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 April - June, 2023, is available in the museums.
For programs and activities that do not have a cost associated with them, you may now sign up online here Version OptionsMUSEUMSHeadlineCurrent Exhibits.
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BRANIGAN CULTURAL CENTER
The Branigan Cultural Center is dedicated to engaging visitors in the rich heritage of the Southwest and the world-at-large through artistic, cultural and historical exhibitions and programs. Housed in a 1935 Pueblo Revival- style building, it was the first library in Las Cruces.
Call for Proposals
2024 Community Exhibits
The Branigan Cultural Center is accepting proposals for exhibits with cultural and historical significance themes relating to the Borderlands and the U.S. Southwest to be presented in 2024. We are particularly interested in submissions that consider the 175th anniversary of the settling of Mesilla and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Submission topics can be wide-ranging and address historical or contemporary issues. We invite submissions from formal and informal scholars, cultural heritage organizations, and artists (solo or group).
Proposals will be accepted from April 1-May 19, 2023. Incomplete or late proposals will not be accepted. The proposal deadline is 5 pm MDT on May 19th. Proposals must be submitted via SurveyMonkey. Use this link below to submit.
Submission Form - Deadline: May 19th
Current Exhibits
Trinity
May 5 - July 1, 2023
Sarah Nguyen’s Break into Blossom installation piece considers an alternative history whereby the failure of the Manhattan Project resulted in the atomic bomb “Little Boy” being a dud, thus causing the nuclear weapons project to be abandoned. In her piece, Nguyen creates an accurate scale replica of the “Little Boy” bomb that is surrounded by two 20-foot long, decorated Tyvek scrolls. The installation includes an audience interaction component consisting of pink blossoms that viewers are encouraged to use to write their wishes for the future, which then are placed in the installation and become part of it. Nguyen’s installation piece is an artistic visual interpretation of “Einstein Saves Hiroshima” from “Pages from the Textbook of Alternative History” by Phong Nguyen.
The piece encourages audience members to reexamine the past and ask, “What if?” It is Nguyen’s intention that by causing visitors to consider and reexamine the actions of the past, they will be empowered to contemplate the impact of our current actions for the future.
Small Village New Mexico
April 14 - June 24, 2023
The Small Village New Mexico Project is an ongoing photo-documentary project of the New Mexico State University journalism department. Over the past ten years, students, under the leadership of photojournalist Bruce Berman, have documented the people and landscapes along southern New Mexico’s Rio Grande River Valley. The images presented in this exhibit capture both the timeless quality of small villages between Hatch and Anthony and the changes brought about by the influx of new residents and transitions in land-use.
Honesty of Construction: The WPA and Spanish Colonial Style Furniture
Nov 29, 2022 - Summer 2023
This exhibit examines the Works Progress Administration-era vocational training program in New Mexico that drew upon Spanish Colonial furniture to teach young men and women a marketable trade in woodworking. Drawings from the University Museum collection at New Mexico State University, the exhibit features fifteen furniture pieces made through a 1930s community vocational program that was established in Las Cruces at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (now New Mexico State University).
MUSEUM OF ART
The Museum of Art features juried, invitational, and traveling exhibitions with artwork by nationally and internationally known artists. Through the Studio Program, the Museum offers professional art instruction for youth and adults in drawing, painting, ceramics, and other media.
Upcoming 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.
MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE
The Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science, or MoNaS, inspires curiosity about the sciences, facilitates life-long learning, and promotes stewardship of the natural environment of the Chihuahuan Desert and southern New Mexico.
RAILROAD MUSEUM
The mission of the Railroad Museum is to preserve the heritage of railroading through a series of miniature representations of New Mexico railroads, as well as research and preserve the history of model railroading.