The El Paso Museum of History offers visitors a bilingual, multi-cultural experience through exhibitions that focus on the history of El Paso del Norte (The Pass of the North). The permanent and rotating exhibitions in the museum’s six galleries feature history beginning from pre-Spanish contact to present.
The Devil You Say! The Saintly and not so Saintly, in Folk Art
2nd Floor, Gallery D
The Devil You Say! is an exhibition that aims to highlight the ascribed Christian concept of duality and how that concept has historically shaped folk-art practices in the Americas.
“The works selected for this exhibition come from a variety of cultures, representing centuries of creativity. The inspiration of many of the artists in our exhibition, most of them anonymous, stems from personal belief, often of a profound nature. Some creations emerged from workshop, or near workshop, environments, and were intended to meet market demands for devotional objects. Some works are decorative—others are intended to be used in a didactic or publicly devotional manner. Some works are intended to profit from a buyer’s unreasonable fear (or lack thereof), while others are objects of intense personal devotion, representing visions wildly abstracted from convention and difficult to reattach to established historical context. A few, defying any reasonable categorization, help keep the boundaries delightfully fuzzy.”
Michael T. Ricker, Collector
Garland, TX
Tracks Across the Desert: More Than 100 Years of Railroad in El Paso
2nd Floor, Gallery C
The railroad boom of the 19th century ushered in a new and transformative era for transportation, technology, and economy in America—one that swept the Paso del Norte region along with it
Neighborhoods and Shared Memories: Sunset Heights
2nd Floor, Neighborhoods Gallery
This exhibition focuses on a thematic overview that covers one of El Paso's most historic neighborhoods through its focus on The People: You Are My Neighbor, Religion: Jewish Settlement and Catholic Community, Politics: City Building, Political Refuge and Migration, Architecture: All the Revivals and Prairie and Educational Significance: Public and Private during the early decades of the settlement.
Low & Slow: Lowrider Culture on the Border
1st Floor, Gallery B
In El Paso, Texas or Chuco, Tejas, the Lowrider is more than a weekend hobby. Lowriding is a way of life. It is not subculture to the Mexican American experience but part of a complex form of lived history and visual culture. It is a unique iteration of a deeply rooted tradition in auto-mobility. In El Paso, the lowrider could trace its earliest roots to the 1940s, most notably after the Second World War. Arguably, the trend originated in California and made its way to Texas.
