Community Calendar

Friday, June 9th, 9:00AM-3:00PM, All Day-Fun Friday-Adobe
Come by for a tour of the Home and get treated to a hands-on lesson in adobe! All day long, we invite guests to experience how the Magoffin home was built on a much smaller scale. Don’t let the size fool you, though! While the bricks and the final home will be smaller, the principles you will learn are the same ones used to build a full-scale adobe structure! Free with paid tour.

Saturday, July 8th, 10:00 AM Free Yoga Class
Joseph Magoffin, as a member of both El Paso’s Board of Health and its Board of Education, was a proponent of physical activities for boys and girls. It is in this spirit that Rebecca leads the class through a vinyasa flow that will get the body and mind centered for the day. Call in advance to 915-533-5147, ext. 1002, or email magoffin-home@thc.texas.gov to register.

Saturday, June 10th, 10:00am - 12:00pm
Location: The Zane Bennett Collection Study Room (RM 106) in Devasthali Hall

Join artist and Wild Pigment Project founding director Tilke Elkins to ask questions about the transformative powers of paint. How can wild pigments usher in change on personal, social and planetary levels? Explore questions of ethical foraging and creative purpose.

Paint-making through a deep relationship with place nourishes both the painter and the land. By intercepting materials as they travel through their life cycles and exploring opportunities for reciprocity — ways to give back to the land and its communities, both human and interspecies — artists can align their material practices with values of reverence for place.

Engage the full sensorium through multiple paint-making demos and a chance to paint with wild pigments in this free two-hour workshop.

Saturday, June 10th, 2:00PM-3:00PM: How El Paso Works: “Tech H2O”
When Joseph Magoffin helped write the articles of Incorporation for El Paso, he helped shape the modern city. In this series, we will compare Joseph’s vision for El Paso to what is has become in the last 150 years. Guest speakers from municipal agencies will be invited to speak about their departments and let us know why and when we might need to call upon them to help us keep El Paso thriving.
This session, we will discuss the duties of City Council with a city representative of El Paso and compare it to duties Joseph would have had as a city alderman in early El Paso. There will be a question-and-answer portion of this event that is intended to help us understand what we should expect of our representatives. This is a series meant to help us all become more aware of and confident in using city services available to us all and to celebrate 150 years of being an incorporated city in Texas. Call in advance to 915-533-5147, ext. 1002, to register.

Friday, June 16th , All Day- Fun Friday: Cool Down
If the summer heat is getting you down, come by the Magoffin home for some fun and games in the sprinklers! You can enjoy the land just like the Magoffin’s did. Be sure to wear clothes suitable for water activities. Feel free to bring a picnic lunch and et on the grounds. Note: After playing in the sprinklers, you will not be allowed in the Magoffin Home for a tour. If you wish to both tour and play in the yard, we strongly recommend you do the tour first.

Saturday, June 17th, 10:00 AM-12:00PM Make-a-Thing: Rock Painting Art, $5.00 per person
Get your creative juices flowing for summer and join us at the Magoffin Home to paint some rocks! Bring your ideas and help us make the grounds extra special by creating a little piece of art. Make sure to wear clothes suitable for painting with acrylic. Paints will be non-toxic, but we ask that parents monitor young children while they work. Paint, brushes, and rocks will be provided. Take it with you or leave it in our Magoffin Home Rock Garden to be admired. This is for all skill levels. All materials will be provided and are included in the cost of the class. Call in advance to 915-533-5147, ext 1002 to register.

Wednesday, June 21st, 12:00PM/ Brain Trust Brown Bag Lecture: El Paso and our Jewish Heritage

Joseph relied on many people to help build an El Paso that represented all faiths and many cultures. Each group left its legacy to our city. Join us as we discuss the contribution of the Jewish community to
El Paso’s history and how their work is reflected in modern El Paso. Call in advance to 915-533-5147 ext. 1002, or email magoffin-home@thc.texas.gov to register.

Specter, Meditations on Mentor and Student, and Wild Pigment Project, three new exhibitions opening this summer in the University Art Museum at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 22.

“Cara Despain: Specter,”on view in the UAM’s Contemporary Gallery, is an immersive multimedia exhibition featuring work by Miami-based artist Cara Despain. Using sculptural and video-based installations created with found objects and archival film from the 1940s-60s, Despain explores the irreversible environmental consequences and hidden psychological and microscopic health effects left in the wake of nuclear weapons development and testing across the Southwest.

