Experts on the Santa Fe Trail, women of the West, Clyde Tingley, “St. Kate’s” and the Manhattan Project will deliver lectures in the first half of the 2013 Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series. The annual series, organized by Tomas Jaehn of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, is free and open to the public (and, yes, you can bring a lunch). Each lecture begins at noon in the Meem Community Room; enter through the museum’s Washington Avenue doors. Seating is limited.
Mark your calendars. The schedule:
Wednesday, Jan. 16: Allan Wheeler on “The Life of William Becknell, Founder of the Santa Fe Trail: A First-Person Presentation.” Wheeler, of Santa Fe, is Chautauqua performer for the New Mexico Humanities Council and a national director of the Santa Fe Trail Association, a group that works with the National Park Service to preserve, protect and publicize the trail.
Wednesday, Feb. 20: VanAnn Moore on “Westward Ho! The Lives and Diaries of the Women Going West.” Moore, of Los Lunas, is a singer and actress who recreates historical characters ranging from Jenny Lind to Baby Doe Tabor, Lillie Langtree, Sara Bernhardt, and Doña Tules.
Wednesday, March 13: Joy Sperling on “Women’s Visual Narratives of New Mexico between the World Wars.” Sperling, an art history professor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, had a 2012 writer’s residency at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos.
Wednesday, April 17: Lucinda Sachs on “Clyde Tingley’s New Deal for New Mexico.” Sachs, an Albuquerque writer and historian, is finishing a 2013 Sunstone Press book about Tingley. She has also written a novel, Believe in the Wind, plus two award-winning short stories.
Wednesday, May 15: Anna Cabrera on “Becoming St. Kate: St. Catherine Indian School and St. Katharine Drexel.” Cabrera is a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of New Mexico.
Wednesday, June 19: Toni Gibson and Sharon Snyder on “The Manhattan Project in Los Alamos: An Eyewitness Perspective.” Gibson, of Grosse Pointe, Mich., is the author of Los Alamos: 1944-1947 (Arcadia, 2005), and, with Snyder, co-author of Los Alamos and the Pajarito Plateau (Arcadia, 2011). Snyder, of Rio Rancho, also wrote At Home on the Slopes of Mountains: The Story of Peggy Pond Church (Los Alamos Historical Society, 2011).
The Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture Series is generously supported by the Herzstein Family Endowment Fund and the Plaza Café.
Phone number for publication: 505-476-5200