Planning and Launching a New Education Program at the Museum: What it Takes

This fall, the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) and the NM Museum of Art (MOA) will offer a brand new program for children aged 3 – 5 and their adult caregivers: S.T.A.R.T. (Sharing Time, Art, and Reading Together).
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Miss Bartlett, the French Gift, and the Mystery of the Missing Photographer

It sounded so simple: create a little text for a label to display with one of the Museum’s most reproduced images, the picture of our Founder Florence Dibell Bartlett examining a gift from the French Republic in the company of our first Director Robert Bruce Inverarity and French Consul Paul Coze... but the search led on a meandering trail through Museum history
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Time Travel and Travel Time

Continuing our trip through photos of early days at the Museum, we see people arrive on opening day, and explore early traveling exhibits from Tools and Woodworking to Magic and Medicine.
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Looking Back

We've been looking back at photos from the Museum's early days. Here are two favorites, both by Laura Gilpin.
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The Flea, the Truck, and the Dreaded Moth

What does a large freezer truck have to do with the 7th Annual Folk Art Flea (May 7, 2016, 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM)? What's next, folk art ice cream? Read on to learn the lengths the intrepid volunteers of the Friends of Folk Art go to in order to raise money, and preserve the museum's collections.
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Introducing the Marcia Muth Archives

Wednesday, April 21 [1975] Now we must concentrate on being artists. Somehow we must find the way and the means to have the time to develop our artistic life and talents. [excerpt from the Painting Journals of Marcia Muth, Marcia Muth Collection, Museum of International Folk Art Archives AR.00061]
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Just Like Night at the Museum, But Different

Deep in the shadowy vaults, the Museum’s underground storage twists and turns in strange passageways with even stranger objects. A wall of masks, a row of bright garments, or clay figurines peer after you as you walk by. When I found myself in the dark, concrete room with the low dangling light bulb I knew I had gone too far. ‘I should have known,’ I thought to myself, ‘you take a left after the mural depicting the doctors of the black plague.’
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Just Throw the Peanut Shells on the Ground

You never forget the sound and smells of the circus. Peanut shells are everywhere. You hear the c-r-u-n-c-c-ch as you walk. This also kicks up bits of dust, hay and sawdust. As it floats through the air. It smells like circus, but it clogs up your nose and you sneeze BIG TIME...
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6th Graders Make Ema, Japanese Wishing Plaques

“I wish for everyone to shine.” Every weekday, October through May, school group visitors flood the Museum, taking advantage of our Folk Art to Go! school outreach program. K-12 students in the Santa Fe area are really enjoying designing their own ema with acrylic paint...
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Last Weekend for Between Two Worlds

As we prepare for the final weekend of the exhibition Between Two Worlds: Folk Artists Reflect on the Immigrant Experience in the Mark Naylor & Dale Gunn Gallery of Conscience...
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