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Established in 1959, the New Mexico University Museum has provided forty-eight years of service to the university and the community. The University Museum assists New Mexico State University in providing quality education, advancing knowledge and enriching culture through research and providing service to the people of New Mexico.  The  Museum has served the university and surrounding communities since 1959.  Through its care and maintenance of donated ethnographic, historic and prehistoric objects it preserves an important part of Southwestern and  Border region culture and history.  The Museum  also encourages student and faculty research on our diverse cultural materials.  Additionally, Museum faculty members  supervise independent student research projects each semester.

The Museum collections are primarily anthropological (archaeological and ethnographic) with secondary collections in history and the natural sciences.  Anthropological collections document the cultural diversity of the border in the Greater Southwest and northern Mexico.  The preservation and cataloguing of collections are Museum priorities to promote research and access to cultural materials.  Exhibits are developed by students and staff as well as brought in from other institutions.  These exhibits focus on the traditions of on-going historic and prehistoric cultures.  Past exhibits have explored life in 1930s' New Mexico, Southwestern weavings, prehistoric cultural interactions along the Gila River, the Fremont expedition, and everyday life in a Las Cruces Hispanic household at the turn of the 20th century.  The Museum also provides public lectures on a variety of topics. These lectures feature faculty, staff, and visiting experts who present insights on cultural traditions, events, and activities

Location:  
We are located on the University campus in Kent Hall at University Avenue and Solano Drive.

Hours of Operation:

Museum exhibits are free and open to the public. The Museum Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 noon until 4:00 pm.  (Special arrangements can be made for school classes and special functions.) 

Contact:
For general inquires:

e-mail:  museum@nmsu.edu

Telephone:  (505) 646-3739

FAX:  (505) 646-1419

Mailing Address:

New Mexico State University Museum

Kent Hall, MSC 3564

P.O. Box 30001

Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001

The mission of the New Mexico State University Museum derives from and is consistent with the mission of New Mexico State University. The museum's mission, therefore, is to assist New Mexico State University in providing quality education for its students, advancing knowledge and enriching culture through research, and providing educational service to the people of New Mexico. Deriving from and consistent with its status as a sub-department of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Museum places special emphasis on education, research, and service that preserve and maintain the state's multicultural heritage. 

Teaching

The Museum's teaching responsibility is to support teaching and other instructional activities in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the College of Arts and Sciences, and other NMSU academic units. Specifically, the Museum provides formal instruction in Museum Studies to undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines, including Anthropology, Art, Art History and Public History. 

Research

The Museum's research responsibility is to support research by faculty and students in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the College of Arts and Sciences, and other NMSU academic units. The Museum supports, as appropriate, the dissemination of research by faculty and students. The Museum facilitates collaboration among NMSU departments, programs, and colleges. The Museum facilitates cooperation between NMSU and private, state, federal, and international organizations, institutions, and agencies. 

Service

The Museum's service responsibility is to support the local, state, national, and greater world communities through educational outreach and cultural conservation activities, in association with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the College of Arts and Sciences, and other NMSU units. The Museum will especially promote educational outreach and cultural conservation activities that preserve and maintain the state's and region's multicultural heritage. 

Collection, Conservation, and Exhibition of Material Culture

The Museum has a special responsibility to collect, conserve, and exhibit material objects relating to the multicultural heritage of the peoples of our state and region. Primarily, the Museum collects and curates significant anthropological and archaeological materials that relate to this multicultural heritage. Secondarily, the Museum collects and curates objects relating to the history and natural science of our state and region. These activities support the Museum's teaching, research, and service missions and help meet NMSU's legal responsibilities relating to the collection and curation of material objects. 

Dr. Monte McCrossin is Director of the University Museum and Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at New Mexico State University. He was educated at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in 1994. He has been at New Mexico State University since 2000. In addition to the Museum, his primary interests are in the fossil record of primate and human evolution. He has conducted anthropological fieldwork for many years in Kenya and is currently carrying out a research project concerning human origins at the site of Qasr as-Sahabi in Libya.  He has conducted research on museum collections in the U.S., Mexico, the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Swizerland, Kenya, and Japan. While continuing to maintain the Museum's regional focus, Dr. McCrossin hopes to increase the Museum's educational and research activities in interdisciplinary and international directions.

  Dr. Terry Reynolds is the Curator of Collections and  Exhibits for the Museum. She is  an anthropologist  who  has  done extensive research on  New Mexico peoples, history, arts,  and  crafts.  She received her Ph.D. from the University  of British Columbia and was Director of the University  of  Denver  Graduate  Museums Studies Program  before arriving at NMSU in 1998.   Here, she  is primarily responsible for the  management of  the  Museum's collections and the  planning and  implementation of the Museum's exhibits. 

