Constructing the Meeting Ground

Architects I.H. Rapp, William Rapp and A.C. Hendrickson based their design for the front of the Museum Gallery on the facade of the mission church at Acoma Pueblo, and the facade of St. Francis Auditorium on the mission at San Felipe Pueblo.

Kenneth Chapman painted a series of renderings of the proposed building in 1916 that served promotional needs during the campaign for legislative approval. New Art Museum, South Front demonstrates the sophistication of Chapman's conceptualizations and draftsmanship.

Chapman, Jesse Nusbaum, and Sam Huddelston designed the furniture and detailing inside the building. The benches, chairs, chests, and tables combined documented Hispanic forms with elements derived from the Arts and Crafts Movement.

On November 24, 1917, Edgar Lee Hewett, Museum of New Mexico Director, organized a dedication for the gallery that later would be renamed the Museum of Fine Arts. He stated that Native peoples "have a life in keeping with the soil, the skies, winds, clouds, spaces" and "have ordered their lives in honest, simple, harmonious ways." Hewett equated the new architectural style of the Museum with Southwestern peoples and their cultures.