Saddle Up!

There are times when things just do not go as planned, but what might be considered a “crisis” can actually be a fantastic opportunity.

The Plan: In 2012, the Western Heritage Museum and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame on the campus of New Mexico Junior College, signed a contract with International Arts & Artists to bring one of their exhibits to Hobbs, NM in August 2014. Both parties were aware that we were the last venue in the United States and that the exhibit was being extended so we could display it. The exhibit was originally supposed to arrive in April 2014 and we were to store it until August. Before it could arrive, however, International Arts & Artists found that they needed to send the exhibit back over the border to Mexico to renew the permit or pay a large tax. That worked well for a while since we did not need to find storage for an entire crated exhibit for five months.

The Challenge: The exhibit stayed at the Texas/Mexican border for four months. July came and went with no definitive word on when the exhibit would arrive. With the opening a month away we were beginning to get anxious, but were assured that it would be here. A month quickly became two weeks and we became concerned. There were complications causing the shipping date to be continuously pushed back. We communicated daily with International Arts & Artists and each email seemed to push the shipping date back farther and farther. Eventually we were six days out from our Thursday opening. We needed a plan B since there was no way to know what was happening even with multiple emails a day. But what was plan B and when do you fully commit to it?

The Opportunity: The staff got together and came up with plan B: a saddle exhibit. If we could get the local ranchers and other museums involved we could quite possibly throw something together. The hope was that the exhibit would arrive and we would have two exhibits to set up. Not ideal but better than no exhibits! We assigned tasks: contact the ranchers, contact museums, create text panels and have every possible press release ready. We committed to plan B Friday afternoon, so 6 days before we needed to open something.

The Outcome: The exhibit arrived Wednesday evening. With less than 24 hours until opening and the saddle exhibit almost complete in the main gallery we decided to leave the exhibit in its crates in the corresponding room with notes explaining what happened and that it would be set up very soon. The saddle show, dubbed Saddle Up, was a huge success. 12 local ranchers, many of whom are members of the Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame, stepped up bringing anywhere from 1-10 saddles each. A local saddle maker even loaned two saddletrees. One of the Museum’s most important saddles had been on loan in Santa Fe, which ended earlier this year so we made a trip to retrieve it. Since we were out, we called on the Artesia Historical Museum & Art Center in Artesia, NM and the Museum of Texas Tech University and the National Ranching Heritage Center both in Lubbock, TX who also graciously loaned 16 saddles and 26 saddle stands between the three of them. It was an amazing collaboration between community and museums. All told, we ended up with 80 saddles ranging from saddletrees to trophy saddles and Western saddles to English saddles to an Australian saddle.

As stressful as those six days were, the end result is a thrown-together exhibit that looks pretty amazing if we do say so ourselves. Of course there are things that we would like to have done differently if we had more than six days, but overall we are very happy with how it turned out and it is something we are proud of. Collaboration with the community and other museums was the only way Saddle Up could have happened. We came together in a huge way. A thank you has to go out to the community members and museums that helped us with this project!