Allan Houser Sites

"Located in the historic downtown area of Raton, New Mexico, Arthur Johnson Memorial Library building was originally built" as the community's post office in 1917, well prior to the advent of the New Deal. "Remodeling in the late 1990's opened the second floor for use, and included the addition of an elevator." The facility's significance from a New Deal standpoint stems from the "large collection of paintings representative of New Mexico artists of the New Deal period," which hang "throughout the library. A painting by the late Chiricahua Apache artist, Allan Houser, done prior to his moving into 3 dimensional art,...

This collection of WPA art is now housed in the Octavia Fellin Public Library in Gallup, New Mexico The collection consists of 29 listed items including furniture, oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, etchings and sculpture. All items were obtained from the Gallup Arts Center (a WPA Arts Center) when it was demolished to make room for the City Hall in Gallup New Mexico. Documents at the library detail each work as well as the history of the collection.