Recognizing History

Meridel Rubenstein, Oppenheimer’s Chair, 1993, steel, glass with photographic images, chair, video screen, 10 x 7 x 9 feet, courtesy the Tia Foundation

for him are those demanding that visitors question the events of the time. Meridel Rubinstein’s Oppenheimer’s Chair asks viewers to imagine the decisions that Los Alamos National Laboratory director Robert J. Oppenheimer had to make. “It’s a mythic piece ... that carries the weight of being responsible for the detonation of the bomb over Japan.”

The exhibition covers a lot of ground, artistically and from a global socio-political standpoint. But perhaps its most significant accomplishment is challenging preconceptions about radiation and the atomic age–and looking at them through the humanist lens of artistic creation.

“From 14,0000-year-old stone tools to the invention of the atomic bomb, technological invention and social interaction represent a unique, unbroken history in New Mexico,” Traugott says. “The art of New Mexico is clearly a reflection, and a by-product, of those technological and cultural experiences. We have not always treated each other kindly, and art is one of the vehicles that allows us to treat our fellow humans in a civilized manner. Art is a very important healing medium.”

Citizens see family members in Let the Sunshine In. BY JILL HARTKE, DIGITAL ARCHIVIST

THE EXHIBIT, LET THE SUNSHINE IN, features street photography from 1969. Unidentified people are captured in unguarded moments because they didn’t know they were being photographed. In choosing images to showcase, I harbored hopes of someone claiming the subject of one photograph, in particular. In one of the images curated for the project, an older woman sits on a stool wearing a brown dress and a black scarf over her eyes. A sign around her neck reads, “I am blind and sell piñon and gum.” With the opportunity to publicize the exhibition, we encouraged people to come forward if they recognize anyone in the photographs. To my delight, a man showed up at the Museum saying he was sent by his uncle to tell us about his great-aunt Sotela. She was our piñon and gum seller. Sotela Garcia Jaramillo was born in Albuquerque in 1895. She lost her eyesight in her twenties. She married and raised four children. Sotela’s grandson called me from California to say that selling items on Central Avenue was her social outlet and she didn’t like to stay away for long. Responding to a social media post discussing downtown in the late 1960s, people fondly remembered a woman who sold gum and piñon. Sotela loved sitting in the bustle of Central Avenue sidewalks, and people loved visiting with her. She died in 1980 and is buried in San José Cemetery in Albuquerque. When the exhibition opened, the label beside her photograph read: Blind woman selling gum and piñon. It was an honor to update that label to: Sotela Garcia Jaramillo selling gum and piñon. She was our first identification for this exhibition, but not our last. Others have come forward to identify friends and share stories. We continue to welcome information allowing us to change more labels and make our collection stronger. Walter McDonald, Sotela Garcia Jaramillo selling gum and piñon, 1969, 35mm slide, Albuquerque Museum