Preserving a prized library
Work begins to move midtown campus’ Beaumont Newhall collection to museum
As the campus of the former Santa Fe University of Art and Design continues to collect dust and tumbleweeds, one of its treasured research collections is finding its way to a new home — at least temporarily.
The New Mexico Museum of Art will take stewardship of the Beaumont Newhall Library — which contains some 3,500 books and catalogs on photography — on a roughly fouryear loan-out agreement between the state’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the city of Santa Fe.
City workers are conducting an inventory of the collection, which is expected to start arriving at the downtown museum by the end of the calendar year, said Michelle Gallagher Roberts, acting director of the New Mexico Museum of Art.
“Our goal is to make them accessible to researchers within the next 12-18 months here at the museum,” she said Tuesday.
As part of the agreement between the museum and the city, which currently has oversight of the property and materials on the midtown campus, the two entities also will begin talks about the potential for transferring full ownership rights to the museum, she said.
She said she does not know what the collection is worth because “there is no appraisal.”
Beaumont Newhall (1908-93) was a Massachusetts-born photography historian and curator who, among
other achievements, was the first curator of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and one of the founders of the photography journal Aperture.
He moved to New Mexico in the early 1970s to take a position as a professor at the University of New Mexico and died in Santa Fe in 1993. Before his death, he donated the materials for the collection to the College of Santa Fe, as the Santa Fe University of Art and Design was formerly known.
The College of Santa Fe, owned by the De La Salle Christian Brothers, closed in 2009 because of financial challenges. The following year, the for-profit Laureate Education Inc. reopened the campus and dubbed it the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Citing financial problems and stagnant enrollment, Laureate closed the college in 2018, leaving the 60-acre campus off St. Michael’s Drive in the hands of the city.
Roberts said the ties between Newhall and the New Mexico Museum of Art go back decades because some of the museum’s former curators were trained by Newhall.
“He heavily influenced our collection of photography at the museum, so to have the Beaumont Newhall collection come here provides a good connection to the museum,” she said.
“He literally wrote the book on the history of photography. He influenced generations of photographers, photography curators and how people look at photography and its role in our history.”
She said the agreement between the state and city did not involve any transaction of money. “It’s just a straight stewardship [deal],” she said.
The agreement, first approved by the Santa Fe City Council in 2017, does not apply to other arts and literature collections still stored on the campus, such as the Fogelson Library and the Marion Center for Photographic Arts.
City spokeswoman Lilia Chacon said there still is “no big picture” plan for dealing with the Fogelson Library, which houses thousands of books about film, theater and the arts, as well as a number of artworks. She said the city has convened a panel of librarians from around the state to provide recommendations on what to do with the Fogelson collection.
“No decisions have been made at this time,” she said.