Museums in Albuquerque

Albuquerque's Cultural Institutions

The Albuquerque Museum in Old Town covers New Mexico history and fine art across four centuries, with particular strength in Spanish colonial work and twentieth-century New Mexico painting. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, also in Old Town, provides essential geological and paleontological context for understanding the landscape that defines so much of the region's art. The University of New Mexico Art Museum on the main campus holds a significant collection of prints, photographs, and paintings, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology offers one of the strongest collections of Southwest Indigenous material culture in the state. The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, operated by the nineteen Pueblos of New Mexico, presents Pueblo history and contemporary art with an authority that no outside institution can match. Together these institutions make Albuquerque an underrated museum destination, one that rewards visitors willing to move beyond the most famous Santa Fe institutions.