2026 State of the Foundation at the Garden Party & Annual Members Meeting - Melanie McWhorter, June 25, 2026
Melanie McWhorter; Story Coleman; Giulia Caporuscio; and Nick Wirth. Photo credit, Anne Kelly.
Welcome & Reflection – Education, Preservation, Conversation
Thank and recognize members, volunteers, staff, board, donors, sponsors, and community partners.
At Historic Santa Fe Foundation in 2026, my mind has been on concepts surrounding preservation and culture with conversation and education as tools to explore these ideas.
The staff discussed at our annual January planning meeting how El Zaguán and the Thaw Education Center are our place of grounding. We strive to be the best caretakers of these structures with long histories and to use these places for our mission-aligned education and events. We are relationship-building in Santa Fe city, and county, and regionally and focusing on education that will foster a love for our values across generations presently and for posterity.We communicate with and within our community.
We explore the relevancy of and actualization our purpose and mission. We look to maintain the longevity of this long-standing nonprofit. We are defining what clarity looks like for the vision for our future.
Preservation Education: Growing the Next Generation
Our preservation education programs work towards fostering passion for research and the preservation trades.
We completed our third year of our High School Research Fellowship this April. Thanks to Giulia Caporuscio, our Education Center and Programs Director for heading up the High School Research Fellowship this year. We are also grateful to Nick Wirth and Lisa Nordstrom for their mentorship and all the many speakers for the monthly meetings. Finally, we are thankful to the anonymous donor and Rob and Jody Wilson for sponsoring the program.
This year we mentored five students Mandela Magnet School and one from Santa Fe Prepatory School with topics on the history of Santa Fe’s architecture, TB in NM, A History of Colcha, A Transformation of Indigenous Mythologies in NM, and exploring Corridos during the Mexican-American War including an original musical performance. The Recordings are on YouTube or will be soon.
Each student receives a $500 scholarship with competition of the program and upon entering a higher education college or university.
One of our fellows is now an intern Gabriel Bleichmar, an upcoming senior, who focused on TB in NM. Among project like sanding our front windowpanes and preparing for painting, he is focusing on a finding guide in our archives on TB.
Once again, we are pleased to partner with St. John’s College as part of their intern program this year. Astrid Schwarz is recently graduated from St. John’s College with a degree in philosophy and the history of science. She is currently focusing on researching historic properties in our archives files to draft children’s illustrations.
Our staff and board with the leadership of new board director and educator Nick Wirth are excited about a phrase that as Nick mentioned in our planning meetings about how we are teaching and training with the arc of education in mind – from early childhood to adult in research and hand-on experiences.
Faith & John Gaw Meem Preservation Trades Internship
As we enter the 22nd year of the Faith and John Gaw Meem Hands-on Trades Internship program, we are again happy to have another student from UNM and also a native New Mexican, Alicia Varoz. She Currently pursuing a Master’s of Architecture with Certificate in Historic Preservation.
She completed the re-mudding of the front wall in June. She is working on research on historic churches with staff Giulia and will assist Jacob on re-creating a historic stone wall behind apartment 7 and with restoring the Kate Chapman arbor in the rear of EZ.
HSFF staff and board are also pleased to announce transformational endowment gift and funding that is projected to sustain the Meem internship for 27+ years.
I want to emphasize the importance of training future preservation professionals who are in short supply across the nation and the benefit of learning from trained professionals like our Preservation Projects and Programs Manager Jacob Sisneros in such a setting as Santa Fe and El Zaguán connecting with traditional practices.
This beautiful quote from the 2011 intern Peter Harper notes how special this internship truly is:
I came to New Mexico searching for timelessness and permanence in the earthen architecture that punctuates the landscape in the misshapen mud-brick churches that have stood for hundreds of years. Where I ultimately found meaning is in the temporal nature, the fragility of the earthen material itself. These structures do not owe their inveterate position to the adobe bricks that compose their walls. Instead, they owe it to diligent maintenance and to skilled hands, year after year.
Exhibitions, Arts & Public Programs
We are also working on exhibitions and public programming. Our Gallery and Gift Shop Director Anne Kelly had another successful year promoting local artists to help support HSFF – just one of the aspects of cultural heritage, the human creativity and expression.
We just deinstalled the fiber arts exhibition and retained three of the pieces in our gift shop, created by Benita Ortega-Rael, a Northern New Mexico-based artist specializing in Colcha Embroidery, a Spanish Colonial tradition dating back to the early 1700s.
The fifth annual Broom Room exhibition, by former resident artist Julia Tait Dickenson features the handcrafted brooms many mounted found objects, that is on display now.
In August, we are also partnering as we do many years with other nonprofits or educational organizations, this year with the IAIA collaboration featuring an exhibition curated by George Alexander.
Our Community Liaison Story Coleman helped to launch the Get to Know your Town series where we organize visits to nearby locations that our members may not often or who have never taken the opportunity to visit and/or tour.
We started with four full docent tours of La Fonda on the Plaza led by Cindy Atkins, then the Baumann Exhibition at New Mexico Museum of Art led by Maura Knitzer, Scottish Rite Temple with a tour by the Masons, then Agua Fria Village (Reunity Resources and William Mee)
We look towards the Opera and Holy Faith Church as other potential locations including a partnership with the Watershed Association along with a walking tour of Women’s Markers with Lisa Nordstrom and two more garden histories with Ruthbeth Finerman, among many other exciting events.
