Current and Upcoming Exhibitions

Magical & Real: Henriette Wyeth & Peter Hurd, A Retrospective

June 16 - September 16, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday June 15, 5-7pm

Patricia Gaylord Anderson, Entry and Spring River Galleries
Lecture Series TBA

Henriette Wyeth and Peter Hurd are two of southeastern New Mexico’s most significant and beloved artists. Born and raised in Roswell, Hurd studied art with renowned illustrator N.C. Wyeth during the 1920s in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. In 1929, Hurd married N.C.’s eldest daughter, fellow artist Henriette, and the two eventually settled west of Roswell in San Patricio. Hurd became renowned for his luminous egg tempera landscapes and portraits capturing the arid beauty of southeast New Mexico, while Wyeth focused on still life and portraiture, creating paintings that showcased her technical skills as a painter as well as her poetic sensibilities. While many visitors to the Roswell Museum and Art Center are familiar with the southwestern output of Wyeth and Hurd, both artists painted and exhibited their work on a national scale, and merit national recognition in the history of American art. Read more

Roswell Artist-in-Residence: Louise Deroualle

May 12 - June 24, 2018
Opening Reception:
Friday, May 11, 5:30-7 pm with artist's lecture at 5:30 pm
Marshall and Winston Galleries

Louise Deroualle uses ceramic materials to create formal abstractions that reveal different physical, experiential and emotional facets of herself. Her work is influenced by the cultural experiences to which she has been exposed—from her upbringing in Brazil to her studies and residence in the United States—and the way those interactions build her identity. She subverts the traditional order of layering glazes over slips and utilizes the fluidity of the glaze layer underneath as a symbol of her inner world of emotions as well as her cultural identity. The stress between the fluid and dry layers of materials results in a partial glimpse into the emotional interior. The slips become an external barrier, while glazes turn into an extremely powerful emotion that always finds its way to the outer reality. Read more

Staff Favorites

April 14 - June 3, 2018
Spring River Gallery

Visitors to the Roswell Museum and Art Center all have their favorite works in the collection. Whether it’s Ram’s Skull with Brown Leaves by Georgia O’ Keeffe, the rare Naskapi coat in the Aston Collection of the American West, or the vintage equipment in the Goddard workshop, we all have objects that we love to visit again and again. Have you ever wondered, however, which pieces the staff like the most? As the people who get to work with this collection every day, which treasures from the vaults do we especially enjoy, and why? Read more

Roswell Artist-in-Residence: Julie Alpert

March 17 - April 29, 2018
Opening Reception:
Friday, March 16, 5:30-7 pm with artist's lecture at 5:30 pm
Marshall and Winston Galleries

Julie Alpert modifies and arranges craft materials and found-objects in temporary room-size compositions that become frozen records of her private performance. After it is completed, she documents and de-installs it until, as she describes it, “nothing remains but the photographs and a pile of broken and tattered materials, like the sad detritus of an epic celebration the night before.” She also makes drawings and sculptural works on paper that help her discover new forms and color combinations for future installations. Read more

Pennsylvania Impressionists

November 10, 2017 - May 31, 2018

Founders Gallery

Drawn from the Michener’s permanent collection, this selection highlights fifteen works by some of Pennsylvania’s most renowned Impressionist painters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including John Folinsbee, Edward W. Redfield, Fern Coppedge, and more. From springtime meadows to the snow-covered river scenes, this exhibition has a landscape for every season. Since these works rarely travel to the western United States, visitors will have an unusual opportunity to explore regional painting traditions from another part of the country. Read more

RAiR at 50

October 6, 2017 - April 6, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5-7 pm
Patricia Gaylord Anderson, Entry, Russell Vernon Hunter, and Spring River Galleries

In celebration of RAiR’s 50th anniversary, this exhibition invites alumni of the program to share their recent art with the Roswell community. With more than 170 participants submitting new work, this show will occupy most of the Museum’s galleries, emphasizing the grant’s impressive scope. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about RAiR’s many recipients while discovering how their work has continued to evolve since their time with the program. Read more

Peter Hurd on Paper

February 24 - August 12, 2018
Horgan and Graphics Gallery

Peter Hurd is renowned for his luminous egg tempera paintings, but his works on paper form another important and substantial body of work. Over the course of his career, Hurd produced finished watercolor paintings, numerous studies in preparation for larger works, and informal sketches of landscapes and people. Some of his earliest surviving watercolors date from the 1920s, and beginning in the 1930s he created pen and ink wash studies for lithographs, as well as charcoal cartoons for murals. Read more

Robert H. Goddard: Dreamer, Tinkerer, Pioneer

On Permanent Display
Goddard Gallery and Workshop Recreation

In 1898, a teenage Robert Hutchings Goddard (1882-1945), captivated by the realism of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, “…imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.” He began enthusiastically filling notebooks with ideas for getting off the planet. As a graduate student in physics at Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts, his hometown, he conducted simple tests with gun powder that suggested it was indeed possible to construct a rocket for space travel. Read more

Hurd & Wyeth: Picturing the Hondo Valley

On Permanent Display
Founders Gallery

The Roswell Museum and Art Center is home to the largest public collection of works by Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth, painters who have both become synonymous with the landscape and culture of southeastern New Mexico. Peter Hurd (1904-1984) was raised in Roswell where his father worked a small ranch southwest of town. Much of his youth was spent astride a horse, and he was known for his equestrian abilities. Roaming the countryside as a youth on horseback earned Hurd an intimate understanding of the hills, prairies, and arroyos that configured the surrounding landscape. Read more