MUSEUMS
The Las Cruces Museum System aims to provide a welcoming environment for the curious so they can gain new insights and experience personal and community enrichment. The museums showcase exhibitions on local, national, and global themes to educate and inspire visitors from near and far. Admission is FREE.
Our new Calendar of Events for July to September, 2023, is available in the museums.
For all our programs and classes, you may now sign up online.
Current Exhibits
(Image credits: Southern Methodist University, DeGolyer Library)
The Chinese Experience in the Borderlands,1880-1930
July 7-October 7, 2023
This exhibition tells the little-known story of Chinese immigration in Mexico and the U.S. Borderlands, 1880-1930, using a small Chinese settlement in El Paso and Chinese businesses in Las Cruces and Deming, NM as examples. It examines the use of Chinese immigrant labor in the U.S. and Mexico and the impact it had on regional Chinese settlements. The exhibit addresses anti-Chinese backlash by Borderland citizens and resulting anti-Chinese immigrant laws, in particular the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the New Mexico Alien Land Act of 1921.
(Image credit: “Uranium” by Shanna Merola)
Trinity: Legacies of Nuclear Testing- A People’s Perspective
July 15-September 23, 2023
This juried exhibition features twenty artists who offer their perspectives, insights, and responses to the effects of nuclear testing, nuclear accidents, and uranium mining on the people, animals, and environment of New Mexico. A wide range of art mediums is represented, ranging from photography and paintings to sculptures and multi-media collages. The exhibit was developed by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium and artists were selected and judged by Marisa Sage, NMSU’s Art Museum Director, and Jasmine Herrera, NMSU’s Art Museum Coordinator. It is supported by an auxiliary exhibit that examines the long-term consequences of the 1945 Trinity test in the Tularosa Basin.
Current Exhibit
ORIGAMI IN THE GARDEN: Transforming Paper to Sculpture
June 2–September 23, 2023
This exhibition presents the Japanese art of paper folding through metal sculptures. Each sculpture in the exhibition is inspired by a single, blank piece of paper that has been folded into a specific form. Motivated by capturing the impermanence of paper, the artist Kevin Box found a way of preserving origami’s intricacy by using lost-wax casting methods and museum quality metals.
ORIGAMI IN THE GARDEN: Transforming Paper to Sculpture consists of several large-scale sculptures and a specialized “Inside Out” display that shows folded paper origami models that are placed alongside cast metal wall hangings that illustrate what the corresponding origami model looks like unfolded.
The exhibition features Kevin Box’s own compositions as well as collaborations with his wife Jennifer and world-renowned origami artists Te Jui Fe, Beth Johnson, Michael G. LaFosse, and Robert L. Lang.