We still have two fiscal sponsorees who will have updates to their projects in 2026:
Karl Horn is completing his tome on William Penhallow Henderson with texts by Dr. Oliver Horn, Laura Finley Smith on Henderson’s art, and Larry Good on Henderson’s architecture.
The Alabado film is coming to fruition with a 7-year project collaborating with the Las Trampas community.
HSFF’s second annual fundraising Garden Dinner will be held on August 6. This fundraising event for operational funding with local wines and catering by The Rook. More info on this event from Anne Kelly or on our website.
Preservation in Action
As for our Preservation in action, We continued our ongoing monitoring of 14 properties as part of our preservation easement stewardship.
El Zaguán preservation projects and infrastructure improvements include thanks to Jacob and our volunteer John Gregory in completing the blue fence, cleaning out one of our garages, and rebuilt the Margretta Dietrich table that now lives upstairs in the Brooks House.
We will also have a new walkway out front thanks to generous donation from Larry and Barbara Good and from Jim Baker to cover much of the new brick and labor as a continuation of the front entrance brick to the Juan Jose Prada House to the west of EZ.
The completed nomination of Plaza Balentine for HSFF’s Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation was written by the 2025 Mac Watson Fellow Ryuichi Nakayama under the mentorship of UNM’s Dr. Audra Bellmore was approved by the Board this year. The now former Board Chair Larry Good’s extensive and well-researched piece on the William Penhallow Henderson Studio was approved to be on the Register. Both properties’ nominations are featured in two articles in our spring/summer printed newsletter available in the Welcome Center.
Preservation Month
In partnership with the City of Santa and Old Santa Fe Association with the support of San Miguel Chapel. We awarded the Architectural Stewardship Award to two awardees:
Nancy Meem Wirth was presented the Architectural Stewardship Award as a person who has been a leader in the community to further preservation efforts, historical knowledge, and cultural practices in New Mexico.
We recognized Nancy for her work in preserving the Bishop Everett Jones house, the Gustave Baumann House and her parents’ home, the Faith and John Meem House along with her years of services on the Cultural Properties Review Committee and Cornerstones Community Partnerships and preserving her family legacy and instilling many of her values in preservation, environmentalism, and community in her children and grandchildren.
For being devoted caretakers of their historic property for the benefit of future generations – caring for their property with consideration of its historic elements through on-going, thoughtful maintenance and repairs. The present owners of the Bishop Evertt Jones House, Kelley and Michael Avery have cooperate fully with HSFF and the Santa Fe Land Trust to act in compliance with the conservation and preservation easements. And the Averys also undertook a faithful reconstruction of a burned casita.
Preservation Leadership & Community Dialogue
And as we look at community dialogue, an accomplishment that I am particularly proud of in 2026 is the second annual symposium Preserving Place: The Santa Fe Continuum.
Accomplished with sponsorship including from Clearstead Avalon, The City’s Economic Development Department, Miguel da Silva Architecture, the NM History Museum, and Ray Landy to support the audio visual and student scholarships including two students from the adobe construction program at SFCC.
On the panels were representatives from New Mexico Home Builders Association, City of Santa Fe Affordable Housing, Chainbreaker Collective, County’s Economic Development Department, Earth Care, and others including a few members of AIA Santa Fe.
We looked at preservation-related issues beyond the downtown area in a day-long event. Look for the video recordings on YouTube. We will be launching the audio with slides in the next couple of weeks.
The goal was to bring disparate voices together in one room to learn about the issues and foster discussion. Very exciting panels highlighting the many partners in Santa Fe trying to meet the housing needs of its citizens.
Funding, Partnerships & Sustainability – With Gratitude
Thankful to the donors to support our operations and specific programming including the aforementioned donors to the HSRF and the Meem Trades Internship program.
We are also pleased to receive another donation of framed Willard Clark prints from Bob Bell and his son Cayley Bell.
We want to acknowledge some of the partners including the City of Santa Fe Go Local grant program Arts & Culture who awarded HSFF a grant for marketing; Century Bank who supports our upcoming Family Days. San Miguel Chapel for use of the chapel for many events including the Preservation Awards, and those who for sponsored of our printed newsletters who businesses you can find in our printed publications in the Welcome Center, and the Santa Fe Extension Gardeners for caring for our historic garden. Once again, we cannot keep these doors open without the support of our members, Stewards, and donors.
As we look forward, HSFF has launched strategic planning to set the course for the next 3-10 years. Look for requests for feedback as the plan evolves.
Finally, we as you may have seen in our email and last printed newsletter, we launched our solar initiative and started to request pledges for the process. Donors Greg and Patricia Walke have generously donated towards the engineering process which we should see the results in the next few days.
As an update, while this may shift a bit, we currently have an estimated fundraising goal of $30,000 to complete this project and then apply for the IRS DirectPay rebate whose preapplication deadline is imminent.
I am personally grateful to the Board for supporting this initiative and to the pledge donors – Julie and David Coates, Michael Saey, Tim and Mary Mitchell, and Elizabeth West who have donated or pledged to donate to showcase HSFF’s El Zaguán as a sustainable energy model of historic buildings. So, thank you very much to those donors. We have a way to go, but we will get there!
We are looking back while looking ahead. Preservation connects past, present, and future. You are here with us to celebrate this stewardship, explore cultural heritage and history, and support our community’s responsibility to do so.
WE INVITE MEMBERS TO PARTICIPATE IN SHAPING SANTA FE’S FUTURE. Thank you to you all in the HSFF community.
