them sold to profit a for-profit institution as it closes would be wrong.”
Reporter Robert Nott contributed to this story.
I believe that Fogelson and the other two libraries hold a treasure trove of knowledge that should be retained in Santa Fe.”
Peg Johnson, former library director