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Diverse contemporary works find a welcome home in the second-largest art market in the nation
MANY a roadside sign boasts of a locale’s special quality: the best river walk in the country, the most scenic village in the Berkshires. So if those unfamiliar with the abundance of art in Santa Fe heard that it is the second-largest art market in the U.S. (after New York), they might dismiss the description as the hyperbole of local boosters. They would be wrong.
There isn’t just a lot of art in Santa Fe; there is important art. Who would think a trove of museum-quality, 20th century Abstract Expressionist paintings would be displayed behind the adobe facade of a former supermarket? Such discoveries were the reward for leaving my patio, home of the most bountiful bougainvillea in Santa Monica, to spend a three-day weekend in July tracking the art scene in New Mexico’s capital, a city that has been a cultural center for more than a century.
Santa Fe, with nary a cow's skull in sight
September 6, 2006 By
Santa Fe's Railyard revival
May 25, 2006 By
Sunset Magazine showcases the new Santa Fe Railyard district
Shabby bohemian chic has never been Santa
Fe’s style. Sure, its most distinctive city buildings are made of mud,
but its arts scene and civic soul have long had a lustrous, upscale
classicism. Which makes what’s happening in this industrial, 50-acre
lot — once used as a switching ground for trains — so unexpected. Drawn
by lofty warehouses and a sense of artistic ferment, some of Santa Fe’s
trendiest galleries are relocating to the Railyard District with
restaurants and boutiques in tow, giving this area the vitality of a
tiny Santa Monica. It may be only half a mile from the historic Plaza,
but the old railyard feels as if it exists in a different century. This
one.