Santa Fe celebrates 400th

By Joan Scobey, Globe Correspondent 06/07/98

SANTA FE -- For months Santa Fe has been buzzing with excitement over its brand new Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which is drawing record crowds since it opened in July. Everyone still has Georgia on their mind, but this year visitors will also hear a lot about Juan de Onate. He's the Spanish-American explorer who in 1598 established the first pemanent Spanish colony in New Mexico, near Santa Fe. And the city is seizing the opportunity to celebrate its 400th birthday throughout 1998.

The Cuarto Centenario, as the 400th anniversary is called in Spanish, has an ambitious calendar of lectures, concerts, and special events about the area's history and cultural traditions. They happen every Friday and Saturday at different city venues.

Since Santa Fe is a quintessential art town, the city's cultural heritage, past and present, is also being noted in many of its museums. ``Here, Now and Always,'' a major new permanent exhibit of the indigenous peoples of the Southwest, opened the new wing of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. Just across Museum Plaza at the Museum of International Folk Art, where a textile wing is opening in August, is architect/designer Alexander Girard's enchanting collection of folk and popular art, mainly toys, displayed in settings of miniature towns and foreign villages.

Three other major museums are downtown. The Palace of the Governors forms one side of the Plaza, and visitors who aren't diverted by the Indian vendors selling jewelry and baskets in its arcade will find a history of the state inside. Across the street, the Museum of Fine Arts is showing ``O'Keeffe's New Mexico'' through March. And a couple of blocks away is the latest jewel of Santa Fe's art scene, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The first fine-art museum in the United States devoted to a woman artist, and, in fact, one of the few to a single artist, the adobe-style building, with serene putty-colored walls and high ceilings, has the tranquil, even monastic, feeling of the Southwest O'Keeffe loved.

The opening exhibit of more than a hundred paintings, pastels, watercolors, drawings, and sculptures spans her work from 1914 through 1982. It includes her famous flowers, among them Jimson Weed, and the poppies that have been memorialized on postage stamps, as well as some stunning earlier and lesser-known works. For O'Keeffe devotees, there are a limited number of tickets to the house she lived in for 40 years at Abiquiu, outside Santa Fe; they must be booked far in advance through the O'Keeffe Foundation, 505-685-4539.

The O'Keeffe Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Palace of the Governors, Museum of International Folk Art, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture are collectively part of the Museum of New Mexico, which offers a four-day pass to all of them for $10. The first three, in the city center, have free admission on Fridays from 5 to 8 p.m.

For art lovers in a buying mood, Santa Fe claims to be the third-largest art marketplace in the country (after New York and Los Angeles). The galleries around the Plaza and along Canyon Road, a narrow street of old adobe buildings that winds its way up to nearby hills, are filled not only with traditional Southwestern jewelry, pottery, baskets, and rugs, but also with Hispanic, Western, and abstract art, in fact, anything you'd find in world-class galleries anywhere. And at world-class prices, too.

In case the city's 250 art galleries aren't enough, collectors can also browse the Summer Art Festival every Saturday and Sunday from May through October in the Plaza. That's also the site of the annual Spanish Market, July 25-26, where more than 500 vendors display Spanish colonial artworks such as tinwork, weaving, retables, santos, and of the famous Indian Market, Aug. 22-23, the world's largest assembling of native American crafts.

In addition to this year's special Cuarto Centenario celebrations, Santa Fe has always been a festival town with a standing calender of events. From May through September, free public concerts and performances are given in the Plaza every Saturday night in a festival called ``El Corazon de Santa Fe,'' which means ``the heart of Santa Fe.'' Western Days in Santa Fe, including a four-day rodeo, is held in early July. The famous Santa Fe Opera, which this year is adding several new productions and 200 more seats, runs through July and August.

Some day trips to consider:

The Sanctuary of Chimayo, north of Santa Fe, is one of the country's most important chapels, famous for what is called the recuperative powers of the dirt on the chapel floor. Thousands of pilgrims walk long distances, especially around Easter, in hope of healing themselves at what is sometimes called the Lourdes of the Southwest.

Of the eight northern Indian pueblos (villages) within striking distance of Santa Fe, several of the most interesting for their picture of Indian life are Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Picuris, and San Juan Pueblos. Each has its own feast day and dances, and is open regularly. The best known is the Taos Pueblo, whose famous powwow is in mid July. Incidentally, Taos is the only pueblo that allows photography (for a fee).

Atop the Puye Cliffs, northwest of Santa Fe on Santa Clara Pueblo lands, are the ruins of an abandoned 740-room Anasazi village occupied from about 1250 to 1577. Visitors reach them by climbing a rough path and ladders up the vertical sandstone wall, past ancient dwellings built along and into the cliffs, or by driving to the top of the mesa. Open April through October.

Shidoni Gallery in Tesuque, 5 miles north of Santa Fe, is actually a foundry, where over a hundred bronze sculptures by national and international artists are displayed on two expansive lawns. It is open Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with foundry demonstrations Saturdays between 1 and 5 p.m. Telephone 505-988-8001.