Historic Santa Fe Foundation

06/26/2026

06/25/2026

George Cuyler Preston and his wife Margaret T. Preston built their substantial Queen Anne Style house on Faithway Street, facing Palace Avenue, in 1886. The Preston house is one of many fashionable homes constructed in the neighborhood off East Palace Avenue. It represents a time in local history when styles and settlers from the East and Midwest influenced residential life and the local built environment. The Prestons came to Santa Fe in the 1880s and became prominent members of the community. Attorney George Cuyler Preston opened a law firm with partner Charles H. Gildersleeve, a land speculator who chaired the Democratic Party’s Central Committee in New Mexico. The Prestons also dabbled in real estate, using their Santa Fe home as collateral in several land purchases. Today, the George Cuyler Preston House is maintained and operated as a bed-and-breakfast.

From Old Santa Fe Today, 5th edition by Audra Bellmore with photographs by Simone Frances. Link in Bio.

06/21/2026

The 2026 BROOM ROOM opens Friday, June 26th from 5–7 PM! 🧹✨ Stop by to meet the artist, Julia Tait Dickenson, and explore this unique and fun exhibition. We can’t wait to see you there!

06/20/2026

Dorothy McKibbin first came to Santa Fe to recover from tuberculosis at Sunmount Sanatorium. After regaining her health, she returned to Kansas City to marry. After the death of her husband in 1931, McKibbin moved back to Santa Fe with her young son Kevin. She worked various jobs until being hired by scientist Robert Oppenheimer to be the primary contact in Santa Fe for the Manhattan Project, developed to create an atomic bomb and ultimately leading to the creation of Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1947. As the only “secure” private residence in Santa Fe, McKibbin’s home on Old Santa Fe Trail became a gathering place for scientists discouraged from socializing within the Santa Fe community. McKibbin continued to work as the Santa Fe liaison for Los Alamos until she retired in 1963. McKibbin collaborated with architect Katherine Stinson-Otero to design her residence, a typical New Mexican adobe ranch house that blends elements of the regional Spanish Pueblo Revival Style with the Territorial Revival Style.

From Old Santa Fe Today, 5th edition book by Audra Bellmore with photographs by Simone Frances.

06/19/2026

“Bound by the High Desert” closes tomorrow, Saturday, June 20—but it’s not too late to view this diverse and tactile exhibition! In these final days, we’re taking a closer look at some of the featured artwork. Today, we are highlighting Andrea Dupree. Andrea Dupree is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Northern New Mexico. Her work centers on fiber sculpture, exploring relationships between ecology, care, and spiritual symbolism. Working primarily with wool, plant fibers, and found materials, she transforms raw material into tactile sculptural forms that emphasize texture, material presence, and the expressive nature of fiber.

About the work:
My Portals and Protectors series explores the interconnected relationships between humans, nature, and the unseen. These felted sculptures and embroidered forms function as altars to invite reflection and reconnection with the living world.

Using wool, plant fibers, stones, and found materials, I build textured forms through wet felting, needle felting, and hand embroidery. My materials are gathered from thrift stores, estate sales, inherited collections, eco-conscious suppliers, and the land surrounding my home in Northern New Mexico. Through this process of collecting and transformation, the materials carry traces of place, history, and human touch.

My practice is shaped by animism, ecofeminism, and ecological attunement. I approach materials as collaborators rather than passive supplies, allowing intuitive and responsive processes to guide the emergence of form. Influences include the aesthetics of Catholic iconography I encountered growing up in South Louisiana, as well as natural forms and practices that emphasize attention, care, and relationship.

Through slow, tactile processes and materially grounded forms, the work invites viewers to consider how care, presence, and interconnectedness might shape the ways we relate to one another and to the natural world.

06/13/2026

Only one week left to experience Bound by the High Desert! 🌵 The exhibition officially closes next Saturday, June 20th.

To celebrate the final days of the show, we’re sharing a little extra insight into these captivating pieces by Dain Daller and Pando Speer of WarpZone. Swipe through to dive deeper into the details, inspiration, and craft behind their work.

