Millicent Rogers Museum — Attraction in Taos

If you had asked me a few weeks ago whether or not I wanted to go to a museum dedicated to a New Mexico jewelry designer, I would have said no. But I would have been wrong.

This is an excellent little museum that does a good job of explaining the history of the native peoples in the Taos area. There are artifacts and works of art from several centuries in this museum, and while the individual pieces aren't quite as spectacular as what you'd find at say the Denver Art Museum (which has a globally recognized collection of pre-Columbian art and artifacts from the Americas), the way the pieces are used to tell a story is impressive.

The museum is built in a circular building, and as you move from room to room you learn about the native peoples as they lived before the Spanish, during the Spanish rule, and afterwards. Art (including a fair amount of jewelry, but not as much as you might expect) is used to illustrate key moments in time. I was especially impressed with the explanations accompanying each exhibit, as they did a good job of sharing the basics succinctly while also acknowledging the nuances that casual history buffs like myself are aware of.

The gift shop is impressive as well, mostly because it contains very high quality works of art and jewelry that are breathtaking and valuable - I haven't seen too many museum giftshops with multiple $20k paintings on the wall. The giftshop was every bit as impressive as a nice art gallery.

If you like art and you're interested in the area's history, you'll like this museum. My grade school kids were also entertained, as they were given a scavenger hunt activity that was challenging enough to take effort but not so much as to be perceived as work. Make sure to grab a sheet if you've got the kids with you.

Highly...

Really lovely museum of its kind - located in a historical house and that been sympathetically restored and extended. If you are interested in traditional crafts, jewellery and fashion, it is an absolute gem (excuse the pun) - good collection, nicely laid out and presented. The highlight is the jewellery Millicent Rogers herself designed, displayed well.

I found the Museum shop a let-down - it is spacious and full of jewelley and clothing. What I really wanted to buy were reproductions of MR's designs - but there are only 7 silver pieces - and even from a distance you can see that they are not particularly well-made (cast and not hand-finished/polished?), nowhere near the quality of the originals - I wouldn't spend $150 on them.

Much of other tradionally inspired stuff is expensive; the most interesting section was where they are re-selling...

Interesting and nice museum. Free to veterans. However we have never encountered such rude, pretentious and presumptious docents/volunteers. We were told by the docents at the front desk and in the gift shop that we must not know anything about the culture of the southwest since we replied that we came from Virginia when asked where we were visiting from. It was particularly annoying since it happened twice to the two of us who have studied both southwest and southeast indigenous archeology and art and one of us was born and raised in Southern Colorado. We were also lectured in in the gift shop on Virginia history and the running commentary was so obnoxious it prevented us from exploring some of the southwest collectors items we were intetested in. Frankly, it was a relief to get out...