Collections

UNM Art Museum Permanent Collection

With close to 30,000 objects, the University Art Museum houses by far the largest fine art collections in New Mexico. These collections enable us to fulfill our mandated missions: to educate about and through art, to directly support the academic programs of the University of New Mexico, to enrich the cultural life of the city and the state, and to contribute to the international scholarly community. Some highlighted areas of our collections include:

Photographs

We hold over 10,000 photographs, from early daguerreotypes to contemporary digital images, by almost every recognized master of the medium (and also by anonymous photojournalists and amateurs).
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The Beaumont Newhall Collection

The collection of work by Beaumond Newhall was started to honor his contributions to the field of the history of photography, and to reflect his scholarly interests.
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The Theodore J. Labhard Collection

Formed by a California collector, and purchased from this estate originally as a study collection housed in UNM's Department of Art and Art History, this group of 481 daguerrotypes (and related processes: ambrotypes, ivorytypes, tintypes, etc.) constitutes the vast majority of cased images at the UNM Art Museum. What all of these early processes have in common is that they produced only single images directly upon a prepared , and highly polished, surface; without an intervening negative, they could not be duplicated.

The Jerome Bowers Peterson Memorial Collection

In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Carl Van Vechten photographed scores of notable African-Americans, who comprised the later stages of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. This extensive collection-82 images- of Van Vechten's portraits came to the University of New Mexico in 1955 and 1956, as a result of UNM English professor Edward Leuder's publishing a book on the photographer.

Prints

Our print collection which contains close to 17,000 examples of the entire history of fine art printmaking. A special emphasis is given to the history of lithography, from its invention (in 1798) to now.
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The Tamarind Archive Collection

A division of the University of New Mexico. The UNM Art Museum archives two impressions of every Tamarind edition, both from it's ealier Los Angeles days and from its continuing Albuquerque productions.
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The Clinton Adams Archive Collection

In 1996, Adams donated impressions of his entire non-Tamarind print oeuvre adding to his Tamarind work that was already part of the University Art Museum Collection, thus enabling the establishment of this complete archive of his work in all print mediums.
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The Clinton And Mary Adams Collections

Over the years, Clinton and Mary Adams have donated many splendid works—primarily, works related to Clinton Adams's scholarly interests in the history of 19th and 20th-century prints—to the University Art Museum. In 1997, the decision was made to honor those gifts with this special designation.

Raymond Jonson Collection

UNM Professor of Art, Raymond Jonson bequeathed to the University of New Mexico a significant collection of over 1,300 of his paintings along with several hundred artworks by other mid-twentieth century and contemporary American artists, including the other nine members of the Transcendental Painting Group—co-founded by Jonson and Emil Bisttram in 1938.
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Old Master Painting, Sculpture, And Drawing

Since the early years of the Museum an effort was made to acquire a modest study collection of Old Master prints. These were seen as both important in their own right, and as a useful prelude to the advent of lithography.
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The Albert A. Anella Collection In Memory Of Mia Anella

The Anella Collection comprises six important Italian paintings from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
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Nineteenth-Century Art

Alongside our extensive holdings of prints and photographs, we also have a fine study collection of 19th-century painting and sculpture, from both Europe and the United States. More so than most other museums, it has been our belief and practice that these mediums should be experienced side-by-side: that painting and sculpture (in addition to their intrinsic worth) illuminate the context within which artist-lithographers and artist-photographers lived and worked.
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Old Spain, New Spain, New Mexico

Through works of art, some by famous artists, others by unknown artisans, we can see the still reverberating consequences of the impacts of European and American civilizations upon each other.
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The Taller De Grafica Popular Collection

University of New Mexico holdings of 300 prints and posters produced at this politically and aesthetically important Mexico City printmaking cooperative are split between the UNM Art Museum and the Center for Southwest Research at the General Library.
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The Mary Lester Field And Neill B. Field Collection

Formed by an early 20th-century mayor of Albuquerque and his wife, and bequeathed to the University of New Mexico in 1939. It comprises 94 pieces of Spanish Colonial silver, and 22 (mostly 19th-century New Mexican) santos.
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Early Modern Art

In addition to the New Mexican Modernism in our permanent collection, Europeans such as Picasso, Kandinsky, Picabia, and Schmidt-Rotluff, rub shoulders with their American contemporaries, and as always photographs and prints hold their own with paintings and sculpture.
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Art Since 1950

While we concentrate on work by American artists, we have special emphasis upon California art from both the Bay area and Los Angeles.
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