Current and Upcoming Exhibitions

Roswell Artist-in-Residence: Afton Love

September 15 - October 21, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, September 14, 5:30-7 pm with artist's lecture at 5:30 pm
Marshall and Winston Galleries



Afton Love’s practice develops out of an intimate interaction with her geographic surroundings, and engages the profound yet subtle geologic changes that occur to a landscape through time. Her practice encompasses multiple media, including drawing, casting, and photography. Her meticulous, detailed drawings record places where she has walked and wandered, and focus on revealed erosion and rock formations.  
Read more

Afton Love web

Exploring Lithography

August 25, 2018 - February 10, 2019
Horgan and Graphics Galleries

Lithography is among the most versatile printmaking methods available today. Invented in 1796 by German playwright Alois Senefelder, lithography operates on the opposition of oil and water. To make a lithograph, an artist draws onto a stone with an oily, ink-receptive crayon or other substance. The stone is then inked, rinsed, and pressed onto a piece of paper. Compared to the limited shelf life of etching plates or woodblocks, which can begin to wear down after a few dozen impressions, lithography can produce hundreds of images inexpensively, making it one of the most ubiquitous printing techniques of the Industrial Revolution. Read more
Gilot, Spring Water, 1977, color lithograph on paper web

Community Minded: The Roswell Federal Art Center
August 11, 2018 - May 26, 2019
Hunter Galley


For 80 years, the Roswell Museum and Art Center has enriched southeast New Mexico with its multidisciplinary collections and educational programs, and its community-driven mission takes inspiration from its origins as a federal art center. Opened in 1937 as the Roswell Museum Federal Art Center, the institution we know and love as RMAC developed out of a WPA initiative designed to bring arts access and education to rural areas, minority populations, and other underserved communities. Read More
RMAC postcard exterior 1937-1938 web

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

Goddard_control_shack

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
hurd

West of Beyond: The Rogers and Mary Ellen Aston Collection of the American West


On Permanent Display
Aston Galleries



Donated by Rogers Aston, The Aston Collection of the American West is one  of the most popular and historically significant aspects of the Roswell Museum and Art Center’s holdings. An independent oil producer, rancher, sculptor, and philanthropist, Aston developed a keen interest in the West during time spent on his family’s various ranches. Read more

aston_skooner_web_2007