Dr. John G. Cabrera is a retired engineering geologist who presently is a volunteer Co-Manager for the School Outreach program of the Museum. He attended the City College of New York, The University of Tennessee, and Cornell University where he obtained his Ph.D. He did most of his research in Brazil, where he studied the foundation conditions of hydroelectric projects, including the world's largest-Itaipu. Dr. Cabrera was also an Associate Professor in the Geological Engineering program of NMSU.  Dr. Cabrera helped design the first sets of "Museum in a Bag" kits to teach Las Cruces school children how to recognize and appreciate the importance of minerals and rocks.  He also collaborated in creating the second set of kits on "Indians of the Southwest." 

As Co-Manager of the Museum's School Outreach Program, Ann's desire is to bring the "Museum to the Children" and the "Children to the Museum." 

Amy Harvey and Jennifer Frederick are the Museum's Public Programs Coordinators.   They schedule and conduct exhibit tours  and workshops for school children, design and direct our Saturday Family Workshops, supervise activities in the “Kid’s Corner,” and conduct other public outreach programs.  Amy and Jennifer skillfully and enthusiastically combine arts and crafts activities and lessons that relate to Museum current exhibits.  Amy and Jennifer help children explore the many facets of exposing them  to different cultures through hands-on activities related to Museum exhibits, giving them a tangible connection to those cultures.  Amy is currently working towards her Master's in English and Jennifer is working towards her Master's in Anthropology from New Mexico State University.

Dr. Rani Alexander (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Curator of Mesoamerican Archaeology and Ethnohistory) received her Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1993, and has been at NMSU since 1996. She studies the archaeology of pre-Columbian and Colonial period civilizations in Mesoamerica. Her research focuses on colonial ethnohistory, political economy, and faunal analysis. Recently, she has completed a study of Late Colonial period (AD 1750-1847) settlement and site structure of the pre-Caste War communities of the Parroquia de Yaxcaba, Yucatan, Mexico. 

Dr. Christine Eber (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Curator of Maya Ethnography) is a cultural anthropologist who received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1991. She has been at NMSU since 1995. Her research focuses on gender, art, religion, and Mesoamerican ethnology. Since 1987 she has been studying Maya women's participation in social movements in Chiapas, Mexico, including women's weaving cooperatives. 

Dr. Jon Hunner (Associate Professor of History; Curator of History) received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1996. In that same year he arrived at NMSU to become Director of the Public History program. In this capacity, he has supervised numerous projects in historic preservation and historical research in the local area and state. 

Dr. Wenda Trevathan (Professor of Anthropology; Curator of Physical Anthropology) is a biological anthropologist who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado In 1980. She has been at NMSU since 1983. Her research concerns aspects of human reproduction including childbirth, maternal behavior, sexuality, and menopause. She is the recipient of the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association/Society for Applied Anthropology (1990) and the NMSU Westhafer Award for Excellence in Research (1998). 

Dr. Daniel Villa (Associate Professor of Spanish; Curator of Border Studies) received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1992 and started at NMSU that same year. His research concerns Spanish language loss and maintenance in the United States, the discourse structure of Spanish dialogue, the Dynamics of Language contact in the Southwest, and inter-institutional approaches to language preservation. He teaches a broad range of courses which reflect this research. His fieldwork centers on New Mexican and northern Mexican varieties of Spanish and he has collaborated with professors and teachers in the area in order to develop teaching strategies and curriculum for working with at-risk high school students. 

Dr. William Walker (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Curator of Southwest Archaeology) is an archaeologist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1995. He came to NMSU in 1996. he specializes in the study of prehistoric ritual and has participated in archaeological excavations in Arizona, New York, and Argentina. He directed the NMSU archaeology field school on the Gray Ranch in southern Hidalgo county. This work contributes to a larger research project, La Frontera Archaeological Program, that explores the ritual organization of the Cases Grandes Interaction Sphere in Southern New Mexico.

Dr. Andrew Wiget (Professor of English, Curator of Folklife) recently joined our illustrious group of Curators. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1977, and is now Director of the New Mexico Heritage Center at NMSU. His principal interest is assisting indigenous peoples in preserving their cultural traditions. His first major fieldwork was among the Mistassini Cree of northern Quebec, Canada. In the southwest, he has worked with the Navajo and Apache, as well as among the Zuni for whom he has directed several programs documenting oral history and folklore. Currently, he is engaged in a project among the indigenous Khanty of Western Siberia to document their traditional way of life and assist them in securing their land base as a protected area.