Welcome to our latest issue, one that captures the vibrant spirit of Taos — from the quiet grace of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the heartwarming bustle of Mantes Chow Cart. In these pages, you’ll find stories rooted in the land and lifted by art, music and memory.
We walk with llamas through alpine wilderness and learn from the wisdom of foragers searching for mushrooms beneath forest canopies. We visit the newly opened Aldo Leopold House, where conservation history breathes through timber and stone, and we share in the soulful reflections of Eliza Gilkyson as she sings us through today’s storms.
From stolen masterpieces finding their way home to the enduring light of painters Leffel and McGraw, Taos continues to inspire, surprise and stir us. With portraits that honor community and craftsmanship, and a fresh chapter in Taos hospitality at Hotel Willa, this issue is our love letter to the high desert and all of those who shape its story.
“It took a complete three days to recognize this and make the move which has lasted 35 years to date … Taos hit me like a ton of bricks: I knew I was home,” Paul O’Connor writes in the introduction to “Taos Portraits II: Photos by Paul O’Connor.”
This sense of belonging — immediate yet enduring — provides the foundation for a book that delves into the lives of the people who make up this singular town. Edited by Lynne Robinson and designed by Kelly Pasholk, “Taos Portraits II” presents 60 portraits, each accompanied by essays that illuminate the personal, cultural and artistic forces shaping Taos.
“Then there are the people. First and foremost, the Indigenous Tiwa people of the Taos Pueblo. Their presence, generosity, and history are the underpinnings that hold everything together,” O’Connor continues. These words underscore the centrality of the Tiwa community to the identity of Taos, where their traditions and connection to the land have shaped the town’s rhythm and spirit. O’Connor acknowledges this with a deep respect born of decades of observation and participation.
The town itself has also been shaped by those who came and never left. “Waves of people from various periods of time, coming and going and leaving behind a certain number who never leave,” he writes. It is these individuals — artists, builders, thinkers — who have captured O’Connor’s attention, those who stayed and became part of the fabric of Taos, contributing their creativity and lives to its enduring complexity.
The art of quiet exchange
In her foreword to “Taos Portraits II,” Jina Brenneman reflects on the deeply human challenge of portraiture. “A great portrait is not only a collaboration but also a negotiation between the photographer and the sitter,” she writes. “Perhaps that push and pull is what makes taking a photographic portrait so complicated and also one of the most difficult undertakings in art.”
Brenneman’s words capture the spirit of Paul O’Connor’s black-and-white images, which unfold as intimate exchanges. His photographs have a quiet gravity to them, inviting the viewer to linger, not just on the faces but on the invisible relationships behind each frame.
The book itself mirrors this intimacy. Large in format and weighty in presence, it feels deliberate, designed to demand your attention. The portraits, rendered in black and white, strip away distractions, bringing every detail — the lines of a face, the texture of clothing, the light in a subject’s eyes — into stark relief. It’s not just a book to flip through but one to sit with, to return to, as the stories unfold across its pages. The essays that accompany the images, written by friends, family members or the subjects themselves, deepen the sense of closeness. It is a book that feels both monumental and personal, a rare balance that makes it as much an artifact as an experience.
“Today, portraiture is more important than ever,” Brenneman observes. “It creates a life-affirming, human connection that is essential, in a world becoming less and less sensitive to the human condition.”
This is the quiet power of “Taos Portraits II.” The book isn’t about grand statements but about the small, profound moments of connection between people and the places they call home. Through O’Connor’s lens, we see artists, chefs, builders and weavers not as abstractions but as individuals bound by their creativity, perseverance and deep ties to the community.
O’Connor’s photographs remind us of the richness in every face, every gesture.
“Paul reminds us of the depth of the humanity, culture, care, and love that is the nature of the diverse arts community in Taos,” Brenneman writes.
The portraits are more than static records — they are openings, moments of seeing that reveal not just the subject but the dynamic, interconnected web of life in Taos. The book’s scale, its careful pacing and its refusal to rush or overwhelm embody this ethos. It’s an object that asks to be engaged with deeply — echoing the exchanges it captures.
Stories from the community
The essays in “Taos Portraits II” provide intimate narrativesof the individuals who make up the artistic and cultural heart of Taos. Written by collaborators, friends and family, these reflections highlight the resilience, creativity and deep sense of purpose that define their lives.
Editor Lynne Robinson, who is also editor of Taos News’ Tempo magazine,ensured these pieces retained the authentic voices of their writers, many of whom were not professional authors.
“They were not bound to rote academia in regard to copy edits,” Robinson notes, emphasizing the importance of preserving the individuality and rawness of each perspective. This commitment allows the essays to mirror the diversity and authenticity of the Taos community.