“Agnes Martin & Karen Yank: Meditations on Mentor and Student” will be on display in the Bunny Conlon Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery. This exhibition explores the work and intersecting lives of the artists Agnes Martin and Karen Yank. For nearly 17 years, Yank and Martin met weekly as a friendship and mentorship flourished. Featured in this exhibition are a selection of Martin’s lithographs on vellum, whose complex and meditative grids are indicative of the renowned artist’s style which impacted upon Abstract expressionism, Minimalism, and Transcendentalism. Yank’s steel wall-based sculptures reference nature and convey abstract emotional content in minimalist/maximalist forms.

“Wild Pigment Project” curated by Wild Pigment Project’s founding director Tilke Elkins will be on display in the Mullennix Bridge Gallery. This group exhibition, which originated at form & concept gallery in Santa Fe, NM, features artists who actively integrate plant and mineral pigments, hand-gathered and prepared in local landscapes, into their studio practice. The project promotes ecological balance and regenerative economies through a passion for wild pigments, their places of origin, and their cultural histories.

The University Art Museum at NMSU is pleased to announce Specter, an immersive multimedia solo exhibition by artist Cara Despain. Through site-specific research-based processes, Despain explores nuclear weapons development — addressing the difficult history and legacy of territory expansion, industrialization and empire building in the U.S. Using sculptural and video-based installations created with found objects and archival film from the 1940-60s, Despain questions our cultural memory and underscores the irreversible environmental consequences and hidden psychological and microscopic health effects left in the wake of nuclear testing across the Southwest.

Specter was initially shown at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, FL, with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and curated by Leilani Lynch. In this iteration of the exhibition, Despain builds upon her new series of curio cabinets, adorned portals to her video installation “Test of Faith'', constructed to hold Depression Era glass dishware containing uranium oxide. This three-channel video, along with new paintings and drawings by Despain, presents hypnotic but horrific mirrored images of nuclear test clips pulled from declassified and digitized footage of atomic bomb experiments conducted at the Nevada Test Site, less than 150 miles from where Despain’s mother and grandmother were born and raised. This deeply beautiful but haunting video installation and accompanying body of work reveals a layered and complicated history poetically revealing the injustices delivered on rural communities across the Southwest.

The world's first nuclear explosion occurred in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto. “Trinity” (the code name for this detonation) was said to have a nuclear “fall-out” zone of 150+ miles, affecting the entire ecosystem, including all the immediate inhabitants of the region, but it also ultimately affected the entire globe forever. Specter will form the centerpiece and backdrop for a series of events happening in the region including juried exhibitions, curatorial projects, and a series of collaborative panels, lectures, and screenings, all mining the region's history of nuclear warfare, uranium extraction and pollution, climate change, and the effects of nuclear radiation across the Southwest. This exhibition runs concurrently with shows at the Las Cruces Branigan Cultural Center and The El Paso Museum of Art, both which tackle the environmental, biological, mental and physical effects of nuclear development across our rural communities of the US.

The University Art Museum at NMSU is pleased to announce Specter, an immersive multimedia solo exhibition by artist Cara Despain. Through site-specific research-based processes, Despain explores nuclear weapons development — addressing the difficult history and legacy of territory expansion, industrialization and empire building in the U.S. Using sculptural and video-based installations created with found objects and archival film from the 1940-60s, Despain questions our cultural memory and underscores the irreversible environmental consequences and hidden psychological and microscopic health effects left in the wake of nuclear testing across the Southwest.

Specter was initially shown at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, FL, with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and curated by Leilani Lynch. In this iteration of the exhibition, Despain builds upon her new series of curio cabinets, adorned portals to her video installation “Test of Faith'', constructed to hold Depression Era glass dishware containing uranium oxide. This three-channel video, along with new paintings and drawings by Despain, presents hypnotic but horrific mirrored images of nuclear test clips pulled from declassified and digitized footage of atomic bomb experiments conducted at the Nevada Test Site, less than 150 miles from where Despain’s mother and grandmother were born and raised. This deeply beautiful but haunting video installation and accompanying body of work reveals a layered and complicated history poetically revealing the injustices delivered on rural communities across the Southwest.

The world's first nuclear explosion occurred in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto. “Trinity” (the code name for this detonation) was said to have a nuclear “fall-out” zone of 150+ miles, affecting the entire ecosystem, including all the immediate inhabitants of the region, but it also ultimately affected the entire globe forever. Specter will form the centerpiece and backdrop for a series of events happening in the region including juried exhibitions, curatorial projects, and a series of collaborative panels, lectures, and screenings, all mining the region's history of nuclear warfare, uranium extraction and pollution, climate change, and the effects of nuclear radiation across the Southwest. This exhibition runs concurrently with shows at the Las Cruces Branigan Cultural Center and The El Paso Museum of Art, both which tackle the environmental, biological, mental and physical effects of nuclear development across our rural communities of the US.