Taos Art Museum

The Taos Art Museum is an art museum located in Taos, New Mexico, housed in the historic Nicolai Fechin House. Founded in 1994 and opened in its current location in 2003, the museum is dedicated to improving awareness of Taos artists and nurturing local artistic development. Its central mission includes the effort to "Bring Taos art back to Taos," addressing the dispersal of works by the Taos Society of Artists to institutions outside New Mexico. The museum occupies a building widely regarded as an architectural masterpiece, combining Russian, Native American, Spanish, and Art Deco influences, which was constructed between 1927 and 1933 by the Russian-American artist Nicolai Fechin.

The Taos Art Museum opened in 1994 to exhibit the collection of Edwin and Novella Lineberry, established in memory of Lineberry's first wife, the artist Duane Van Vechten. In 2003, the museum officially opened in its current location with its new name, Taos Art Museum at Fechin House. The property itself had earlier been opened to the public as a museum in 1979 by Eya Fechin, daughter of Nicolai Fechin, who had returned to New Mexico in 1977 after a thirty-year absence to restore the house and establish the Fechin Institute. She continued living in the studio and conducting exhibition and education programs until her death in November 2002. Following her death, the Board of the Taos Art Museum acquired the Fechin property and undertook significant conservation work, including installing security and lighting systems, treating windows to filter ultraviolet rays, and refinishing interior walls and floors.

The museum's permanent collection centers on Nicolai Fechin's House and Studio, architectural works that unite Fechin's artistic sensibilities with his building skills. The collection includes works by Fechin himself and nearly all members of the Taos Society of Artists, among them Joseph Henry Sharp, Bert Geer Phillips, Oscar E. Berninghaus, Ernest L. Blumenschein, Walter Ufer, E. Irving Couse, W. Herbert Dunton, Joseph Fleck, Ernest Martin Hennings, William Victor Higgins, Catherine Critcher, Gustave Baumann, Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt, and Julius Rolshoven. The vitality of the broader Taos art colony is also represented through artists such as Leon Gaspard, Joseph Imhoff, Gene Kloss, Ila Mae McAfee, and Dorothy Brett. The collection extends to the Taos Moderns of the 1940s, artists including Andrew Dasburg, Louis Leon Ribak, Beatrice Mandelman, Emil Bisttram, Howard Cook, Cliff Harmon, and Ward Lockwood, whose work was shaped by the Great Depression and Modernist currents. Post-World War II developments are represented through figures such as Rod Goebel, Walt Gonske, Jackson Hensley, Charles Stewart, Julian Robles, and R.C. Gorman.

The signature holding of the museum is the Fechin House and Studio itself, an architectural work that embodies the creative vision of its maker. The collection's strength lies in its comprehensive representation of the Taos Society of Artists, the group that catalyzed the Taos art colony in the early twentieth century. Works by Nicolai Fechin form a core component, reflecting both his painting and his sculptural and architectural practice. The museum's holdings span from the foundational period of the Taos art colony through the mid-century Taos Moderns to postwar contemporary developments, offering a continuous narrative of artistic production in the region.

The Nicolai Fechin House was constructed between 1927 and 1933 on property purchased from Dr. J.J. Bergmans and his wife Wilhelmina Harkink-Bergmans, who had returned to Holland. Fechin, born in 1881 in Kazan, Russia, and his family had arrived in Taos in 1926 at the invitation of patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and through the encouragement of artist John Young-Hunter. The original eight-room, two-story adobe proved unsatisfactory, and over five years Fechin and his multilingual wife Alexandra directed craftsmen in a radical transformation. Non-load-bearing interior walls were removed, the front porch was doubled in size, and new rooms were added extending from the former central cube. The resulting 3,545 square meter asymmetrical adobe structure features 24-centimeter thick walls in the Pueblo and Mission styles. Fechin carefully planned window openings, including lancet and oriel windows of rolled and sloped glass, to frame views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and admit intense light through textured "Terra Bayeta" walls and richly carved wood. Drawing on his training as a sculptor in his father's workshop, Fechin carved columns, stair railings, vigas, doors, and furniture from sugar pine and poplar imported from northwest England, achieving undulating surfaces through glued wood, uniform staining that preserved natural grain, and hand-waxing for luster. He collaborated with a local blacksmith on lighting fixtures, handles, and hinges, and produced copper lamps and a kitchen hood in his own metal workshop. The introduction of electricity to Taos in 1928 enabled Fechin to carve and build at night while painting by day. The house was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and the New Mexico Register of Cultural Properties on December 31, 1979.

The Taos Art Museum is located in Taos, New Mexico, in the Nicolai Fechin House. The museum operates as a nonprofit institution with the primary aims of improving awareness of Taos artists and patronage, and nurturing local artistic development. Visitors can access the museum through its official website at www.taosartmuseum.org. The museum's location in the historic Fechin House provides a distinctive setting that integrates artistic exhibition with architectural heritage, allowing visitors to experience both the collection and the built environment that Fechin created.