About the Museum

Established in 1959, the New Mexico State University Museum has provided fifty years of service to the university and the community. The Museum assists NMSU in providing quality education, advancing knowledge through research, and celebrating the culture and history of the southwest and the University. The Museum serves the community as a repository and exhibitor of local and regional culture and history.

Through its care and maintenance of ethnographic, historic, ancient and contemporary objects the museum preserves an important part of Southwestern and  Border region culture and history.  The Museum  also encourages student and faculty research on our diverse cultural materials.  Additionally, Museum faculty members  supervise independent student research projects each semester.

The Museum collections are primarily anthropological (archaeological and ethnographic) with secondary collections in history and the natural sciences.  Anthropological collections document the cultural diversity of the border in the Greater Southwest and northern Mexico.  The preservation and cataloguing of collections promotes research and access to cultural materials.  Exhibitions are developed by students and staff as well as brought in from other institutions.

These exhibitions focus on the traditions of on-going historic and ancestral cultures.  Past exhibitions have explored life in 1930s’ New Mexico, contemporary Indigenous art, Southwestern weavings, indigenous cultural interactions along the Gila River, the Fremont expedition, and everyday life in a Las Cruces Hispanic household at the turn of the 20th century.  The Museum also provides public lectures on a variety of topics. These lectures feature faculty, staff, and visiting experts who present insights on cultural traditions, events, and activities.