Arts Council likely to move in 2022

In 2021, the Doña Ana Arts Council (DAAC) marked its first 50 years serving Doña Ana County and the region with the arts and through the arts. Hopes have been shared that, in 2022, it can continue its service with a move into a permanent site.

From its start in 1971 in a private residence and in five other locations since then, DAAC has been an investment in our community through the arts. Visionaries here have been making the case for the power of the arts in a creative economy and the importance of community pride through the arts these past five decades, and we are moving confidently with that same vision into the next five decades.

Despite the pandemic, we’ve enjoyed 15 great months in our current spot, 250 W. Amador Ave., and it has had the best gallery of all of them. Norman Todd made sure we had a great space for showing art, and even though everyone in the audience had to wear masks and keep their distance from each other, we’ve also had three superb performances here.

Todd passed away in August of this year, and his family has decided to sell the building where the arts council has been located since September 2021.

They have been fantastic, and we can fully appreciate how this is something Norman’s family feels they have to do. However, this means the arts council will most likely be again moving, either at the end of August 2022 or possibly even months before.

The DAAC board of directors gave the green light to start a search for a new location, with an emphasis on possibly finding a permanent address where visual arts, performing arts and classes in the arts can productively coexist. Particular interest is focused on arts programming for young people: continuing the initiative of Jordan and Marian Wolle with Career Art Paths, along with other summer art programs as well as building on the recent collaborative success in arts integration with seven entities that included Las Cruces Public Schools and Kennedy Center Partners in Education.

The sites being contemplated are even in historic adobe structures. This could be very appropriate, given our history here with adobe and the arts council’s own time in two historic adobes.

Three of the five past Las Cruces locations for the Arts Council have been just blocks apart in what is now the Las Cruces Arts and Cultural District (ACD), and two of those three were historic buildings constructed of adobe.  Adobe construction predominated for most of the area’s buildings for 100 or more of the past 170 years, and in 2005, DAAC moved from an adobe storefront on Campo Street to the iconic, two-story, adobe Rio Grande Theatre (RGT) on Main Street.

The incredible generosity of two granddaughters of one of the original owners of the theater got the ball rolling. Then, our community and legislators stepped up and made something spectacular happen.  Ostensibly, RGT was to be the prominent and permanent home of DAAC, but several conditions made it necessary for us to move out and turn operation of the theater over to the City of Las Cruces in 2017.

The arts council is asking for the community to step up again and help something “spectacular” happen again, but this time where gallery space, performances and classes can all be adequately accommodated.  The history, the arts and the culture in Downtown Las Cruces all seem to be compelling considerations in the search for a new, permanent home for DAAC.

Very attractive sites are also being seriously considered outside downtown and the ACD.

The two key points for us are that it has to work for what we are doing in the arts, and it has to be something we can afford.

DAAC is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 5 p.m. every second Saturday. It’s current art show, “Blue Skies,” an exhibition of The Border Artists, continues through Dec. 29.

Contact DAAC at 575-523-6403. Visit daarts.org.