Exhibition Opening for "1912"

Join the New Mexico History Museum for a free public reception celebrating the opening of 1912, an exhibition about statehood.

Listen to music in the Palace of the Governors Courtyard by the Santa Fe Concert Band, who will play a variety of historic tunes from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., including the first state song. Make a button to wear and take home with graphic symbols of statehood. Take home a 1912 felt pennant (while supplies last). And enjoy refreshments by the Women’s Board of the Museum of New Mexico. We’re going to have a good time!

About 1912

The exhibition, , offers a snapshot of the state at a time of remarkable change and growth, and explores what formally tied 327,000 Nuevo Mexicanos to the union. It lets visitors step back into 1912 and explore a striking matrix of historic objects that reveal interesting, surprising, and sometimes unusual connections from that time, sparking curiosity about the past. A special aspirational video project titled “Voices of 1912,” proclaiming the future will be what we make it, blends words from 1912 politicians and poets and is presented in both English and Spanish.

About the Santa Fe Concert Band

Performing under the baton of Music Director, Greg Heltman, The Santa Fe Concert Band will offer a program of historic music from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, an era bookending New Mexico statehood. Selections will include beloved Mexican and Spanish works such as La Golondrina, Cielito Lindo, and Amperito Roca; and Sousa marches including Fairest of the Fair, Semper Fidelis, and The Liberty Bell. Also on the program will be the official song of Santa Fe, adopted in 1935, La Villa de Santa Fe, and of course, the official state song, O, Fair New Mexico by Elizabeth Garrett, written in 1915 and officially adopted in 1917.

The Santa Fe Concert Band continues one of Santa Fe’s oldest traditions of free public concerts by volunteer musicians, dating back to 1865, when Mexican musician Francisco Perez, after serving as a Confederate Army bugler in the ill-fated invasion of New Mexico by Texas forces during the Civil War, returned to Santa Fe and formed La Banda de Santa Fe. This musical tradition and ensemble continued for many decades under different names and directors. In 1983, Greg Heltman stepped in and reincorporated the organization in its present structure as The Santa Fe Concert Band.