Interviewer: “All of these articles, items, what are your plans for the future Mrs. Stradling, with the museum?”
Anne: “Well I was hoping I could get the museum up in Ruidoso, NM.”
Interviewer: “To take it over?”
Anne: “Yes, I hope, I hope they do.”
Interviewer: “And in perpetuity? Forever?”
Anne: “Yes because I’m getting pretty old.”
Interviewer: “And you’d like to have it so that people…”
Anne: “I’d like to know that it’d be set in one place. Yes.”
Interviewer: “150 years from now children can come in and look at some of these things?”
Anne: “Sure, they can look at the horses and everything, you bet, yea.”
-Video interview with Anne Stradling in her Museum of the Horse in Patagonia, AZ, 1990.
The Hubbard Museum of the American West currently holds Anne Stradling’s collection in addition to numerous items from smaller donations accepted throughout the years. Items in the collection include American West fine art and historic objects, Native American art and objects from tribes throughout the Americas, and an abundance of heirlooms, many of which are bespoke, and items brought back from worldly travels that had been passed down to Anne from affluent relatives on the East coast as early as the 1700s.
Museums are not locations to store forgotten objects. They are a places where collections are preserved and protected to be used for education. They are also places for people, both locals and visitors, to gather and interact with each other and to share ideas and learn together. HMAW staff facilitated the experience between objects and people by caring for the collections and finding ways to present the objects to visitors that ultimately spark ideas, promote questions, and start conversations. According to museum specialist and art historian Colleen Ritzau Leth, museums are “active records of ‘us’ in the broadest most universal, global, and cosmopolitan sense of the word” and that we “come to know ourselves as part of a continuum of shared human identity” through visiting these institutions.
Museums also have the ability to promote community and education through programming and volunteer opportunities. HMAW staff invited local artists, school groups, organizations, and lecturers to come share their achievements, knowledge, and discoveries through the Community Corner and Summer Saturdays programs. These programs provided new content and educational opportunities for visitors. HMAW also offered tours to tourist, professional, and school groups. Schools and organizations could also take advantage of the Education Trunk program which allowed them to have a museum curated lesson in their classroom while also meeting the New Mexico Common Core State Standards for education. In addition, HMAW also provided important volunteer opportunities to the community. Many of the volunteers were retirees that enjoyed coming to the museum on a regular basis to assist in educating visitors and in caring for the collection.
The most recent Museum staff had been working on a shoestring budget, and to call it as such is generous. HMAW’s goals to protect and preserve objects and provide for the community still existed but the lack of budget and apparent lack of support or concern from the City of Ruidoso Downs had made those goals very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve despite how badly the staff wanted to succeed. Since its ownership of the Museum, the City had hired a string of unqualified and inexperienced Museum Directors who failed to increase visitation and revenue and had allowed the $1.5 million gifted from the Hubbards to be spent with seemingly no long-term plan for the Museum. The building itself has been allowed to fall into disrepair, becoming an unsafe environment for people and for the collection for many years. Before the recent museum closure and lay-off of staff, these issues had created a situation in which three people attempted to do the work of 15 with almost no budget or support. They tried and planned to do so much more to increase visitation and revenue, if only they had the resources. The Museum needs to be run as a business and any novice business owner would know that money needs to be invested first before the business can be profitable.
HMAW is, and has been, on a path that cannot continue. The Museum needs backing and support from a willing parent organization, one that wants to see it succeed, be it the City or not. The Hubbard Museum of the American West is here because of Anne Stradling’s love for the American West. Please, City of Ruidoso Downs, don’t be the reason the Museum ceases to exist.
