The Roswell Museum Federal Art Center

Exhibitions


The exhibition schedule included traveling shows assembled by the Federal Art Project (FAP), and locally-organized installations. Shows rotated quickly, with the main gallery usually featuring at least two FAP-organized exhibitions per month. Exhibitions were often combined, allowing visitors to see different types of work at once.  FAP shows often traveled by train, and art centers adhered to a specific schedule to ensure that they reached their destinations on time.


Paperwork accompanied every exhibition, which included checklists, shipping receipts, and schedules. Although the federal government usually paid for the shipping, individual art centers were responsible for making sure that each exhibition was shipped to its next destination on time. 


The exhibitions included an eclectic range of materials, from contemporary artwork produced by FAP workshops, to historical lithographs and photographic reproductions. While some of these shows featured historical materials from the Library of Congress or Tulane University, most of these traveling exhibitions highlighted contemporary work from the Federal Art Project. California and New York appear in the schedule several times, although FAP works from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Louisiana were also exhibited at least once. The Index of American Design was exhibited several times between 1938 and 1942, and children's art was also shown on several occasions, reflecting the FAP's interest in sharing and promoting its art education initiatives. In 1930s Roswell, a museum visitor could view contemporary lithographs produced in New York, antiques from local collectors, and more. During the summer months of 1938 alone, the Roswell Museum hosted exhibitions about contemporary California mosaics, Currier and Ives prints, and oil and watercolor paintings.


Of the traveling exhibitions, paintings constituted a third of the materials, followed by prints and drawings, textiles, and sculpture. In keeping with the didactic charater of the FAP, several of the exhivitions explained how the works of art on view were made, with examples including The Making of a Mosaic, or How a Print is Made. Most of the traveling shows were group installations featuring three or more artists, but there were also several solo shows, including work from women artists such as Ruth Reeves and Erica Karawina. What remains to be seen is whether the FAP artists exhibited were predominantly white, or whether artists of other ethnicities were also exhibited. 

 
The Roswell Museum also showed historical and anthropological materials, such as an exhibition on Mayan civilization organized by Tulane University. While most exhibits featured original art work, the Mayan exhibition included casts of sculpture, and a show of contemporary drawings from 1939 featured only reproductions. Some subjects were shown on multiple occasions, as was the case with the Index of American Design, which was exhibited on at least three occasions in 1938, 1940, and 1941. In 1930s Roswell, a museum visitor could view contemporary lithographs produced in New York, antiques from local collectors, and more. During the summer months of 1938 alone, the Roswell Museum hosted exhibitions about contemporary California mosaics, Currier and Ives prints, and oil and watercolor paintings.





 
Other shows explored New Mexico’s different cultures. Native American exhibitions appear in the schedule regularly, and encompassed historical artifacts as well as student painting from the Santa Fe Indian School. Hispanic traditions were also addressed, with examples including an exhibition highlighting santos, and a selection of plates from the Portfolio of Spanish Colonial Design, a set of fifty hand-colored woodblock and linocut prints illustrating different examples of Spanish Colonial decorative art in New Mexico. 


Locally-organized exhibitions included archaeological materials, antiques, and paintings by area artists. Like the touring exhibitions, paintings constitute the majority of the temporary exhibitions, with nearly 40% dedicated to easel works. In contrast to the FAP shows, material culture rather than prints or drawings comes in second, with objects including antiques, flowers, and local collections of historical artifacts. Prints, drawings, and photographs round out the selection. Several local exhibitions augmented national shows, as part of an effor to give residents a sense of ownership and familiarity over the material. The first showing of the Index of American Design in 1938, for instance, featured a show of local antiques, with the intention of having outstanding objects selected for inclusion in the Index itself. Later that summer, residents were invited to bring in their own examples of Currier and Ives prints to display alongside selections from the Library of Congress. In the most ambitious example, an exhibition of FAP flower paintings was augmented with both a selection of locally-produced paintings and several bouquets from the Garden Club.

By inviting residents to supplement rotating exhibitions with their own material, the Roswell Museum encouraged the community to contribute to exhibition content, a proactive role that underscored the participatory, educational focus of community art centers. The Roswell Museum presented itself as a collaborator even as it sought to educate visitors about its own beliefs regarding what constituted good art.  

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