Come see them in person at El Zaguán before this fantastic show closes.

Dain Daller
Volcano Abstraction

This ikat weaving is a musing on the theme of volcanos. Specifically the Jemez Caldera and the Socorro Magma bubble.
Both before and during the process of this piece, information about volcanos kept crossing my path, and fascinating me, inspiring me to delve further into the subject.

A central volcano symbol is surrounded by magma rivulets, pyrochlastic cloud tendrils (clouds of hot gas and ash that flow down and follow the landscapes topography during an eruption), all on a ground of cooled lava rock, with tiny cracks throughout (the loom controlled grid pattern), indicating the fact that underneath the surface, there is always activity and fluidity.

Pando Speer
Apparitions Series
Double weave with naturally dyed cotton, and a silk screened warp.

This series explores the differences between concrete realities and how these real entities and events exist in our memory. Exploring the fluid changes over time of the past, which we can only recall from memories. These pieces question the permeable boundary between the past and our perceived concept of the past.

06/11/2026

Looking for somewhere to cool off this summer? Stop by El Zaguán and enjoy the shade of our garden and portal.

06/09/2026

For over a century, the house across the street from the San Miguel Chapel has been known as the oldest house in the city. While the structure is labeled the “oldest building” on the J. J. Stoner Bird’s Eye View of the City of Santa Fe, N.M. 1882, its actual age is not known. While tree-ring specimens taken from wooden vigas date to about 1740–67, portions of the lower walls of one room in the house are made of puddled adobe, an indigenous building technique that predates the adobe mud bricks introduced by Spanish colonists. Even though its age remains debatable, it is a tourist destination that demonstrates how long tourism has been an important part of Santa Fe’s economy.

From Old Santa Fe Today, 5th edition (book) by Audra Bellmore with photographs by Simone Frances.

06/09/2026

Take a virtual stroll through Bound by the High Desert! 🌵✨
If you haven't had a chance to see our current exhibition in person—or if you simply want to experience it again—we are excited to share this video walkthrough.

"Bound by the High Desert" is on view now through Saturday, June 20. We hope you'll stop by to experience these incredible works up close before the show closes!
Visit us: 545 Canyon Road
Hours: Monday and Tuesday 12- 5 pm & Wednesday through Saturday 10 - 5 pm.

Welcome to the virtual walkthrough of "Bound by the High Desert", c...

06/07/2026

Fiber art icon Nancy Kozikowski perfectly captures the bold, graphic spirit of the Southwest. Her legendary tapestries balance structural precision with brilliant visual rhythm. Below, explore the details of four incredible pieces alongside Nancy’s own words and insights about her work.

Butterfly II
A few years ago I learned that New Mexico is a corridor in the US for butterfly migration. I was fascinated that something so delicate could make an arduous trek thousands of
miles.

Peapods
I wanted to create an image in my weaving that was three-dimensional. I started
drawing the shape to fit in the space and it began to look like a peapod. So, from the beginning, the weaving was always referred to as Peapod.

Red Bird
This is a part of a very intricate pattern on a 2,000 year old coffin that I saw in a
museum in Wuhan, China when I lived there. I wanted to sketch part of the design to incorporate it into a weaving. I didn’t know what I was getting into because it took me three weeks just to deconstruct the pattern and create the sketch. It was a unique pattern that was not simple; it was complex, like another language. Over the years, I saw the pattern on other items, like paper weights that I found at a flea market.

Wave
Waves crash on the shore all day, every day. The energy for each individual wave may have formed 1000 miles away. I think of each piece of art being like a wave whose concept, color, form, and medium was formed years before by our country,
grandparents, parents and lives. And when the wave crashes on the shore the viewer brings the history of their energy and responds positively or negatively. History, human nature and our ergonomics cause us to accept or reject or incorporate what we see. Johan Sebastian Bach died 300 years ago. His music is played every day in every country. This isn’t just a cultural response but an organic response. Successful and lasting art is effective because it speaks to our history, culture, body and soul. This is the way of art. You are a wave.

Bound by the Desert: Contemporary Fiber Art is on view through June, 20.