My first introduction to Santa Fe's Museum Hill was when it was used as a site for an episode of Antiques Roadshow. There were 2 museums located there as well as a restaurant with lovely views of the mountains in the distance. During our visit large scale, brightly colored sculptures of fanciful animals adorned the spacious plaza between the buildings.
The Museum of International Folk Art houses an impressive collection of art forms created by a number of different cultures from all over the world, as the museum's name implies. There are crafts, glorious textile creations and costumes worn when celebrating various festivals. One gallery is devoted to the dress of the Inuit people who live in the forbidding cold of the artic region. The highlight is a spectacular array of dolls and miniature tableaus. Small carved figures crowd around handcrafted diminutive buildings inspired by architecture from a wide variety of locales. Tiny people crowd around and line up to enter dollhouse like Russian palaces and Mexican cathedrals. There is a riverfront scene with boats, on wheels, this particular piece being a rather elaborate toy, sailing down a painted "river" that runs through a miniature village. There are dolls and vignettes everywhere. If you are not charmed by the surroundings I would have to assume that you have no soul.
The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, I found it odd that in this area of the country they did not use the term Native American, has a nice collection, some pieces dating back centuries, some quite contemporary. I got a comment on Facebook that someone was good friends with one of the artists whose work is on display there. Yet, somehow, I did not find it engrossing. The exhibits seemed to lack focus. Perhaps had I visited it first before the Folk Art Museum I would have seen it in a different light.
According to Santa Fe tourism websites there are 4 museums on the hill but only 2 were in operation during our time there. A brief online search didn't provide any information on the 2 missing. Perhaps, like a number of other businesses and institutions, they were victims of the pandemic. The world constantly reinvents itself, our resilience is evidenced by the fact that time hasn't knocked us completely to the mat. We always beat the 10 count.
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