Furnishing the Santa Fe Style - El Palacio Magazine

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Much of the furniture created for the New Mexico Museum of Art over the years since its opening in 1917 still exists in galleries and storage areas. Beyond Jesse Nusbaum’s readily identifiable contributions based on local Hispanic tradition lay a mystery. In a group of significant works an accomplished furniture maker had continued Nusbaum’s vocabulary while introducing elements from various Native American cultures. Who might be the author of this evidence of a developing triculturalism in the Santa Fe style? And when were these pieces made? Above: Desk carved with Indian motifs that provided the key for identifying the furniture of Sam Hudelson. The file drawer is carved with the initials of the Museum of New Mexico. Photograph by Blair Clark. All furniture made for the Museum of Art pictured here and throughout is shown courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Left: Pencil notation under the center drawer of the desk with the initials of Samuel Francis Hudelson and dating his completion of the assignment to March 10, 1934, with emphatic flourish and underline. Photograph by Blair Clark.
SAM HUDELSON Firm in the belief that all the contents of the museum should be documented, Registrar Michelle Gallagher Roberts assigned her colleague Dan Goodman (now curator of collections at El Rancho de las Golondrinas) to work with me, and together we photographed, measured, and recorded every piece we could find. Most bore inventory numbers assigned in 1990, but no further study had been undertaken to determine their author or date. Moving what appeared to be a battered radiator cover with elaborate carved Indian-style decoration out from under a window recess in a corner of a gallery, we found it to be a desk with the initials MNM carved on the front of the deep file drawer, clearly indicating official use for the Museum of New Mexico. But it was the shallow center drawer that provided the Eureka moment: when we removed the drawer we discovered scrawled in pencil underneath “SFH/ Finished March 10-34.” We now had a lynchpin! Over the months when Dan could fit periodic furniture forays into his full schedule I was researching in libraries and archives where I had picked up on the name Sam Huddleson, Huddelson, or Hudelson, variously spelled. He had been officially added to the Museum of New Mexico staff in 1920 as superintendent, with responsibility for the Palace of the Governors and the Art Gallery (as the New Mexico Museum of Art was originally called) buildings, then jointly administered with the School of American Research (SAR, now School of Advanced Research) under the founding director Edgar L. Hewett. “Superintendent” was the same title held by Jesse Nusbaum before his departure from Santa Fe in December 1917. Further, Nusbaum in his memoirs credited Hudelson as one of the “good men” he had helping with the elaborate architectural woodwork he designed for the art museum. 1 Finding S. F. H. What singled Hudelson out to me was the artist Will Shuster’s passing reference in a 1940 interview as he described the scene in the art museum basement: “There’s Sam Huddleson [sic] presiding over a carpentry shop where Joe Bakos and Fremont Ellis and several other artists are busy making frames and crating paintings . . . good old Sam ready to lend a helping hand or a bit of advice.” 2 I couldn’t even be sure that “good old Sam” was the SFH written under the desk drawer as I could find no mention of a middle name—at least until I opened a manila envelope in the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, crammed with Sam Hudelson posing with an unidentified “Indian Friend” in El Palacio 50 (7), July 1943. Hudelson taught “industrial arts” for the Indian Service on several reservations before coming to Santa Fe in 1912 to work with Jesse Nusbaum on the renovation of the Palace of the Governors. He held the post of superintendent for the Museum of New Mexico from 1920 until 1941. yellowed newspaper clippings. I carefully removed each crumbling, irrelevant bit of trivia published in the Santa Fe New Mexican mentioning the Museum of New Mexico until out came a one-paragraph obituary published on June 7, 1946, for “Hudelson, Samuel Francis,” stating he had been custodian of the Museum of New Mexico. At last the correct spelling and his middle name! The information that he had retired eight years earlier proved incorrect, but it sent me to back issues of El Palacio to see if the fact was mentioned. An appreciation of his service in the July 1943 issue revealed that he had actually retired in 1941. In a brief biography, Assistant Editor Hulda R. Hobbs wrote that this son of a Texas rancher had come to Santa 44 El Palacio
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Page 5 and 6: SAM HUDELSON Elizabeth White house
Page 7 and 8: Left: A small bookcase whose carvin
Page 9 and 10: SAM HUDELSON The “Director’s de

Furnishing the Santa Fe Style - El Palacio Magazine

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