Johnny Ortiz, a chef and forager, lives and works in harmony with the land, blending tradition with innovation. Andrea Rosen describes him as someone whose strength is matched only by his kindness.
“As sweet as Johnny is, he is tough! I could never be strong enough to tie a dead chicken around my dog’s neck for two days,” she writes, illustrating Ortiz’s unflinching respect for the cycles of life. Whether raising Navajo-Churro sheep, foraging wild mushrooms or cooking over open flames, Ortiz’s work is a reflection of his commitment to renewal and connection, where sustenance becomes art.
Artist and artist’s model Lyle Wright approaches his work with a profound connection to his Pueblo heritage and a keen sense of his role within it.
“I ask Lyle what he thinks about when he’s posing,” Kelly Pasholk writes. “He tells me he thinks about the future, about the legacy his generation will leave, about the generations before.” As a silversmith, Wright draws inspiration from ceremonial life and the teachings of elders, creating art that honors the depth of his cultural roots. His work bridges the historical and the contemporary, balancing the preservation of tradition with the reinvention of identity, carving out a space that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
For Patricia Michaels, a fashion designer and artist, creation is an act of cultural preservation and forward thinking, her work rooted in both tradition and innovation.
Her daughter, Margeaux Abeyta, reflects on her mother’s approach: “Fashion is forever forward thinking, and now more than ever the roles are changing.” Michaels’ designs draw inspiration from her Pueblo heritage, translating the textures and patterns of her culture into a contemporary framework. “It is a life of balance, to preserve one’s past while progressing within a larger world of relevance,” Abeyta writes, emphasizing her mother’s ability to weave sustainability and storytelling into her work, ensuring tradition evolves while its origins are never forgotten.
J. Matthew Thomas, as Erin Elder writes, is an artist, architect, curator and the founder of The Paseo Project and the PASEO, a festival that transforms Taos into a hub of interactive art and community engagement. He also co-founded Pecha Kucha in Taos, creating a platform for local artists and thinkers to share ideas and stories. Alongside his community-building work, Thomas’s artistic practice draws from his upbringing and family traditions.
“I’m working with a pile of dress patterns from my mom,” he explains, describing his use of waxed, folded and sewn-over paper. “I think of this as queering the tools of my ancestors.” From quilted 2-D artworks to performances with inflatable cinder blocks, Thomas’ work merges the practical and conceptual, fostering spaces where creativity and community intersect.
A living portrait
“Taos Portraits II” is a celebration of the people who define Taos. Through O’Connor’s lens and the deeply personal essays, the book reveals a community bound by tradition, creativity, and resilience. The Tiwa people, whose connection to the land is woven into the town’s identity, the artists who honor heritage while forging their own paths, and the individuals who choose to stay and contribute — all are part of this living portrait.
The black-and-white images are timeless yet immediate, capturing quiet moments of humanity and connection. The essays enrich these portraits, reminding us that every face carries a story — of perseverance, history and belonging. This is not just a book to look at but one to experience, asking us to pause and truly see the people who shape this extraordinary place. Through these portraits and stories, Taos emerges not just as a place but as a shared, living expression of art and humanity.
In a world often focused on the fleeting, “Taos Portraits II” lingers, offering a powerful reminder of the beauty and strength found in community. It is a reflection of what it means to belong — to a land, to a culture and to each other.
To encounter a painting by David A. Leffel or Sherrie McGraw is to be drawn into a stillness so precise it feels charged. Light blooms in shadow. Edges soften into air. Figures and objects emerge gradually, as if shaped by the light itself. The longer one looks, the more the structure of the painting comes into focus, not through sharp detail, but through balance, rhythm and intention. There is no decoration, no distraction. Every element serves the whole. The result is an image that holds the viewer fully, quietly and without hesitation.
Leffel has said he seeks to understand the process of painting the way a theoretical physicist seeks to understand the universe. What looks like a figure or a bowl of lemons is, in his terms, “quarks and electrons, waves and particles.” Step too close and the illusion dissolves into gesture. Step back and solidity returns, not as fact but as phenomenon. He’s painting, in his words, not people or fruit, but motion.
Leffel himself calls this process of trying to comprehend nature through painting “intelligence.” It is not a metaphor. It is his philosophy.
Born in Brooklyn in 1931, Leffel spent 11 years of his childhood confined to hospitals with a bone disease. He used that time to draw — not idly, but with intensity. It shaped everything that followed. He later studied at Parsons and Fordham, then at the Art Students League of New York with Frank Mason, where he would return to teach for 25 years. In Studio 7, under the cool north light once used by Edwin Dickinson and Frank Vincent DuMond, Leffel resurrected an endangered lineage of painting.
“David has single-handedly brought the knowledge of the old masters to the forefront of the art world today,” says his partner, painter Sherrie McGraw. “Because he studied Rembrandt, and understood him.” Indeed, Leffel is not only recognized by his peers as a painters’ painter; he is considered by many to be no less than the artistic reincarnation of Rembrandt.
