If you’re considering a
place to launch a life in
the arts after retirement,
Santa Fe is the place.
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Santa Fe is now the second largest art market in the United States. If you’ve considering
a place to launch a life in the arts after retirement, Santa Fe is the place. There are
so many organizations promoting arts and culture in Santa Fe you’re sure to rub shoulders
with this pillar of the community. The tension between preservation and experimentation
is the creative vitality of this city. We care as much about where we are going as where
we have been.
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Traditions are honored as part of the strength of the community. To survive in an isolated
colony people learned to make what they needed, embellish where they could and pass along
these skills to the next generation. Spanish colonial and Pueblo traditional arts, including
pottery, baskets, jewelry, straw inlay, woodcarving, embroidery and devotional painting went
from being made for personal and community use to becoming valuable collectibles in the 20th
century. Spanish Market and Indian Market are two of Santa Fe’s blockbuster historic markets.
No longer isolated, many Native and Hispanic artists freely moved beyond the traditional.
Both markets have expanded to include a ‘contemporary’ arts division in the annual events.
Once again, the creative force emerged victorious, supporting artistic freedom. Retirement
for many means time to integrate career with passion. Retire to Santa Fe and you won’t be
alone in your creative endeavors.
When Modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe made northern New Mexico her home and the landscape
her subject, she raised the bar on seeing the Southwest through the timeless eyes of abstraction
rather than through its past. She had received national and even international recognition by
the time she moved to the southwest. Her success afforded her the opportunity to retire from
New York and live in the place that most inspired her work. While widely known for its regional
painters (the Museum of Fine Arts has an outstanding collection of early 20th century paintings
from the Cinco Pintores and Taos Society of Artists), Santa Fe’s growth from provincial art town
to 21st century art center is evident in the number of new venues for contemporary art. Educational
programs welcome locals into the sometimes unfamiliar zone of video and installation art. It’s
easy to be a lifelong learner in Santa Fe – many educational events are free or at least affordable,
so even if retirement means you are on a budget, you can exercise your brain with more than Sudoku.
SITE Santa Fe hosts a Biennial exhibition that brings Santa Feans face to face with international
contemporary art and its collectors, along with ARTSanta Fe, a market for galleries and collectors
from around the world. The Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) is a venue for emerging and acclaimed
artists to show their work. It’s an outstanding example of art and government, Santa Fe’s economic
wheels, working together. The CCA is part of an art complex that includes the Santa Fe Children’s
Museum, Santa Fe Armory for the Arts, and the Bataan Memorial Military Museum. Built on the site of
the old Armory, the management of the property has transferred from the New Mexico Department of
Military Affairs to the Department of Cultural Affairs. The complex will be named in honor of its
military history, The Bataan Memorial Arts Complex. Retire to Santa Fe and this culture complex
alone will give your multi-generational visitors plenty to do.
Design Week is a massive, citywide annual event, investigating everything from green building to
contemporary pueblo architecture and its place, or not, in the historic district. Whether or not
hard edge contemporary architecture will break into the annals of designated Santa Fe Style downtown
is uncertain but it is already showing up in other areas of the city. The CCA renovation, the newly
completed Southside library and the ‘Mexican Modern’ developments popping up are a few examples of
the ‘new’ architecture to be found in Santa Fe. Preservation and creation make friction but Santa
Fe uses the spark wisely. There are innovative retirement developments that welcome mixed ages in
order to avoid the ghetto atmosphere of gated ‘senior’ communities elsewhere. The tradition of the
extended family in New Mexico has given Santa Fe a unique city vision of inclusion rather than
exclusion that brings together young families, the middle-aged and retirees.
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