ABOUT

The University Art Museum’s mission is to serve as an academic environment for the critical analysis of visual art while making culturally relevant and conceptual practice accessible to the University and surrounding regional and border communities. The UAM actively acquires and stewards a permanent collection of contemporary visual art, houses the country’s largest collection of Mexican retablos, and facilitates educational programming to align with the teaching missions of both the Department of Art and New Mexico State University. The UAM’s overarching purpose is to provide enriching and informative experiences through participatory engagements with artists and contemporary and historical visual art. To accomplish these goals for our under-served area, we involve the full regional community in our educational programming, which range from exhibitions, performances and lectures, to catalogs and scholarly publications. We actively work to establish the importance and significance of the visual arts relative to the diverse human values present in our broader community.

OUR FOCUS

Our focus includes the alignment of our exhibitions and programming with the contemporary and interdisciplinary teaching missions of the NMSU Department of Art faculty, graduates students, and undergraduates and the whole of New Mexico State University. We curate original exhibitions and steward over 4,200 works in the university’s permanent collection. The UAM provides curatorial and exhibition management experiences for graduate and undergraduate students. In addition to an ambitious exhibitions program, the University Art Museum events include public lectures, gallery talks, workshops, films, outreach activities, videos and symposia. Occasional publications enhance the exhibitions and permanent collection. Tours for NMSU classes, public, private and parochial schools and community groups are available upon request; reservations are required.

COLLECTIONS

Our collection includes the country’s largest collection of Mexican retablos (devotional paintings on tin) as well as contemporary and modern photographs, paintings, prints and graphics, book art, and small-scale sculpture and metals.