But where Rembrandt’s time teemed with guilds and apprenticeships, Leffel found himself painting in a world increasingly uninterested in technique or tradition. That didn’t deter him.
“The more you invest in anything, the more you get out of it,” he says. “It takes tremendous energy and commitment.” He pursued painting not just as craft, but as a way of perceiving. “Painting is like an interlocking set of relationships: color, edges, values, thick and thin, etc. Life is the same. Everything is interrelated. All of life is like one big, interlocking relationship. Everything you do has a consequence to everything else.”
McGraw met Leffel as a student at the League, after years of searching for something deeper than the high-key Impressionist approach she’d been taught. She had known, even as a child in Oklahoma, she would become a fine artist and had already resolved not to marry or have children, determined instead to follow her own path. Her drawing practice, now recognized as among the finest of her generation, brought new awareness to the medium at a time when few were paying attention to it. Her book, “The Language of Drawing,” is now considered an essential resource for serious draftsmen.
Though McGraw and Leffel made their mark in New York, they moved to Taos in 1992, drawn by the light, the dry air and the mountains. From their studios here, they continue to work and teach, sharing decades of insight through Bright Light Fine Art. Their influence reaches far beyond the canvas: not only in how to paint, but how to see, how to think.
A collector once told Leffel, “I thought your paintings were about quiet.” Leffel replied, “They’re about light and shadow.”
In truth, they’re about both and something more. They are about a way of being in the world, attuned to the deep intelligence of form, and the still, flickering grace of things as they truly are.
Bright Light Fine Art offers online fine art drawing and painting classes for all levels with Leffel, McGraw and landscape painter Jackie Kamin.
FBI recovers two Taos treasures missing for 40 years
By Geoffrey Plant
An exhibit at the Harwood displays missing pieces, Aspens by Victor Higgins, left, and Oklahoma Cheyenne by Joseph Henry Sharp, which were recently recovered and are currently being held by the FBI, as seen Friday (March 28). DANIEL PEARSON/Taos News
Forty years ago, art thieves targeted the Harwood Foundation, an unassuming public library on LeDoux Street with a small exhibition gallery upstairs. A woman distracted the librarian while a mustachioed man removed Victor Higgins’ “Aspens” and Joseph Henry Sharp’s “Indian Boy in Full Dress” and left with them under a long coat.
Thanksgiving that same year, a man and woman used a similar M.O. to lift Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre” from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson.
The bizarre 2017 tale surrounding the return of de Kooning’s masterpiece led investigators to the missing works by two members of the Taos Society of Artists.
All three paintings were secreted away for decades in the remote community of Cliff, New Mexico, where they hung inside an innocuous-seeming married couple’s home until 2017. Jerry Alter died in 2012. Rita Alter passed away in 2017. That summer, their nephew cleared out their home.
He engaged a Silver City estate sale company to collect the bulk of the home’s contents, donating other items to a tiny Silver City thrift shop. Removed from the back of the Alter’s bedroom door, the de Kooning went to the estate company’s resale shop, where customers soon identified it as “Woman-Ochre.” News spread like wildfire across the art world that the stolen 1955 work of abstract expressionism, now valued at $160 million, had been found.
After some twists and turns, and a lengthy restoration process, it was returned to the University of Arizona last year.
Initial speculation that the Alters stole from the art museums strictly to keep the works for themselves morphed into theories by amateur investigators that the couple were professional art thieves. They traveled internationally and domestically several times each year, living beyond their means.
A photo shown in the 2022 documentary film “The Thief Collector” shows both Taos Society of Artists paintings on a cozy-looking wall beneath which Jerry Alter is seated playing a clarinet while reading sheet music.
The Higgins and Sharp paintings were among the items donated to the humble Town and Country Garden Club Thrift Store. The nonprofit behind the store ultimately sold the works through the Scottsdale Art Auction in 2018 for $93,600 and $52,650, respectfully. The shop closed in 2021.
In 2024, true crime writer Lou Schachter did some sleuthing to uncover the stolen Taos paintings, writing in a series of articles published by Medium, “In the movie, a garden club volunteer describes the auctioned works and mentions their artists: Joseph Henry Sharp, Victor Higgins, and R.C. Gorman.”
Schachter found a 1985 Taos News story on the Harwood thefts, traced the paintings to the Scottsdale auction and notified the Harwood. In April 2024, the Harwood asked the FBI to track down the paintings, which were found by December.
Juniper Leherissey, executive director at the Harwood Museum of Art, said, “We’re hopeful they will be returned between now and September. We anticipate getting them back.”
