Taos Historic Museums Set Summer Hours

The Taos Historic Museums - La Hacienda de los Martinez and the E.L. Blumenschein Home and Museum – are now open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The museums are closed on Monday.

The Martinez Hacienda, on State Road 240 two miles south of Taos Plaza, is one of the few late Spanish Colonial period "Great Houses" remaining in the American Southwest. Built in 1804 this fortress-like building with massive adobe walls became an important trade center for the northern boundary of the Spanish Empire.
 The Hacienda was the final terminus for the Camino Real which connected northern New Mexico to Mexico City. The Hacienda also was the headquarters for an extensive ranching and farming operation. Today the Hacienda's twenty-one rooms surrounding two courtyards provide the visitor with a rare glimpse of the rugged frontier life and times of the early 1800s.

The Hacienda Heritage Quilters and Weavers work is on exhibit year round. On Fridays the Hacienda Heritage Quilters demonstrate in the chapel in the front placita, and on Wednesdays guests can watch the Hacienda weavers in the weaving room in the back placita. Additional demonstrations of traditional crafts occur throughout the summer.

The Blumenschein Home & Museum is located at 222 Ledoux Street one block south of Taos Plaza. In the early autumn of 1898 young American artists Ernest L. Blumenschein and Bert G. Phillips were on a sketching trip from Denver to northern Mexico when the wheel of their surrey broke on a mountainous road just north of Taos. The ensuing delay gave them time to become captivated by the spectacular landscape and remarkable cultures of the Taos Valley. Phillips remained in Taos from that time forward. Blumenschein came back nearly every summer until 1919, when he, his artist wife Mary Greene Blumenschein, and daughter Helen purchased a 1797 structure from Herbert “Buck” Dunton for their permanent home.

In 1915 Blumenschein, Phillips, Dunton, Oscar Berninghaus, E.I. Couse, and Joseph Henry Sharpe formed the famous Taos Society of Artists. The society was organized to promote the splendor of Taos and the art of the American West to ever greater audiences.

The Blumenschein Home and Museum is maintained much as it was when the artist and his family were alive. The home is filled with a superb collection of the Blumenschein family's art, a representative sampling of works by other famous Taos artists, fine European and Spanish Colonial style antiques, and the family's lifetime of personal possessions. The home beautifully illustrates the lifestyle of Taos artists in the first half of the twentieth century.

A special exhibit of small drawings by Blumenschein will be on exhibit through May 2009.

Admission is $8 for adults, $4 for youth under age 16 and free for children under age 5. Admission is free on Sunday for Taos County residents with ID.  "SAVER CARDS" are also available that admit one person to both THM museums for $12.

For more information, visit www.taoshistoricmuseums.org or contact Morris Witten, Executive Director, 575-758-0505 or director@taoshistoricmuseums.org.