The arts business is on a roll

New Mexico Business Journal, Sept, 1997 by Nancy Traver

Authors Laura Mixon and Steven Gould, an Albuquerque husband-wife team whose specialty is science-fiction fantasy, agree that New Mexico is something of a creative hotbed. Says Gould: "We've found other writers here - people who understand what it's like to be an isolated writer." And Mixon added: "If you live in a place that's damp and gets a lot of rain and pollution, it's harder to summon the creative energy you need. But here, the desert is very calming. There's a strength and clarity of light that make us want to live and work in this state." And doesn't that sound a lot like what D.H. Lawrence once wrote about New Mexico?

RELATED ARTICLE: A Museum for O'Keeffe

In 1929, artist Georgia O'Keeffe began summering in New Mexico. Now the state is honoring her with the new Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, the world's first such institution dedicated to a female artist. The 13,000-sq. ft. museum, one of many created by New York architect Richard Gluckman, is home for more than 80 O'Keeffe works, ranging from her iconic flowers and bleached desert skulls to cityscapes, landscapes, nudes and still lifes. Expecting to draw 150,000 people each year, the museum opened its doors July 17.

The new museum was largely funded by John Marion, a philanthropist and retired Sotheby's auctioneer, and his wife, Anne Burnett and her $250 million Burnett Foundation, which is based in Fort Worth. Burnett inherited an oil fortune from her mother's side of the family and another large sum from her stepfather, Charles Tandy, founder of Tandy Electronics, the Radio Shack people.

The couple first visited Santa Fe in 1988; for the past five or so years, they have been focusing their considerable resources on the arts in Santa Fe. The Burnett Foundation provided the bulk of funding for the O'Keeffe Museum and SITE Santa Fe; it purchased 33 works from the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation at a reduced price and donated them to the new museum. Burnett herself has either loaned or donated her six O'Keeffes to the museum. Two years ago, the foundation donated $4 million to the College of Santa Fe to create the Anne and John Marion Center for Photographic Arts and about $2 million to the Santa Fe Art Institute to improve its artist-in-residence programs.

Peter H. Hassrick, museum director, says it was only natural to locate a museum dedicated to O'Keeffe in Santa Fe. "She lived and worked in New Mexico almost half of her professional career," he says. "New Mexico is the natural place, and Santa Fe as a vortex of our state's cultural life is the logical center."

Nancy Traver

Nancy Traver, a former Time correspondent, contributes frequently to the New Mexico Business Journal.