Two empty frames representing the stolen works are on display with “Return of Taos Treasures,” an exhibition featuring Joseph Henry Sharp and Victor Higgins’ works from the Harwood’s collection on display until Sept. 7.
The Harwood Museum of Art’s permanent collection includes over 6,500 works of art, including pieces by Sharp, Higgins and the Taos Society of Artists, established July 19, 1915 by Sharp and five other artists and later joined by Higgins, who was also on the founding board of the Harwood Foundation.
If you’ve taken to heart the cliche that “travel is broadening,” if you long to return home with more than tacky postcards and forgettable souvenirs, if you’re looking for opportunities to learn a new skill or improve an existing one, Northern New Mexico offers a bounty of opportunities to give your travel experience real roots.
Taos has long been a magnet for talent, and visitors have so many options for expanding their minds and creative spirits. Taos’ website lists myriad workshops for painting, photography, cooking and baking, papermaking, fiber arts, pottery, stone carving, dance, yoga, meditation, folk and herbal medicine, and more.
taos.org/explore/arts-culture/workshops
Alumni and guests attend the Taos Cultural Institute class Bringing Life to Art: The History and Legacy of Taos Artists and Their Work taught by Nicholas Myers and Jade Gutierrez on the SMU-in-Taos Campus, July 19, 2024
Taos Art School is a college-accredited institution that has been offering classes for over 30 years in Northern New Mexico. Participants come from all over the world for a week or more to study pottery, weaving, painting, drawing, photography and equine art. Students also learn about local history and culture in a campus-free setting. Discounts offered to locals.
taosartschool.org | 575-758-0350
Taos Ceramics Center offers a variety of eight-week classes, from hand-building and sculpture to wheel throwing, for adults and children all summer long. For those traveling for a short spell, Taos Ceramics Center can also accommodate pre-arranged private and small group lessons for those who would like to experience a ceramics class and create a keepsake from their visit to Taos.
taosceramics.com | 575-758-2580
Victoriano Cárdenas, a trans poet and native of Taos, is among several writers headlining SOMOS’ Taos Writers Showcase during LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in June.
Society of the Muse of the Southwest (SOMOS) holds writing workshops and readings all summer. Their Taos Summer Writers’ Conference (July 25– 27) offers three days of workshops in memoir, poetry, prose fiction and nonfiction, playwriting, and publishing. Keynote speaker Nick Flynn (writer, playwright, poet) has published 12 books and five collections of poetry, His memoir, “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,” was made into a film starring Robert DeNiro and has been translated into 15 languages. The annual Taos Storytelling Festival takes place every October.
somostaos.org | 575-758-0081
Earthships, invented by Taos architect Michael Reynolds, are off-grid homes built from recycled materials like earth-rammed tires, cans, and bottles. See what the architecture is about in a self-guided, guided or private tour at the Visitor Center, 2 Earthship Way, Tres Piedras (1.5 miles northwest of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge). You can also gain the skills needed to build your own through intensive four-week building sessions, online programs and more.
earthship.org | 575-613-4409
SMU-in-Taos Cultural Institute offers in-depth courses for adults on a wide-range of topics: jewelry making, fly fishing, cooking, literature, history, painting and politics. The challenge will be selecting which two one-day classes to take during the event held July 17–20.
Ghost Ranch, an education and retreat center 12 miles north of Abiquiu and the former home of famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe, offers workshops on a broad array of subjects: religion, art, folk arts, drama, music, health and wellness, and more. Visitor are also welcome to explore the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology and the Florence Hawley Ellis Museum of Anthropology, in addition to the Ghost Ranch Library.
What’s the greatest invention from the 20th century? Personal computers, cellphone, digital cameras, GPS, and Google might spring to mind, but for some of us, few innovations beat the joys of buckled ski boots and step-in bindings.
Skiing has come a long way from soggy, double-laced leather boots and bear-trap ski bindings. Before Hannes Marker pioneered releasable bindings, spectacular injuries were not uncommon — or as Bob Hoye said in the story “Skiing for 70 years,” “I knew a guy who suffered a spiral tib, fib and femur. All on one leg and in one crash.”
Skiing gear has definitely evolved, and while no one can control the risks a skier might take, at least the equipment makes the sport safer.
The same goes for skier transport. Remember rope tows? Poma lifts? T-bars? The first chairlift, designed by Union Pacific engineer Jim Curran for the 1936 opening of Idaho’s Sun Valley, must have seemed like a godsend for skiing — and it was.
Take the following excerpt from Taos Ski Valley’s history, “In 1957 a Poma [platter] lift went up Al’s Run [one of the steepest ski runs going]. … The lift pulled passengers along the ground at twice the speed of a modern lift. … Small people were lifted completely off the ground in certain spots and hung spinning in the air.”
