News from MIAC/Lab

Pueblo Students Learn Architecture through Summer Reading Program & UNM School of Architecture Partnership

AUGUST 1, 2017

(Santa Fe, NM) – With an established mission to Build a Better World more than 200 children from the Pueblos of Tesuque, Laguna, San Ildefonso, Zia, Jemez, Santa Clara, Ohkay Owingeh, and Santo Domingo designed and created miniature adobe structures that were assembled into a village complete with hornos and a ramada. Future architects Brandon Ortiz (Taos Pueblo), Charelle Brown (Santo Domingo Pueblo), and Daryl Lucero (Isleta Pueblo) created a fun and dynamic atmosphere in which children made adobe bricks, designed and built structures. Stories were shared and basic design ideas exchanged as students from ages 4 to 12 worked together to complete the village.  

Each year, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) and the Tribal Library Program (TLP) of New Mexico State Library hosts workshops for students that enhance the National Collaborative Summer Library Program annual themes. Build a Better World, construction, architecture, and community activism is the theme of the 2017 Summer Reading program. As a member of the Collaborative Summer Library Program NMSL sponsors public libraries’ membership to join in this national consortium. For more information on the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) visit their website. 

Now in its third year, the TLP Workshops held at MIAC from July 18-21, 2017 adapted the national summer reading theme Build a Better World so that it was addressed from an indigenous perspective.

MIAC partnered with Indigenous Design and Planning Institute of the UNM School of Architecture with extraordinary results. Dr. Ted Jojola and Francisco Uvina, mentored the group of young indigenous architecture students to be the workshop’s instructors.  

The TLP Summer Reading at MIAC directly responds to the following recommendations made by tribal community members at a 2013 World Café session: a need for better communication and improved outreach to Native communities through strengthened partnerships; a need for educating tribal communities about the basic purpose and resources available at MIAC; a need for more educational programs aimed at youth. 

Together, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the Tribal Library Program at NM State Library will continue to refine, develop and produce collaborative programs that strive to serve the interests and concerns of these constituencies. The workshop was made possible through the generosity of the Sternberger Foundation, Chamiza Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.

 

 About the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture: As the 19th century closed, one of the Southwest’s major "attractions" was its vibrant Native American cultures. In response to unsystematic collecting by Eastern museums, anthropologist Edgar Lee Hewett founded the Museum of New Mexico in 1909 with a mission to collect and preserve Southwest Native American material culture. Several years later, in 1927, John D. Rockefeller founded the renowned Laboratory of Anthropology with a mission to study the Southwest’s indigenous cultures. In 1947 the two institutions merged, bringing together the most inclusive and systematically acquired collection of New Mexican and Southwestern anthropological artifacts in the country. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

 

About the New Mexico State Library: Established in 1929, the New Mexico State Library provides services that support public and tribal libraries, delivers direct library services to rural populations, state agencies, the visually impaired and physically disabled, and students and citizens conducting research. The library supports public libraries by providing consulting services, offering training and continuing education opportunities, administering the librarian certification program, coordinating a state-wide summer reading program and tribal library program, and administering state and federal grants to public libraries.  Main Library open to the public from 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.  The Southwest history and culture room hours are 1:00- 5:00 p.m., Wednesday and Friday.  1209 Camino Carlos Rey, Santa Fe, NM 87507-5166 Phone: (505) 476-9700 The New Mexico State Library, a part of the executive branch of state government, is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.