The University Art Museum’s mission is to serve as an academic environment for the critical analysis of visual art while making culturally relevant and conceptual practice accessible to the University and surrounding regional and border communities. The UAM actively acquires and stewards a permanent collection of contemporary visual art, houses the country’s largest collection of Mexican retablos, and facilitates educational programming to align with the teaching missions of both the Department of Art and New Mexico State University. The UAM’s overarching purpose is to provide enriching and informative experiences through participatory engagements with artists and contemporary and historical visual art. To accomplish these goals for our under-served area, we involve the full regional community in our educational programming, which range from exhibitions, performances and lectures, to catalogs and scholarly publications. We actively work to establish the importance and significance of the visual arts relative to the diverse human values present in our broader community.