Today’s skiers are treated to faster, more comfortable chairlifts and high speed detachable quad (four-person) chairlifts that eliminate long lines and “chair bang” — that bruise on the back of your legs you get from being hit hard from behind by a fast-moving chair.
And grooming? A few die-hards may long for the days when skiing required skill to navigate through icy ruts, giant moguls and huge holes, or sitzmarks, left behind by less skilled skiers. Maybe a few miss seeing numerous bamboo poles with flags dotting the slopes, a warning to skiers bare spots are ahead.
The rest of us are grateful for mountainwide snowmaking and grooming machines that leave a fluffy “corduroy surface” — perfect for cruising.
Ask any old timer, they’ll tell you: Skiing just keeps getting better and better!
Museums showcase unique works this winter and spring
Staff report
Every museum in Taos is a showcase, every day. Visitors have only to decide how to plan their days. Several of these curators of Northern New Mexico arts and culture also frequently plan special exhibitions showcasing unique perspectives. Some will be gone soon. Plan accordingly.
“The Story of Us”
The Art of Richard Alan Nichols: A Thirty-Year Retrospective
Where: Taos Art Museum at Fechin House
Last day: December 29, 2024
While studying at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Richard Alan Nichols learned about the Taos Society of Artists, which led him to his first visit to Taos in 1990. He was led to paint the sights of the area, and in 1994, he and his wife Deb relocated to Taos. With “The Story of Us,” Nichols is allowing himself to reflect on his life’s work and the impact it has had. “I chose paintings that all represent something special — that reflected my painting life, my emotional life — they all have a story.”
“Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected”
Luchita Hurtado’s 1971 Encounter DANIEL PEARSON
Where: Harwood Museum of Art
Last day: Feb 23, 2025
When Los Angeles-based artist and former part-time Taos resident Luchita Hurtado died in 2020 at the age of 99, few were aware of the remarkable life she lived as an artist and environmental activist. Born in Venezuela in 1920, Hurtado attended classes at the Art Students League New York, then lived in Mexico City, the San Francisco Bay area, and Santa Monica. During the 1970s, Hurtado began spending a significant amount of time in Taos, where she and her third husband, fellow artist Lee Mullican, built their second home.
Hurtado’s work continued to evolve throughout the 1960s and ’70s, leading to contemplative self-portraits known as her “I Am” paintings. This series was followed by a group of surrealist “Body Landscapes” — the human figure assumes the form of mountains and desert sand dunes — and her late-1970s “Sky Skin” series — feathers weightlessly float in bright blue skies. Works from this period were informed by Hurtado’s feminist ideals and involvement with the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists, which hosted Hurtado’s first solo exhibition in 1974.
Up to the last days of her life, Hurtado continued to make work that pushed the boundaries of her practice through numerous drawings and paintings related to nature.
“Channeling Luchita: A Community Response to the Life and Work of Luchita Hurtado”
Where: Millicent Rogers Museum
Last day: Feb 2, 2025
Millicent Rogers Museum (MRM), with the Taos Abstract Artist Collective (TAAC) is displaying “Channeling Luchita: A Community Response to the Life and Work of Luchita Hurtado,” a collaborative exhibition and curatorial response. Curated by Claire Motsinger, Deborah McLean, and TAAC artists Bob Parker and Jill Kamas, this exhibition presents 10 New Mexico artists whose styles and conceptual practices respond to the themes conjured in Hurtado’s artistic body of work: Audra Elizabeth Knutson, Dean Pulver, Josh Tafoya, Lynnette Haozous, Margaret R. Thompson, Maye Torres, Olive Tyrrell, Rick Romancito and Tse Tsan.
“Querencia” by Tse Tsan
MRM’s other winter and spring exhibitions:
28th Annual Miniatures Show & Sale, Feb. 8–March 9, 2025. This popular annual event includes hundreds of works, paintings, prints, sculpture, jewelry and more from Taos, Rio Arriba and Colfax counties.
Taos Pueblo Winter Arts Show, March 15–16 (date subject to change). Free admission to view and buy works by dozens of Taos Pueblo artists. Performances and Pueblo-made food help make this annual event even more wonderful.
National Pastels Society Show & Sale, March 22–June 1, 2025. This juried exhibit showcases award-winning pastel works from some of the country’s finest pastel artists.
“Forsaken Objects and Untold Stories”
Photographs by Zoë Zimmerman
Zoë Zimmerman
Where: Taos Art Museum at Fechin House
Last day: March 30, 2025
A little over two years ago, Christy Coleman, executive director at the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House, noticed a box of dust-covered, interesting looking bottles in the basement of the Fechin House. Her discovery culminated in the unique exhibit “Forsaken Objects and Untold Stories” a 42-photographic exhibit of personal items once owned and used by Nicolai Fechin and his wife Alexandra, and photographed by artist Zoë Zimmerman.
