Out of the Vault: The College of Santa Fe Collection of Photographs

The City of Santa Fe Community Gallery is proud to present Out of the Vault: The College of Santa Fe Collection of Photographs, featuring a selection of works from a collection of nearly nine hundred prints donated to the Marion Center for Photographic Arts at the former College of Santa Fe.

Primarily under the guidance of art professor David Scheinbaum, the collection was conceived as a hands-on learning resource for students and the community, with prints generously donated by local galleries, collectors, photographers, and individuals. After the college changed ownership and then closed, the collection came into the care of the City of Santa Fe.

Curated by Katherine Ware, the exhibition highlights works by a wide range of internationally recognized and locally admired photographers, from Ansel Adams to Patrick Nagatani.

Throughout much of photography's history, the photographic print has been its dominant form of expression, hence the importance of a physical collection for close study by students, artists, and others. Today, most viewers see photographs in a different format, as digital images on a screen. This exhibition offers a special opportunity to enjoy printed images as they were intended by the artists who made them.

About the Curator

Katherine Ware is a writer and longtime curator of photographs, most recently at the New Mexico Museum of Art. She has held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Oakland Museum, and other institutions. Her work focuses on darkroom photography and the photographic print, along with work that interrogates the boundaries of the medium.

Ware has organized more than 75 museum exhibitions, including Transgressions + Amplifications: Mixed-media Photography of the 1960s and 1970s, Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery, and Vision in Motion: The Photographs of László Moholy-Nagy. She has also served as a juror for more than 35 shows and has written numerous books and essays on historic and contemporary photography.

She earned an M.A. in art history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in English and American literature from Pitzer College.

Exhibition Details

Opening Reception

Thursday, August 27, 2026

5-7 p.m.

Gallery Talk with the Curator

Thursday, September 17, 2026

On View Through
October 16, 2026

Gallery Hours

Tuesday-Saturday

Noon-5 p.m.

Location

Community Gallery

201 West Marcy St.

Santa Fe, NM 87501

Admission

Free and open to the public.

Click here to visit our website and learn more about the Community Gallery.