New Mexico History Museum — Attraction in Santa Fe

The New Mexico History Museum is centrally located and easy to find. The main exhibition is interesting in parts, but we were shocked to see the amount of downplaying and denial of problematic colonial history.

It starts with one tiny room glossing over thousands (!) of years of native history, mentioning little more than pottery and sheep. It then continues with troubling biased language casually downplaying torture, genocide, slavery and cultural erasure. Colonial experiences and losses were strongly favoured over native voices and losses.

There were many examples of this, among them a wall talking about "Indian boarding schools" created by Americans "worried about the extinction of the Indian". Furthermore mentioning sewing and pottery classes that these native children got to attend. That seems like an incredibly inappropriate summary of what has been widely recognised as a systemic effort of displacement, cultural erasure and a brutal hit to traditions and family structures. There are many more ways in which this museum fails the native history and people of New Mexico both in language and focus.

I can only hope that the New Mexico History Museum will be testimony to our ability to revisit history more honestly and restore oppressed voices in the future - I want to support museums and I learned an interesting thing or two. However as it is now I would not...

New Mexico History Museum opened in 2009, documenting history of New Mexico, from native American culture to WWII to current, the American culture.

Manifest destiny was an ideal in the 19th-century United States that people of US would inevitably settle the continent from the Atlantic Ocean, to the Pacific: destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny").

Fred Harvey (1835-1901) might have been the American Michelin guy: whose Harvey House (1876) restaurants served rail passengers in Santa Fe area.

Uncle Sam & his 48 daughters, by Fray Angelico / Manuel Chavez; Jack Chow, B-17 bomber.

The compound includes:

Palace of the Governors Fray Angélico Chávez History Library ↓ Palace Press Photo Archives

Fray Angélico Chávez (1910-96) was a Hispanic American priest, historian, who wrote poems, and paint:

"The library is named after Franciscan priest Fray Angélico Chávez to honor his life and contributions to New Mexico as an author, archivist, and artist. His personal papers, the Fray Angélico Chávez Collection, are now part of the library collection where he conducted much of...

I've been to museums around the world; Phoenix, New York, etc. This museum is spectacular. It's so well done, I was surprised that Santa Fe had a museum this amazing. Also, Johnny the greeter at the front desk is outstandingly professional and welcoming. He was amazing and is well deserving; on the level of a professional docent or other museum staff. The exhibit on the Harvey Girls was one of my favorite.

You will see exhibits on WWI, WWII, The Manhattan Project, New Mexico's History, Arizona becoming a state, and more. It was spectacular and was a "much better experience" than the museum across the street (New Mexico Museum of Art) if you're pressed for time down by the plaza, and have to make a choice. If so, chose this museum!!

The gift shop was also sufficient for me, as I was able to buy a Harvey Girls DVD and a coffee mug (I collect...