Gallup New Deal Art

The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum is launching on March 29, 2025!

Celebrate the “grand opening” of the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum on March 29, 2025 with a full day of tours, talks, music, crafts, and free family activities in downtown Gallup, NM.

Questions? Call 505-488-2136

EVENTS:

“Drop-in” Happenings (10am – 5pm):

Gallup New Deal Art Raffle – Enter to win a set of ceramic tiles designed after the historic McKinley County Courthouse’s New Deal tilework.
- Enter at ART123 Gallery.
- Raffle winners will be announced at the concert at the El Morro Theatre at 7pm.
New Deal Art Self-Guided Viewing: See Gallup and McKinley County’s New Deal art at the following locations and scan QR code labels with your smartphone to learn more through the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum website:
- Octavia Fellin Public Library (115 West Hill Avenue)
- McKinley County Courthouse (207 West Hill Avenue)
  - See New Deal furniture temporarily displayed in the Rotunda
  - See New Deal paintings and a 2,000-square foot mural on the 2^nd floor of the historic building
  - See original tilework, wall paintings, and tinwork light fixtures on the 1^st floor of the historic building

Pro-tip: pick up Gallup New Deal Art Family Bingo cards from ART123 Gallery and compete to complete a bingo-style scavenger hunt during your self-guided journey.

Do-it-Yourself Exhibit Lab: Hop on a computer at the Octavia Fellin Public Library to share your Gallup New Deal Art ideas, insights, and inquiries by hanging your own virtual gallery wall of works from the collection.
Hands-on Paper Craft (11am – 3pm): Head to the McKinley County Courthouse Rotunda to design and create a paper card inspired by New Deal Nuevomexicano furniture and the work of local artist Virginia Primozic.

ART123 Gallery is your Gallup New Deal Art headquarters!

Stop by for:

- Raffle entry
- Water
- Event schedule and map
- Gallup New Deal Art Family Bingo Cards
- Visitor sign-in book
- Event questions
- 11^th Annual Youth Art Show

Event Sponsors

Scheduled Happenings:

Gallup New Deal Art Tea Party

Time: 9am – 10am
Location: McKinley County Courthouse – Extension Building Training Room
Description: Gallup’s New Deal art center opened on February 26, 1939 with a tea attended by 100 people. Just over 86 years later, we’re celebrating the opening of the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum and kicking off a day of tours, talks, and activities with a 2025 Gallup-style tea party. Join us for flavored iced teas by Tea Boss and locally made baked goods.

Collection Highlights Tour

Time: 10:00am – 11:00am
Location: Meet in front of historic McKinley County Courthouse
Description: Gallup New Deal Art Project Director Rose Eason shares what makes the collection so special and important, from mythological architecture to an epic mural to era-defining Hispano and Native arts.

Real Eyes – Realize – Real Lies

Time: 11:30am
Location: Historic McKinley County Courthouse – 2nd Floor Courtroom
Description: Laguna educator, historian, artist, and community leader Teri Fraizer unpacks Lloyd Moylan’s monumental historical southwest history mural from a Pueblo perspective.

Issues of Native Representation in the New Deal

Time: 1pm – 2pm
Location: Octavia Fellin Public Library – Meeting Room
Description: Diné artist Jerry Brown and fomer curator of the Museum of Northern Arizona Jennifer McLerran team up to consider the New Deal’s interest in and approach to cultural preservation and commidification through Native arts.

Collection Highlights Tour

Time: 2:30 – 3:30pm
Location: Meet in front of historic McKinley County Courthouse
Description: Gallup New Deal Art Project Director Rose Eason shares what makes the collection so special and important, from mythological architecture to an epic mural to era-defining Hispano and Native arts.

Furnishing Gallup: A Local Woodworking Legacy

Time: 4 – 5pm
Location: McKinley County Courthouse – Rotunda
Description: Luis Tapia, New Mexico sculptor, furniture maker and restorer, and author Carmella Padilla explore the WPA’s woodworking legacy in Gallup, where vocational training projects in furniture making intersected with historic furniture traditions in valuable, beautiful and enduring ways.

Sounds in Place: Music of Diné History, People and Land

Time: 7 – 8pm
Location: El Morro Theatre
Description: Diné trumpeter Delbert Anderson, joined by pianist Robert Muller, performs Anderson’s The Long Walk composition, original land-healing songs, and the music of Jacob C. Morgan, a Diné leader, educator, instrumentalist and band director.

