NM Moderne

"That money will all be set aside for future art acquisitions, so I'm actively looking at the market. We'd like to fill some gaps in our collection and start expanding our holdings," Hartley tells SFR. "It's exciting. I'm working with dealers, talking to collectors, finding out what's out there and what would make sense for us to add to our collection."

Not resting on laurels, on Friday, the museum is set to unveil Modernism Made in New Mexico, an sublime patchwork of 15 artists who, like O'Keeffe, were deeply inspired by New Mexico, its people, traditions and jaw-dropping vistas.

"Some of these we have ownership stakes in and some are just loans," Hartley says of the museum namesake's works that fleck the exhibit. He's standing in the gallery where the pieces are gingerly being set up by gloved hand, flashes of provenance peering as the paintings are handled.

"The point is made visible," Hartley, the former assistant curator of paintings at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, says of the flow from one painting to the next. "You've got someone like O'Keeffe to the left and Raymond Jonson on the right doing really radical, new things."

Rediscovering renowned talents and presenting their New Mexico-inspired works, which at time stray from the rest of their oeuvre, Hartley says, was key.

"It's pretty fascinating," he remarks, as a John Marin goes up. "One of the observations is how New Mexico really changes what artists do. It changes the way they work, and not just their subject matter—not just painting New Mexico scenes and subjects—but also the way they paint, the rejection of the more traditional, representational, romantic ideals of the past is gone and you've got something increasingly abstract and flat.

“They’re getting rid of this notion of depth and perspective,” he continues, his words echoed in pieces like “Train on the Desert” by Thomas Hart Benton and O’Keeffe’s own “Black Place, Grey and Pink.”

Exploring how the state influenced this radical new direction is an overarching theme. It also plays into the notion that New Mexico is known for trapping these creative types who arrive here and never leave. "Someone like John Sloan, Jonson and O'Keeffe, of course, move here permanently and make [the state] a significant part of their lives. But then you have others, Marin for example, that visit for a summer or two, get it out of their system and don't come back."

The state, he notes, had a lasting effect on the likes of Marsden Hartley, whose sweeping, post-visit pastel landscapes are in the show. "He is the most modern artist that comes to New Mexico when he arrives in 1918. He doesn't actually paint that much while he was here. It's the subsequent decade that he starts painting these recollections of New Mexico, so it's been working in his mind this whole time and takes a while for it to come out in painted expression."

The move to kick off what is sure to be a banner year with the sui generis group exhibit, the director of curatorial affairs explains, was a well-thought-out one, given they're focusing on modernism "in a significant way" in 2015.

Later, on a quick coffee break, away for the sound of hammers on nails and hydraulic scissor lifts being raised, Hartley would reflect on the timelessness associated with the so-called Mother of American Modernism.

"I think she's got incredible durability. Her method of painting struck this perfect balance between being very easily read, it's very legible, but at the same time, it's got this amazing complexity to it, so it pulls you in and rewards time and close-looking."

Starting Friday, Jan. 30

and on display through April 30

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

217 Johnson St.,

946-1000

Santa Fe Reporter