MUSEUMS

Welcome to the Las Cruces Museums!

COVID-19 UPDATE

The Las Cruces Museum System is committed to ensuring the health and well-being of all our patrons and staff.  

Per the most recent public health order issued by the State of New Mexico regarding COVID-19, masks are no longer required indoors, however we encourage our guests to still practice safe distancing while visiting our museums.


The Museum of Nature and 

Science, the Museum of Art, Branigan Cultural Center and the Railroad Museum are OPEN. Our normal operating hours are: 

Tuesday – Friday, 10am – 4:30pm and Saturday – 9am - 4:30pm

Please check out our Calendar of Events for April - June, 2022.

Branigan Cultural Center Call for Proposals 2022

Deadline Extended

Friday, May 27th at 5 PM


The Branigan Cultural Center is accepting proposals for exhibits with themes of cultural and historical significance relating to the Borderlands and U.S. Southwest to be presented in 2023. We invite submissions from informal and formal scholars, cultural heritage organizations, and artists (solo or group). 

Proposals must be submitted through SurveyMonkey. Use the following link to access the form:

SurveyMonkey Proposal Form

The deadline for submissions is Friday, May 27th at 5 pm. For more information, call 575.541.2154 or email museum.exhibitions@las-cruces.org

 

The Las Cruces Museum System aims to provide a welcoming environment for the curious so they can gain new insights and experience personal and community enrichment. The museums showcase exhibitions on local, national, and global themes to educate and inspire visitors from near and far. Admission is FREE. Our museum system includes:

Senior Couple watching a old Mexican wrestler movie surrounded by luchador mask

BRANIGAN CULTURAL CENTER

The Branigan Cultural Center is dedicated to engaging visitors in the rich heritage of the Southwest and the world-at-large through artistic, cultural and historical exhibitions and programs. Housed in a 1935 Pueblo Revival- style building, it was the first library in Las Cruces.

Gallery with pictures, ceramic vases and a big wooden bench

MUSEUM OF ART

The Museum of Art features juried, invitational, and traveling exhibitions with artwork by nationally and internationally known artists. Through the Studio Program, the Museum offers professional art instruction for youth and adults in drawing, painting, ceramics, and other media.

Little Boy playing at the exhibit

MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE

The Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science, or MoNaS, inspires curiosity about the sciences, facilitates life-long learning, and promotes stewardship of the natural environment of the Chihuahuan Desert and southern New Mexico.

Model railroad train

RAILROAD MUSEUM

The mission of the Railroad Museum is to preserve the heritage of railroading through a series of miniature representations of New Mexico railroads, as well as research and preserve the history of model railroading.

EXHIBITS

A patchwork of red yellow and orange fabric stitched to look like a spiky caterpillar

Thorns & Trees:
 Art Quilts by 4 Common Corners 

April 16- June 18, 2022


In this compilation, members of the quilting group 4 Common Corners used the natural environment as their theme by bringing attention to the animals and vegetation of New Mexico and surrounding states. 

Take off Aviation

Cleared for Take-Off:

Aviation in Southern New Mexico

Oct 1st-Fall 2022 


Cleared for Takeoff examines over 100 years of regional aviation history, both military and civilian, in southern New Mexico, using photographs, oral histories, and historic objects. Starting with the introductory use of military airplanes in 1916 after Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, NM, the exhibition explores the local impact of aviation-related training programs offered through the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts during World War II and the post-war era. It addresses the flourishing of civilian aviation in the 1950s–1960s, with the formation of flying clubs and shuttle airlines dotting southern New Mexico. With the decline of leisure flying beginning in the 1980s, it notes the changing nature of local aviation in the 21st Century. Come learn more about aviation history in southern New Mexico.

 

Learn More

blue alien woman with mouth agape and eyes closed painted in watercolorThe Voice of a Two Spirit

May 6-July 16, 2022


The Voice of a Two Spirit presents artwork by Marcy Angeles, a regional artist who explores her life experiences as an Indigenous Two Spirit through her art. Angeles’ artwork presents her conflict of living within a culture and power structure dominated by white Christian men while honoring her Indigenous heritage and embodying two gender spirits within one human body. By embracing her Two Spirit being, Angeles acknowledges the continuum of gender identity and its expression through gender fluidity. Angeles’ goal is to heal herself from traumas she has experienced, and by doing so, offer healing to others. 

Painting of waves crashing against the rocks on shore of Monterey

American Impressionism

Museum of Art

April 29th - July 23, 2022

Drawn from the acclaimed collection of the Huntington (WV) Museum of Art, American Impressionism: Treasures from the Daywood Collection showcases work from a transitional time in American art, approximately the 1890s through the 1910s, when artists abandoned the rigors of academic styles and subjects. They turned instead to intimate scenes of the cultivated countryside and figure studies of friends and neighbors.