The heat promised to be oppressive in the courtyard of the house that Jack built. Yet there was hope as guests stepped off the shuttle to receive a warm greeting by President’s Circle Chair and host Ken Stilwell, who honored the legacy of Jack Lambert by wearing a white collared shirt, dress jeans, and a ranch hat. Dark clouds gathered, providing relief from the sun during The Dude Wrangler, the Lady Archaeologist, and Martha’s Corrals President’s Circle event on July 26, 2023 from 4-6 pm.
It was the kind of morning best spent in a worn chair next to a lamp reading a good book. Rain pelted at the roof. Its percussive rhythms accompanied the lulling language of Fray Angélico Chávez who wrote: “The angel had simply vanished, slipped out of his hand the way sparrows or trout usually do, only much more swiftly.” Huddled around a broad table, fingers warmed by mugs of coffee and tea, we were in the Reception Center at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) listening to the first three short stories in Fray Angélico Chávez’s “New Mexico Triptych.” Published in 1940, the beloved Franciscan padre born in Wagon Mound, NM created his own illustrations. In 1938 and 1939, he read his poetry aloud at the White Sisters’ “Chapel.” On May 19, 2023, in honor of the second annual Santa Fe International Literary Festival, twenty-four tour guests learned about the literary connections at SAR as an organization, a collection, and a place.
The School for American Research (SAR) started the Santa Fe Indian Market one hundred years ago this September. SAR’s first director, Edgar Lee Hewett, spearheaded the effort and printed a statement in the Santa Fe New Mexican on June 27, 1922. He wrote, “The objects of the exhibition are the encouragement of Native arts; to revive old arts, and to keep the arts of each tribe and pueblo as distinct as possible; the establishment and locating of markets for all Indian products; the securing of reasonable prices; authenticity of all handicraft offered for sale.” The first of its kind, the Southwest Indian Fair featured artists across seven states, and included Julian and Maria Martinez, the celebrated potters of San Ildefonso Pueblo, who won a substantial monetary prize for their work.
Growing up in the middle of Alaska, there was a window to another world on the wall of my living room. It was like no place I’d ever seen. There was a church that seemed to be made of clay pinched together by someone’s fingers. And there was a woman with a flared skirt, shawl, and scarf over her head. No one dressed like that in Alaska. I enjoyed stepping back to where it appeared to be a photograph or passage to another land and then move slowly forward to find just that point when the optical illusion fell away and I could see the leaves, the moss, the bark.
Drought is now a way of life. As a result, argue Patty Limerick and C. J. Alvarez in their recent Washington Post article, people throughout the United States need to start listening to desert dwellers, “the Indigenous people and others who settled in deserts for generations and who view aridity, not moisture, as ‘normal.’”
SAR Press has started a new blog series comprised of interviews with diverse scholars who have recently published or are in the midst of publishing their first book and who can offer guidance and encouragement to colleagues who are just starting to think about publishing. We hope that these interviews make a small contribution to supporting junior scholars as they begin the publishing process.
We invite you to take a virtual tour of El Delirio. Learn about the origins of the buildings and the historical significance of the sprawling estate that is now SAR’s campus. Join your guide, SAR scholar-in-residence Nancy Owen Lewis, for a delightful online tour complete with archival and contemporary visuals from SAR’s collections.
SAR Press is starting a new blog series comprised of interviews with diverse scholars who have recently published or are in the midst of publishing their first book and who can offer guidance and encouragement to colleagues who are just starting to think about publishing. We hope that these interviews make a small contribution to supporting junior scholars as they begin the publishing process.
