12 Days of Christmas: UTEP's Centennial Museum

On the campus of University of Texas El Paso, there's a great museum with exhibits on the natural and cultural history of the Chihuahuan Desert region.  The Centennial Museum is a great place to visit, and while you're there, duck into their lovely store...lots of good shopping inside! 

UTEP's Centennial Museum

A hidden gem of the region is University of Texas-El Paso's Centennial Museum, with impressive changing exhibitions on history, natural history and culture of the region, as well as permanent displays.  A lovely garden on the grounds presents native species of the Chihuahuan Desert.  We encourage you to visit this great museum! 

The Museum's website says this,

"The Museum’s permanent exhibits focus on the natural and cultural history of the Chihuahuan Desert region. The extensive stored collections of the Centennial are available for scholarly research. In the temporary galleries the Museum presents a wide range of exhibits on themes related to border life and culture, the Americas, and UTEP activities. "

We send our thanks to Randy Mallory and the Texas Historical Commission for use of this photo! 

From Above, Day 3

This is the third "taste" of a wonderful aerial photography exhibit now on display at UTEP's Centennial Museum....photographs by Adriel Heisey.  They were taken from the open seat of his tiny, experimental Kolb TwinStar airplane.  Check out Friday's and Saturday's entries on this blog for more information.

From Above, Day 2

One of the stunning aerial photographs by Adriel Heisey on view at UTEP's Centennial Museum.  See yesterday's entry for more information on this exhibition. 

From Above!

For the next three days, we'll be featuring photographs from an exhibition showing at El Paso's Centennial Museum on the UTEP campus.

Here's a description of the show:

From Above: Images of a Storied Land

Showing through January 15, 2009

The exhibition, created by the Center for Desert Archaeology in collaboration with the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, features 28 large-format aerial photographs by Adriel Heisey. The images convey the beauty, mystery, and fragility of past human activity on the Southwestern landscape.


Heisey photographs ancient and modern landscapes from a unique vantage point: the open seat of his tiny, experimental Kolb TwinStar airplane, soaring above the earth to capture the imprints that both ancient and modern cultures have left on the landscape.


Heisey’s aerial photographs have been featured in numerous publications, including Arizona Highways, New Mexico Magazine, National Geographic, American Photo, Photo Life, Whole Earth, Journal of the Southwest, and Nature Conservancy.

Flowers Gracing the Chihuahuan Desert Garden at UTEP's Centennial Museum

Flowers in the Chihuahuan Desert Gardens outside UTEP's Centennial Museum in El Paso!

UTEP's Centennial Museum

The Centennial Museum on the campus of University of Texas-El Paso offers visitors wonderful exhibits on culture, history and natural history.  Surrounding the Bhutanese-inspired building is a demonstration Chihuahuan Desert Garden.  Check it out when visiting central El Paso!

'The Disappeared' exhibition at UTEP

The Disappeared is an exhibition so ambitious in scope that it encompasses three exhibition spaces of The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP): Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, Centennial Museum, and Union Exhibition Gallery. We visited the exhibition at the Centennial Museum and were moved by the works on display.

From the exhibition publication:

"The word 'disappeared' was refined during the military dictatorships that ruled many Latin American countries during the mid-to-late twentieth century, when it came to describe members of the resistance, their sympathizers and everyday citizens who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the regime. The exhibition contains work by thirteen contemporary artists and one artists' collective in a variety of media from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Venezuela, who over the course of the last thirty years have made art about the disappeared. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The younger artists were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. Others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war."

Plan to visit the Centennial Museum and the other exhibition locations on the UTEP campus now through September 11.

Hummers

Taken in Dog Canyon at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, there are lots of places in the region to see hummingbirds.

Also check out the Hummingbird trail at the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens in Fort Davis, too.

In El Paso, visit the Centennial Museum's bird exhibits on the campus of UTEP.

For a link to all the region's nature centers, click here.

For information on birding in the region, visit: www.texasmountaintrail.com/bird