A Blumen’ Century!

Celebrating 100 years of E. L. Blumenschein Home and Museum

Margo Beutler-Gins, director of Taos Historic Museums, invites Taos and the rest of the world to celebrate 100 years since the Ernest L. Blumenschein family of artists bought their historic home and studios at 222 Ledoux Street in August of 1919, further establishing and promoting Western art in Taos.

The museum commemorates the lives and art of all three artists – Ernest L. Blumenschein, Mary Shepherd Greene Blumenschein and their daughter Helen Greene Blumenschein.

“Ernest went back and forth for almost two decades, but my great grandfather never left,” Beutler-Gins said.

Her family history agrees with near-legendary accounts of how enchanting Blumenschein and Phillips found Taos to be, upon inadvertently discovering it on their famous broken wagon wheel mishap in 1898, on a sketching trip from Denver to Mexico. Blumenschein traversed over 20 miles to a Taos blacksmith, reputedly located off Ledoux Street, opposite the Blumenschein Home & Museum of today.

By 1915, E. L. Blumenschein and Phillips founded the Taos Society of Artists, with fellow artists Oscar Berninghaus, E. Irving Couse, W. Herbert “Buck” Dunton and Joseph H. Sharp, all with the intent to support and promote these artists of Taos. By 1919, the Blumenschein family moved into four units of the Ledoux Street complex that over the years expanded into a large home, studios and garden.

Artist: Mary Blumenschein