MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO ACQUIRES COLLECTION OF RELIGIOUS ART

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SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The Museum of New Mexico now owns a collection of 263 pieces of Hispanic devotional art.

Museum regents voted unanimously to accept the works — a vote that was a formality since the state had paid $3 million to the heirs of Taos-area collector Larry Frank. A vote by the regents last September allowed state Cultural Affairs Secretary Stuart Ashman to open negotiations with the heirs.

An exhibit of the works — 81 bultos or statues, 44 penitente cristos, 130 retablos or paintings and eight tin housewares — is to open at the Palace of the Governors here on July 20, said museum director Fran Levine.

The 2007 Legislature appropriated $3 million to “purchase and preserve’’ the collection, most of which was created in New Mexico during the Nineteenth Century. The oldest pieces date from the 1790s.

“This collection, together with the Iberian collection, really puts the Palace of the Governors on the map,’’ said Joseph B. Diaz, curator of Spanish colonial collections at the museum. The International Institute of Iberian Colonial Art gave the Iberian colonial collection of 70 paintings and three bultos from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries to the museum in 2005.

The museum’s conservation department has begun cleaning the Frank collection, said director of conservation Mark Mackenzie.

“It’s a monumentally large project,’’ he said.

Many pieces have been overpainted several times. Mackenzie said those additions are like chapters in the artworks’ long lives.

Conservation staff members are not restoring the art, but rather are leaving some overpainting to show part of the works’ past lives, making sure the pieces are in stable condition and “bringing forth their best appearance,’’ he said.