GPS City GuideAlbuquerqueJonson Gallery

Stop 37 of 39 · Albuquerque audio walking tour

Jonson Gallery

University of New Mexico · 1950 · Home and modern art gallery

What you'll hear here: about a minute on Jonson Gallery — the story behind what you're looking at, playing hands-free as you arrive.

Raymond Jonson, the modernist painter, lived upstairs and kept his gallery downstairs in the Jonson Gallery, the modest Pueblo Revival building you see here, completed in 1950 on the University of New Mexico campus. Designed by John Gaw Meem, the building is relatively sparse in its styling—a main horizontal volume with a centered entrance flanked by asymmetrical windows and a lower wing projecting to the west. It sits on a hillside, one story above grade in the front and two in the back, so the upper floor once housed Jonson's residence while the gallery space occupied the lower floor.

Steel casement windows with concrete sills punctuate the facades; multiple additions were constructed at the rear over the years. During Jonson's lifetime and afterwards this gallery was a center for modern and abstract art in New Mexico and it housed a large collection of Jonson's own works. In 2009 those collections were absorbed into the University of New Mexico Art Museum and the former gallery building was converted to office space.

Notice the restrained angles of the facade, tracing the hillside up toward the lower wing that projects west.

Where it is

Coordinates
35.08694, -106.62083
Area
University of New Mexico
Era
1950 · Home and modern art gallery
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Three stops free. No account needed. The audio plays itself as you walk.