From left, Roswell Mayor Sam LaGrone; Elizabeth Shamas, then-presient of the Roswell Museum and Art Center Foundation; Gail Burroughs, then-RMAC treasurer (and current president); Laurie Rufe, RMAC director; Bill Liakos, RMAC Foundation vice president; Ivan Hall, president of the Spring River Corridor Foundation; and Dusty Huckabee, executive director of MainStreet Roswell all dig a shovel of dirt during the April 3 groundreaking for the RMAC courtyard renovation.
By Mike Bush
575magazine.com editor
It sat for many years almost unnoticed on the northeast corner of the Roswell Museum and Art Center property at 11th and Main streets, surrounded by a chain-link fence.
Now Robert H. Goddard’s original rocket tower, along with a new bronze sculpture of Goddard standing just inside the doorway of his shed poised to launch the rocket, will be the centerpieces of a renovated courtyard area across the northern end of the museum.
The rocket tower will be held up by a new gantry of concrete pillars connected by crossbar lintels. The pillars will be attached to the top of the tower with piano wire, which will protect and stabilize the tower without marring the view.
Etched into the crossbars will be this 1927 quote from Goddard: “As I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet.”
Elizabeth Shamas, then Roswell Museum and Art Center Foundation president, addresses the crowd during April 3 groundbreaking ceremonies for courtyard renovations.
Most of the work on the courtyard, for which ground was broken in April, is expected to be completed in September, according to museum director Laurie Rufe. Artist Steven Weitzman will cast the sculpture at his studio in Brentwood, Md., and it will be shipped to Roswell for installation sometime in the spring, Rufe added.
The statue will be larger than life — Goddard will stand about 9 feet tall and the doorway will be about 11 feet high — and the doorway will be facing the rocket and, beyond, the museum. In the sculpture, Goddard will be leaning on the doorframe, watching the rocket with a telescope in his right hand, as he prepares to press a button with his left hand to launch the rocket.
Rufe said Weitzman told her the open doorway is a metaphor.
“Conceptually, the doorframe acts as a metaphor bridging the museum-goers and the city of Roswell with Goddard’s fantastic vision for rocketry,” Weitzman told Rufe. “The physical act of walking through or past this doorframe makes it a portal for people to pass from Main Street into another realm.”
The “other realm,” Rufe said, is the museum itself.
The courtyard renovation, designed by architect Baker Morrow of Albuquerque, will include a seating area along Main Street with a “Fotera” cap (mural of colored concrete) depicting historic images of Goddard standing at a chalkboard and launching rockets with his team, including his wife, Esther.
The courtyard also will include many of the museum’s outdoor sculptures on display.
The courtyard project is a united effort by the city of Roswell, the Roswell Museum and Art Center Foundation and the Spring River Corridor Foundation, Rufe said. The RMAC Foundation is providing the major funding for the project while the Spring River Corridor Foundation is providing funding for the sculpture and the landscaping around it. New Mexico MainStreet is also contributing through MainStreet Roswell.
Cindy Torrez, executive director of the RMAC Foundation, said the foundation was able to raise $600,000 for the renovations and museum programs through the Reaching New Heights campaign. Local businessman and philanthropist Donald Anderson said in 2007 if the foundation could raise $300,000 to fund museum renovations, he would match it.
Torrez said Anderson gave the foundation three years to reach the goal, which it accomplished in 15 months.
Any funds not used for the renovation will be invested in museum programs, Torrez said.
“The foundation’s sole purpose is to support the museum, so all the money raised or received through grants or corporate sponsorships goes back to support programs like Second Saturday,” she said.
Second Saturday is a program that has been operated during the school year for third-grade through middle school students, she said. High school students were added in January.
“It’s a museum gallery experience for the first 30 minutes, and then they go into a classroom and learn art, whether painting or sculpture or clay, all sorts of different things.”
Foundation funds also support the museum’s two film series each year, once in the fall and spring and a second in the summer, Torrez said.
The foundation also funds the museum’s lecture series.
“In the last lecture, (the museum) has an exhibition of contemporary desert photography, and we were able to bring one of the photographers in, through Pioneer Bank, a corporate sponsor,” she added.
The museum also hosts an all-day chalk art party in October, sponsored by Bank of the Southwest, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center and, this year, Target, she said.
“Usually, our (annual) budget is right around $100,000,” she said, adding the budget is growing as the community and the museum grow.
Ivan Hall, president of the Spring River Corridor Foundation, said much of his foundation’s contribution came from a $170,000 New Mexico MainStreet contribution, which required a match. Hall’s foundation provided $75,000 from its Aston investment fund and the city provided some in-kind services for the match.
Hall, former Roswell city planner, said the rocket tower has been neglected over the years. When he was city planner, he had a fence put around it to protect it.
Hall said he is pleased that Baker Morrow will be designing the landscape.
Morrow “has a tremendous appreciation for the WPA work done in Roswell,” he said. During the Depressions, the federal Works Progress Administration funded construction projects including the sunken garden at Cahoon Park, the Roswell Museum and Art Center and DeBremmond Stadium.