Museum Hill's heritage arts venue drops 'Spanish Colonial' from its title

May 6—The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art is saying adios to the motherland.

The venue, after removing the "Spanish Colonial" from its name and renewing its focus on regional traditions, will now be known as the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum, said Jennifer Berkley, executive director of the nonprofit Spanish Colonial Arts Society, which runs the museum.

While Berkley described the old name as confusing and in some cases off-putting, the change is already drawing ire from some Santa Feans who view it as an assault on their Hispanic cultural identity.

"Here we go again," said Virgil Vigil, president of Hispanic fraternal organization Union Protectíva de Santa Fé, when he heard the news.

Vigil, who has been a vocal critic of Mayor Alan Webber's order to remove a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas from Cathedral Park, said he views the museum's name change as "just another attack" on Spanish colonial heritage and culture in the name of political correctness.

"They are intended to eliminate our history, culture and our traditions, and this is just another prime example of what is happening," he said. "... I don't agree with it. I don't know how to stop it."

The private museum, which occupies a John Gaw Meem home on Museum Hill, opened in 2002 — decades after the founding of the society, which formerly managed Santa Fe's Traditional Spanish Market.

The museum's collection has a heavy New Mexico focus, with some internationally sourced pieces that provide context of the Spanish colonial influence. A wooden box from Peru emblazoned with twining designs, for example, sits beneath a wall covered in straw applique crucifixes.

Berkley, who came to the society in 2020 following what she described as a largely academic career at The Claremont Colleges in Southern California, said the society underwent a strategic planning process that resulted in issuing a survey in 2021 to more than 3,000 museum members, donors, Spanish Market artists, community members and others.

"It became really clear that, while we very much honor and respect the legacy of our founders ... the name of our museum was just confusing," Berkley said. "It was misleading, and people were coming here expecting to see one thing, or not coming here because they didn't want to see something."

Berkley said visitors sometimes showed up at the Camino Lejo property expecting to the trappings of colonial Spaniards.

"I saw a visitor come in one time and he asked the front desk where the armor room was," Berkley said. "He thought he was going to see conquistadors."

The survey itself came in the wake of the civil unrest that had washed over the country in 2020, set off by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The movement came to a head in New Mexico with the October toppling of the Soldiers' Monument on the Santa Fe Plaza during an Indigenous Peoples Day rally. The long-controversial Plaza obelisk honored both Civil War Union soldiers and those who had died in battle against Native Americans.

While Berkley shied away from connecting the timing of the survey with the national conversation on race and the effects of colonization — "They both seemed to be happening at the same time," she said — she confirmed concerns have arisen over whether the term "colonial" could be a turnoff.

"People have definitely expressed that," she said.

Museum leaders hope to draw a larger audience with the new name, an accompanying new logo and other, more tangible changes.

Admission to the museum is free to New Mexico residents for the month of May, for one.

A kitchen now undergoing a renovation will be home to a new partnership with the local nonprofit Cooking with Kids, where low-income kids and families from Santa Fe, Española, Ohkay Owingeh and Las Vegas, N.M., will be able to take classes on healthy cooking inspired by Northern New Mexico Hispano and Indigenous traditions.

More of the museum's 2 1/2 acres will be put to active use with a planned outdoor sculpture garden. And Berkley said there have been discussions about having the museum's library archive be more readily accessible to the public.

Still, some Santa Feans decry what they say are widespread attempts to minimize or even erase the specifically Spanish elements of Santa Fe's history.

Daniel Ortiz, founder of the Hispanic Anti-Defamation Association, said he thinks that bent has led to an "oversimplification" of the complex dynamics between Spanish and Native communities as they lived alongside each other.

"It's black and white, good versus evil, colonizer versus colonists," he said.

Vigil and Ortiz both said they take issue with people who aren't from Santa Fe pushing what they described as anti-Spanish changes.

Orlando Romero, a longtime writer, historian and santero, said he too finds the museum's name change "very distressing."

"It seems like anything with Spanish in it, they're trying to do away with it in Santa Fe," said Romero, a former columnist for The New Mexican.

In response to some of those concerns, Berkley pointed out the Spanish Colonial Arts Society's name is not changing, and the new logo includes the group's name. She also noted the reason for the change is to make the museum more of a draw, so it can continue to support New Mexico artists.

"It's obviously not about erasing anything," she said. "It's about highlighting and trying to get more people in the door."

Some associated or formerly associated with the museum don't see a problem with the new name.

"I think it more accurately depicts what they're attempting to do there," said Stuart Ashman, the museum's founding director, who ran the organization from 2000 to 2003. "... It is focused on the New Mexican traditions that arose out of the Spanish colonial period."

Ashman, who also served as Cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs under former Gov. Bill Richardson, said while he understands the controversy, much of the art on display at the museum is uniquely regional and not Spanish, in part because of limitations on supplies.

"The things that were made out of silver in Spain were made out of tin here, and the things that were made out of gold were made out of straw," he said.

Ashman said he understands the desire to attract a wider audience, and said he thinks a continued support of contemporary works could help the museum along that path. He pointed to work by New Mexico artist Luis Tapia, including a modern devotional piece called Chuy's Burden, a reference to one nickname for the name Jesus.

"He carved this figure and it's a man in a bandana and a tattoo in a workman's T-shirt and he's ... pushing a wheelbarrow, and in the wheelbarrow is the Earth," Ashman said. "He's basically saying that Jesus is a migrant worker, or like a migrant worker."

Diana Moya Lujan, a Santa Fe straw applique artist who has some pieces at the museum, said she does see references to the Spanish being pushed out. But, she said, she agrees New Mexico's Spanish colonial-inspired art is its own thing.

"For me, it's a way to preserve my culture," said Moya Lujan, whose daughter and granddaughter are also artists with work at the museum. "I want to educate the public with our culture, and I want to pass our culture on to next generations."

Moya Lujan said she sees the change as a rebrand to draw in more viewers, which she supports.

"I'm trying to stay positive and I hope they're going to do something to help New Mexico and showcase the beautiful art that's here," she said. "I wish them well and I hope this is something that works for them."

While they don't like the loss of "Spanish colonial," Ortiz and Romero conceded the new name does have some merit. Ortiz said he had feared the new title would be "something generic."

"It doesn't sound so bad, but I don't know," Romero said. "I've kind of given up on Santa Fe. Can't even go out to eat anymore because it's 200 bucks."