“I showed Zoë everything in the basement and I could immediately tell that, like me, she saw something special in the remnants from the Fechins’ lives,” Coleman said.
The boxes were packed with leftovers from the Fechins’ personal lives — discarded tube of Nicolai Fechin’s signature cobalt blue paint and Alexandra Fechin’s bottles of facial cleansers and hand cream.
Zoë Zimmerman
“Initially it was exciting, like finding something in someone’s attic,” Zimmerman said. “I really thought … it would be good for me to try and take pictures that were just about composition and color and light … I can’t do anything visual unless there is an emotional backstory and I had to make emotional sense of it.”
Coleman matched Fechin’s portraits and Zimmerman’s photographs — a portrait of Alexandra with a photograph of her lipstick — and the rare, respectful and emotion-provoking exhibit is on display throughout both floors of the Fechin House.
“Nicholas Herrera: El Rito Santero”
Nicholas Herrera
Where: Harwood Museum of Art
Last day: June 1, 2025
Nicholas Herrera, known as the saint maker of El Rito, has carved out a life that straddles the sacred and the profane.
“I’ve been a santero since when I was a young kid,” Herrera told Laura Martin Baseman during a “Voices of Taos” podcast interview. “One of my great uncles was Santero de la Muerte [José Inéz Herrera].”
Herrera said he was inspired when he saw photos of his uncle’s works at the Denver Art Museum. “Right away, I was like: Man, now I know why I’d like to carve. I think it’s in my blood. Yeah. And so I started carving. … I learned mostly on my own. I cut my fingers a lot, but … I was always carving.”
Rebellious and reckless, Herrera’s life seemed destined for destruction. All that changed in 1990: At the age of 26, a serious car accident left Herrera in a coma, teetering on the edge of life and death. He experienced a vision of a death figure, a carved specter created by his great-uncle José Inés Herrera, standing at the end of a tunnel of light. When he awoke, the transformation began. Herrera felt compelled to leave behind the chaos of his past and dedicate himself to his craft.
Nicholas Herrera
As a modern santero, Herrera creates bultos (carved wooden figures), retablos (painted wooden panels), and large-scale mixed media works, each one a chapter in the rich, and often challenging, narrative of his life.
“Charles Ross: Mansions of the Zodiac”
Where: Taos Art Museum at Fechin House
March 15–Sept. 7, 2025
“Charles Ross: Mansions of the Zodiac” is a planned exhibition of Ross’s artwork, inspired by sunlight, starlight, time, and planetary motion. Ross emerged in the 1960s and is considered one of the preeminent figures of land art. This exhibition is opening as Ross nears the completion of his earth/sky work,” Star Axis,” a monumental architectonic sculpture, and naked eye observatory located on the eastern plains of New Mexico. It will give us a glance at his art and art making in New Mexico, a place that is elemental to his life and work.
“Luchita Hurtado: Earth & Sky Interjected” DANIEL PEARSON
Taos Historic Museums
Harwood Museum of Art
Harwood Museum is considered the second-oldest art museum in the state and houses an impressive array of Spanish Colonial and Hispanic relics as well as works from the many waves of artists who have found their muse in the Taos Valley.
238 Ledoux St, Taos | 575-758-9826
harwoodmuseum.org
E.L Blumenschein Home & Museum
Next door, the E.L Blumenschein Home & Museum is a living museum and shrine to Ernest and Mary Blumenschein’s legacy.
222 Ledoux St, Taos | 575-758-0505
taoshistoricmuseums.org
Richard Alan Nichols
Hacienda de los Martinez, a living museum on the outskirts of town, is a Spanish Colonial-style fortress-like home (now on the National Register of Historic Places) that became an important center of commerce for traders.
Hacienda de los Martinez
708 Hacienda Road, Taos | 575-758-1000
taoshistoricmuseums.org
Kit Carson House & Museum
Kit Carson House near the plaza is a prime example of vernacular New Mexico adobe architecture that gives us a better understanding of how people lived in the 19th century. Restoration, at an estimated cost of $3 million, will stabilize and rehabilitate this 200-year-old historic adobe structure.
113 Kit Carson Road, Taos | 575-758-4945
kitcarsonhouse.org
Couse-Sharp Historic Site
Couse-Sharp Historic Site features the former homes and studios of E. I. Couse and J. H. Sharp, two of the American-born, European-trained artists who formed the Taos Society of Artists in 1915.
146 Kit Carson Road, Taos | 575-751-0369
couse-sharp.org
Governor Bent House & Museum
Governor Charles Bent House & Museum, across from the John Dunn Shops, provides a small glimpse into a violent chapter in Taos’ history.
