Gustave Baumann: The Artist's Environment

New Mexico Museum of Art on the Plaza
Beauregard Gallery: July 18, 2025- January 11, 2026
New Wing: August 15, 2025-February 22, 2026
Goodwin and Clarke Galleries: September 26, 2025 – February 1, 2026

Gustave Baumann first came to New Mexico in 1918 and has since become one of the most beloved artists and cultural figures in Santa Fe. Best known for his enchanting woodblock prints, Baumann was a prodigious artist and creative who left behind an enormous legacy that also included painting, sculpture, drawing, marionettes, and furniture.

Gustave Baumann: The Artist’s Environment will provide a comprehensive study of Baumann’s artistic output and offer a close look at how he engaged the physical, cultural, and artistic environment in which he worked. Surveying all periods of his artistic career, and organized thematically, this exhibition will critically examine key concepts at play in Baumann’s artwork through a variety of lenses.

The retrospective will pull primarily from the New Mexico Museum of Art’s extensive collection of artwork by Gustave Baumann. The exhibition is organized by common themes present across Baumann’s work, offering a nuanced understanding of the artist and his artwork within a broader cultural, social, and historical context. Some of these lenses include his relationship to southwestern archeology; cross cultural inspirations and specifically from Puebloan and Hispano cultures; the significance of whimsy, humor, and play in his work; modernist aesthetics and movements that informed his style; nature and ecology; florals and still lifes; decorative art, design, and book arts; and his use of genre scenes in cultivating a romantic vision of New Mexico. The exhibition will also examine Baumann’s artistic process, especially in woodblock printmaking from the original sketch to early designs, drawings and preliminary gouache paintings all produced before the design is transferred to the set of carved blocks.

Gustave Baumann: The Artist’s Environment explores Baumann’s contributions as an artist but also as a key figure in the construction of cultural and artistic identity for northern New Mexico. From his initial visit to Taos in 1918 until the twilight of his lengthy career, Baumann crafted a vision of the rich cultural diversity, awe-inspiring landscapes, and distinctive architecture of his adopted home. Though he was hardly alone in shaping popular perceptions of the mystique of New Mexico, Baumann enjoyed an esteem and regard among his fellow artists and the public alike, creating an enduring legacy that persists today.