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Art To Heal Wounds In Santa Fe

Fiesta de Santa Fe has been a defining tradition of the city's cultural life for over 300 years.  This year, the annual celebrations will not include La Entrada, a pageant about the reclaiming of Santa Fe by Spanish forces after their expulsion by the Pueblo Indians in 1680.  That decision was controversial and divisive.  Hoping to reconcile disagreements in the community is an exhibition at Santa Fe's Institute of American Indian Arts.  Reconciliation runs through January 19, 2020 at IAIA's Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

"The idea was to reach out to both Indo-Hispanic and Native American tribal artists," says the exhibit's curator, former New Mexico State Historian Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez.  "When we convened the artists, they said, 'We want to create something new together,' and through that creative process emerged ten  installations.  I think of it as a microcosm of the process that led to the abolishment of the Entrada.  People who were from Cochiti Pueblo engaged in a dialogue with people who were from Alcalde and Santa Fe.  There were tension points all the way to the very end."

Dr. Rael-Gálvez talks further about the IAIA exhibit in this longer version of the interview.  "There are lingering tensions in the community, a sense of loss over traditions.  As a community, we have the responsibility and the opportunity to create something new together.  And it's not just this exhibit.  I want people to realize that that there's more than one way to tell a story, more than one way to protest."

estevan_interview_long_version_final_.mp3

Spencer Beckwith reports on the arts for KUNM. For ten years, until March of 2014, Spencer was the producer and host of KUNM's "Performance New Mexico," a weekday morning arts program that included interviews with musicians, writers and performers. Spencer is a graduate of the acting program at the Juilliard School, and, before moving to New Mexico in 2002, was for many years a professional actor based in New York City.