Nearly 30,000 objects, the largest collection of fine art in New Mexico, live inside the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the campus institution in Albuquerque you have come to. Step closer in your mind to a place that opened in 1963 and, in its early years, staged important exhibitions of Georgia O'Keeffe, Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt, Cady Wells, Andrew Dasburg, John Marin and other Modernists. You can imagine the curatorship that Van Deren Coke began here; Robert O. Parks followed as another early director, helping shape a museum that gathers paintings, photographs, prints and more.
The museum's stories even touch Georgia O'Keeffe: she had included this university in her will of 1979, but a codicil signed in 1984 removed that inclusion, and an agreement in 1986 between the State of New Mexico and Juan Hamilton resolved estate questions, with the state agreeing to drop a challenge in exchange for several O'Keeffe paintings. Today the museum's shelves and galleries hold nearly 30,000 objects and dedicated collections of photographs and prints. Let the museum's galleries and the wider University of New Mexico campus hold your attention next.