Weaving the Threads of El Hilo The Threads of Memory Lecture Series

State Historian Rick Hendricks wraps up the Threads of Memory Lecture Series with "Tejiendo el Hilo: Weaving the Threads of History." This event is free with museum admission (Sundays free to NM residents).

(A high-resolution photo of Hendricks can be downloaded by clicking on "Go to related images" at the bottom of his page.)

Hendricks is a native of North Carolina who earned a bachelor's in Latin American History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a doctorate in Ibero American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He also attended the Universidad de Sevilla in Spain.

He is a former editor of UNM's Vargas Project, a long-term, historical editing project that transcribed, translated, and annotated the papers of New Mexico governor Diego de Vargas. Hendricks has been a historical consultant for Sandia, Santa Ana, and Picuris Pueblos in New Mexico and Ysleta del Sur in Texas.

He worked in the Archives and Special Collections Department at New Mexico State University Library, where he took part in a project to microfilm the Archivos Históricos del Arzobispado de Durango and the Archivos Históricos de Sombrerete and edited the guides to those collections. At NMSU, he also taught courses in colonial and modern Latin America and Mexican history.

He has written or collaborated on 19 books and 90 articles on the Spanish colonial period in the American Southwest and Mexico. His writings have garnered awards from the Historical Society of New Mexico, the New Mexico Historical Review, the El Paso County Historical Society, the Border Regional Library Association, and the Doña Ana County Historical Society. His most recent book, New Mexico in 1801: The Priests Report, was published in June 2008 by Rio Grande books. He edited the Southern New Mexico Historical Review, a publication of the Doña Ana Historical Society, for a decade. Rick is a past president of the Historical Society of New Mexico and is a longtime member of the Advisory Council of the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. He is currently completing biographies of Mesilla Valley pioneer agriculturalist Thomas Casad and Spanish-Mexican patriot Father Antonio Severo Borrajo, a native of Galicia who served in the United States-Mexico border region for almost the entire second half of the 19th century.

The Threads of Memory: Spain and the United States (El Hilo de la Memoria: España y los Estados Unidos) features nearly 140 rare documents, maps, illustrations and paintings – many of which have never been displayed outside of Spain — from a 1602 field drawing of a buffalo to portraits of President George Washington. For five centuries, Spanish explorers, colonists and diplomats have played key roles in American culture. This exhibit explores the first 300 years of those encounters – from the friars who made first contact with Native peoples through Spain’s timely assistance to American forces in the Revolutionary War.

Each week throughout the exhibit, which closes on Jan. 9, 2011, the museum will feature lectures, musical performances, panel discussions and more to further explore the role Spain has played in shaping America as it is. After its debut in the museum’s Albert and Ethel Herzstein Changing Exhibits Gallery, the exhibit travels to the El Paso Museum of History and the Historic New Orleans Collection.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Fundación Rafael del Pino and, along with the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies), is co-organized with the   State Corporation for the Spanish Cultural Action Abroad (Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, or SEACEX), in collaboration with Spain’s Ministries for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and Culture.

In New Mexico, the exhibition and lecture series are presented with special support from BBVA Compass Bank, the city of Santa Fe, Wells Fargo Bank, Heritage Hotels, Santa Fe University of Art & Design and the Palace Guard.