It's Not About the Aliens
Roswell, New Mexico... All I'd ever heard about it was kitschy and revolved around supposed alien sightings. After Lisa dragged me to Wall Drug in South Dakota, I made her promise no more kitsch and no more Americana. Roswell promised a lot of both, so how did we end up here? Art, specifically the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art.
While it's usually not in our budget to buy anything, we love to check out galleries and museums as we travel. Unfortunately, our visits to highly touted artsy towns have mostly been disappointing. Just the other day we cruised through Marfa, Texas on our way out of Big Bend. The town was beautiful and we saw a few neat pieces, but mostly it was the same hipsteresque shops you find in SF or Portland. Not our jam.
Thus, we were highly dubious we'd find anything interesting in Roswell and almost skipped it entirely. Man are we glad we didn't. We cruised into town in search of lunch, green chiles required. Big D's Downtown Dive fit the bill. While not a true dive, the food was awesome and people were so friendly, which was a nice change from our Texas receptions.
Sated, it was museum time. The town boasts two free museums, The Roswell Museum and Art Center and the aforementioned AMOCA. Both were excellent. The RMAC initially opened as a collaboration between local groups and the WPA in 1935. Its focus is southwestern artists, but the range of work was fantastic, modern to classic and everything in between. We saw loads of great pieces by artists we knew and some we'd never heard of.
We left completely stoked and cruised up to the AMOCA. Donald Anderson, a local oil magnate, began the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program in 1967, with the goal of providing artists from all over the world with the gift of time to simply create. In 1994, he opened the museum to showcase his collection of work from artists who participated in the RAIR.
This is not your conventional orderly museum; here pieces hang everywhere. Many are brilliant, some are a bit wacky, but the place feels like a treasure hunt and we loved it. Interestingly, Anderson himself was actually a brilliant painter. He had an eye for light and colour and created stunning abstract geometric landscapes. Fortunately for us the museum had a number of his pieces on display. He was probably our favorite artist of the day.
On our way back to camp we stopped at the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge just out of town and we're thrilled to spot a flock of black-necked stilts in one of the ponds. Overall, we've loved our stay in and around Roswell. It's not a town that is highly touted in guidebooks, but it has charming old houses, good food, great art and way less alien shtick than advertised. Sure, it's a touch run down and lacked the overpriced boutiques selling flimsy clothing, but Roswell delivered where so many other places failed, and for that we are grateful.