millicentroger

Our annual Turquoise Gala is scheduled for August 20th of this year and will be held at the Sagebrush Inn and Convention Center.  This event is sure to be extra special as we are celebrating the museum's 60th anniversary and commemorating the legendary lives of Millicent Rogers and Frank Waters.  In a previous post, I discussed a ring once owned by Millicent herself that will be included in the live auction portion of the gala.  We have also recently acquired numerous artworks from the estate of Frank Waters, a Taos writer who published several significant works on Southwest culture and history.

Book of the Hopi remains his most famous text and is included on the MRM Store's summer reading list.  All of the books on the list are available in the museum store and are intended to help prepare travelers signed up for one of our Fall Trips, but they are also useful for anyone who wants to learn more about Southwestern art, history, and culture. The trip to Hopi is particularly unique because in addition to Homolovi and Walnut Canyon, travelers will be visiting many sites that are only accessible with a Hopi guide and will also get a chance to witness pottery and katsina carving demonstrations.  There are several books on the significance of katsina on the reading list, and we are currently exhibiting a collection of contemporary Hopi katsinas at the museum is you are interested in learning more.  For both of the trips, I will be traveling to Albuquerque to present informative lectures on the history of some of the sites at the receptions that are scheduled for the evening before departure, and I have been enjoying several of the books on the reading list in preparation.  I have also been researching Frank Waters and have learned that, like Millicent Rogers, he had close friendships with many artists, such as the Hopi painters Fred Kabotie and Otis Polelonema.  Rod Goebel, another artist he counted as a friend, painted a large, vibrant portrait of the author that will be included in our gala. We will also be featuring a woodcut print by Don Percival that was used to illustrate another book by Waters, The Man Who Killed the Deer.

An image of Frank Waters with the Rod Goebel 

portrait and Frank Samora, his inspiration for the

 main character in The Man Who Killed the Deer, 

courtesy of the Frank Waters Foundation.

Original Don Percival print that was 

reproduced in The Man Who Killed 

the Deer.

If you would like to learn more about the Fall Trips, click here.  To purchase tickets or to learn more about the gala, click here.