Zoë Zimmerman
117A Bent St Taos
taos.org/places/governor-bents-house-and-museum
Taos Art Museum at Fechin House
The Fechin House that now houses Taos Art Museum was once home to the Russian artist Nicolai Fechin. Today, the beautifully restored adobe building is a museum dedicated to Fechin’s life and work. The museum’s collection includes Fechin’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures, as well as works by other Taos artists.
227 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos | 575-758-2690
taosartmuseum.org
Nicholas Herrera
Millicent Rogers Museum
Millicent Rogers Museum houses an impressive and priceless collection of Native American art and jewelry, Hispanic textiles, and Spanish colonial art.
1504 Millicent Rogers Road, El Prado | 575-758-2462
The multicultural, contemporary Taos we know today dates back to August 29, 1540 when Capitan Hernando Alvarado arrived in the Taos Valley for the first time. Today, three cultures exist side by side, and Taos’ history is dotted with so many illustrious names.
Here are a few highlights:
Ernie Blake
Ernie Blake
Taos Ski Valley Inc.’s founder was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1987 and the New Mexico Ski Hall of Fame in 2003. The Blake family left Nazi Germany in 1938, but Ernie later returned to Germany to help in the Allied war effort working for both British Intelligence and in Gen. Patton’s Third Army. Later, it was while flying between the ski areas he ran in Santa Fe and Glenwood Springs, Colorado, that Ernie first spotted the snow-covered slopes that led to TSV’s founding in 1956. Ernie, 75, died in 1989 of pneumonia.
John Nichols
John Nichols
John Nichols had already tasted fame before coming to Taos in 1969. His novel, “The Sterile Cuckoo” (1965), was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Liza Minnelli in 1969. His seminal novel, “The Milagro Beanfield War,” was written here, and in a sense, it remains the quintessential Northern New Mexican novel (albeit by a gringo.) He wrote the New Mexico Trilogy — “The Milagro Beanfield War” (1974), “The Magic Journey” (1978), and “The Nirvana Blues” (1981) — as well as numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction. Nichols died in 2023.
Padre Antonio José Martínez
Padre Martínez
Padre Antonio José Martínez — Jan. 16, 1793–July 27, 1867 — was the very famous pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish for over 30 years and was a pivotal political, spiritual and cultural influence during the transition of power from Mexican to U.S. governance in the mid-1800s. As a result of his activism, he was famously excommunicated by Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy.
Kit Carson
Kit Carson
Whatever one feels about his legacy, Christopher “Kit” Carson left his mark in Northern New Mexico: The Kit Carson Home & Museum is an intriguing stop on any history aficionado’s tour in Taos, and Kit Carson Park is named for the famed explorer, scout, trapper, Indian agent, rancher, and soldier. He traversed and scouted the Santa Fe Trail, fought Confederate troops in New Mexico during the Civil War and battled to secure California for his country in the Mexican-American War. But Carson’s role in rounding up the Navajo in the 1860s — which led to their forced “Long Walk” — damaged his legacy as a “frontier hero.”
Marcelino Baca
Marcelino Baca
Baca was a Taos native and a fur trader who helped establish the Southwest fur trade. Taos’ establishment as a major trade center put the town on the map long before the arts did. Baca settled down with his family in 1854 in what is now Red River; then it was Río Colorado. He died in the Civil War as one of the New Mexico Volunteers in a battle with invading Texans on Feb. 21, 1862.
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
When Dennis Hopper passed away in May 2010, just a couple of weeks after his 74th birthday, American pop culture lost one of its greatest iconoclastic figureheads, and Taos lost one of its most colorful residents. Over the years, Hopper’s life and times became entwined with Taos. It is where he shot portions of his phenomenally successful hippie-biker film “Easy Rider” and lived on and off ever since. Hopper bought the Mabel Dodge Luhan house and dubbed it “The Mud Palace,” threw some star-studded parties and was buried in nearby Talpa after he died.
Gary Johnson
Gary Johnson
The erstwhile Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico governor has a home only a short drive from Taos Ski Valley. It makes sense. He is an avid skier, cyclist and all-around athlete.
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
The late Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush lived in Taos part-time and had been spotted with his grandkids at a July 4 parade. Demonstrations erupted at his property during the Iraq War, but he remained unruffled. He told Gentleman’s Quarterly in 2007, “I have nothing to apologize for.” On June 29, 2021, Rumsfeld died at his home in Taos.
Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell
The late actor and artist appeared in about 100 films since 1945 and acted on the small screen even more often, including the 1990’s hit “Quantum Leap.” Unlike many of the celebs Hopper lured here, Stockwell stayed. An accomplished artist, he created “surreal, digitally enhanced collages” and brightly colored dice sculptures. In 2021 he died of natural causes in New Zealand, where his daughter lived.