Currently, Gallup’s collection of New Deal architecture, Spanish Colonial-style tinwork, oak furniture, murals, prints, western American paintings, and Native art (156 objects in total) is housed in six different locations which are not all publicly accessible. Through a multi-faceted, interpretive, and highly interactive website, gallupARTS hopes to restore the legacy of the New Deal, unifying the collection, making it widely available as an unparalleled artistic and historical resource, and using it to promote community building.

In 2018, gallupARTS received a $30,000 Digital Projects for the Public “Discovery” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to plan the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum.

In 2020, it received a $100K Digital Projects for the Public “Prototyping” grant to continue developing the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum by building and evaluating a prototype.

In 2023, gallupARTS is proud to announce it has received a $400K Digital Projects for the Public “Production” grant to build, launch, and distribute the Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum.

The forth-coming Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum will contain both scholarly information as well as creative content, being designed by experts in collaboration with Gallup’s artists and community members.

gallupARTS Executive Director Rose Eason is the Project Director.

INTERPRETIVE SPECIALISTS

Dr. Molly Medakovich, Ph. D. – Teaching Specialist for the Denver Art Museum, Affiliate Faculty at the University of Denver School of Art and Art History, and Adjunct Faculty at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs
Robin Gavin – Curator Emerita of the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum (formerly the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art) and former curator of the Museum of International Folk Art
Micaela Seidel, M.F.A & M.A. – Community arts educator, curator, writer and editor
Madalena Salazar, M.A. – Freelance art historian, museum educator and grants administrator
Rose Eason, Ed.M. – Arts and museum educator

EXPERT PEER REVIEW PANEL

Ms. Allison Johnson, M.A. Candidate in Community and Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico and LOOM Gallery Co-Chair
Dr. Kency Cornejo, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor of Modern/Contemporary Latin American Art History at UNM
Winoka Yepa, M.A. – Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Art
Kevin Brown, M.A. – Program Specialist for the Indigenous Nations Library Program at UNM

GENERAL ADVISERS

Ms. Carol Sarath, M.L.S – Secretary of the gallupARTS Board of Directors and freelance researcher and writer
Ms. Kathy Flynn, M.S. – Self-titled “New Deal Lead Detective” for New Mexico
Ms. Carolyn Milligan, M.F.A. – This grant builds on the decade of work Ms. Milligan did to archive Gallup’s WPA collection and conserve and curate the County’s portion of the collection.
Dr. Andrew Connors, Ph.D – Director of the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History

Check out virtual tours and talks produced in conjunction with the Gallup New deal Art project.
(Click thumbnail images to view.)

If These Walls Could Talk:

The Past, Present and Future of Lloyd Moylan‘s Southwestern History Mural

Take a “slow look” at a 2,000-square-foot mural painted for the WPA McKinley County Courthouse by artist Lloyd Moylan in 1939 and consider questions of authorship, representation and public art.

Then check out the New Mexico Tourism Department’s 360-degree image of the mural here: https://tourmkr.com/F16hiMTrOl/34423866p&227.39h&76.19t

J.R. Willis: Postcard Artist and Entrepreneur

Librarian and local historian Joe Sabatini chronicles the life and career of J.R. Willis, a compelling and problematic artist who helped establish Gallup’s art market in the early 20th century and who helped perpetuate and shape stereotypical perceptions of the Southwest through his work before, during and after the New Deal.

Western Art in the New Deal Art Collection: What, Who and How

Learn about artworks in the Gallup New Deal Art collection, consider what (and whose) stories they tell about the past and present, and go behind the scenes of an online exhibition with art historian and museum educator Molly Medakovich.

Sample Gallup's New Deal Art collection:

2,000-square foot mural by Lloyd Moylan

"Desert" by Brooks Willis

"Shalako" by Jose Rey Toledo

Trastero by An Uncredited Artist

Sand Painting-Style Wall Painting by An Uncredited Navajo Artist

"Inscription Rock" by Albert Lorey Groll

"Apache Crown Dancer" by Allan Houser

WPA McKinley County Courthouse

"Braying Donkey" by Anna Hyatt Huntington

The Gallup New Deal Art Project has been made possible iby
funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.