R.C. Gorman
R.C. Gorman
The New York Times called him “the Picasso of American Indian artists.” From the late 1960s to his death in 2005, Rudolph Carl Gorman lived in his compound visible from State Road 522 and exhibited his richly colored images of over-sized, impressionistic Native women.
Larry Bell
Larry Bell
A resident of Taos since 1973, Bell is probably best-known for his 3D glass cubes. He told Trend magazine in 2014: “I’m a party guy,” Bell says, with a boyish grin. “… In Taos, there is much less temptation.” His work graces the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and just about every major museum throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
The British author of “Brave New World” reportedly wrote his collection of essays “Means and Ends” in 1937 while staying at the homestead that is now the Taos Goji Farm & Eco-Lodge. The lore: Huxley once ran into the outhouse in fear of a dog. The philosopher and futurist was trapped in there for three hours.
Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron
Julia CameronNatalie Goldberg
To those who have tried to tap into their inner writer or artist, these women are household names and former Taos residents. They both have since emigrated to Santa Fe. Between them, they wrote dozens of books. “Writing Down the Bones” and “The Artist’s Way,” respectively, are their most popular works.
Mike Reynolds
Mike Reynolds
The documentary on this man’s life is called “The Garbage Warrior” and, indeed, his Earthship community northwest of town is a monument to the idea that one can live off-grid and use recycled materials to build comfortable, self-sustaining, attractive, artistic, and downright cozy homes.
Agnes Martin
Agnes Martin
Martin first came to New Mexico when she was a young woman. Some of her large, minimalist paintings hang in the Harwood Museum here. The world-renowned artist moved to New Mexico in 1967, and in the end, came back to Taos in 1993 and lived here until her death in 2004.
Dave Hahn
Dave Hahn
You could say he’s a Taos Ski Valley patroller, and that would be correct. But it would sort of miss the point. The man has scaled Mount Everest 15 times. He even guided former Gov. Gary Johnson to the summit of Everest and Mt. Vinson in Antarctica
Andrew Dasburg
Andrew Dasburg
An American modernist painter and “one of America’s leading early exponents of cubism,” Andrew Dasburg will forever be recognized in 20th century American art history as one who heroically carried on the battle for modernism, primarily in New York in the early years of the 20th century. He will also be remembered as an artist of great versatility who brought new interpretations to the New Mexico landscape that are distinctive and lasting. He died in Taos at age 92 in 1979.
Robert Mirabal
Robert Mirabal
The locals think of Mirabal as a farmer, flute maker, a good dad — and, oh yes, a Grammy Award-winning musician who played Carnegie Hall last year. Taos Pueblo-born, Mirabal won the 2008 Native American Album of the Year. He plays locally quite often, and if you are lucky, you might catch one of these remarkable performances.
Mabel Dodge Luhan
Mabel Dodge Luhan
Arts patron, salon hostess, writer and prominent Taoseña, Mabel Dodge Luhan is celebrated for her role in building artistic communities, supporting artists and generating interest in modern art forms. After building a four-room adobe, which eventually had 17 rooms, she entertained painters, sculptors and photographers John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ansel Adams and Laura Gilpin; dance choreographer Martha Graham; anthropologists John Collier and Elsie Clews Parsons; and writers Willa Cather, Aldous Huxley, and D. H. Lawrence. She is buried in Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery.
Millicent Rogers
Millicent Rogers
Heiress, socialite, fashion icon, jewelry designer, and art collector, Rogers designed modern jewelry pieces that she eventually had made (or made herself at her own bench). She was very passionate about both the Hispanic and Native American communities in New Mexico and played a quiet but instrumental role in securing Blue Lake for Taos Pueblo. Her Taos legacy remains in the museum that bears her name.
Dorothy Brett
Dorothy Brett
In 1924, Brett moved to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch near Taos with Lawrence and his wife Frieda. She settled permanently in Taos and became a U.S. citizen in 1938. In the 100 years since her arrival, her images have become iconic representations of the people and landscape of Taos.
Four Renowned Taos chefs share their personal faves
By Ellen Miller-Goins
Inspired by the late, great “bad-boy chef ” Anthony Bourdain, who trav-eled the world in search of “culinary hotspots and out-of-the-way gems” we asked some of Taos’ esteemed chefs to share their favorite spots to dine in Northern New Mexico.
Find Stunning art, history, colorful characters and more
By Ellen Miller-Goins
Why head for the nearest museum? These treasure troves off er an educational experience that goes beyond textbooks. Some visitors hope to learn about the past, while others are curious about the community they are visit ing. Some just make a point to enjoy unique art and culture. Whatever your reasons, Northern New Mexico offers myriad opportunities.
News Davison Koenig, executive director and curator at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site, stands in newly opened Dean Porter Gallery inside the Lunder Research Center on Wednesday (February 16). (Nathan Burton/Taos )
