Juniper Leherissey, Jim Levy, and David Caffey

[00:06] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: I'm Juniper Leherissey and I am 50 years old. And today is March 27, 2023, and we are in Taos, New Mexico, and I am interviewing Jim Levy and David Caffey They are former directors of the Harwood when it was the Harwood Public Library. And I am the current director as the Harwood Museum of Art.

[00:32] JIM LEVY: Hi, I'm David Caffey. I'm age 75, and I am a former director of the Harwood Library and Museum in Taos, New Mexico.

[00:45] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: Hi, I'm Jim Levy. I was the executive director of Harwood foundation. Today is March 27, 2023, and I'm in Taos, New Mexico. Well, I'm delighted to speak with each of you today. And so my first question is, when did you serve, and can you paint a picture of what it was like when you started your tenure at the Harwood library? And, Jim, I'll have you start since you. All right. I served from 1978 to 1982, and when I got there in January of 1978, the Harwood and UNM, the University of New Mexico, had applied and received a $350,000 grant from the EDA, that's the economic Development Administration, to renovate all of the buildings at the Harwood. The buildings had fallen into serious disrepair, all of them, and the only functioning part was the public library. All the other rooms were closed off. And when I got there, the renovation was about a third finished, and they were working on the heating and plumbing and electrical systems, bringing them up to date. Weirdly enough, nobody had really designated what the renovated rooms would be used for, and that job fell to me and my staff, and we had a great time deciding what each new room, newly renovated room, would become. So that was the main situation when I got there. Excellent. And, David?

[02:44] JIM LEVY: Well, I was director from June 1982 until February of 1990, and that's almost eight years. I was the last director of the combined Harwood Library and Museum. When I came to, both the library and the museum were under the University of New Mexico. When I left, the University of New Mexico hired a museum director, and the town of Taos hired a library director, and those two institutions then made their separate paths forward. I also lived at the Harwood. We had two apartments above the children's library, which I believe would be on the second floor of the east end of the building. And so for those almost eight years, I both lived and worked at the Harwood. And it was one of the magic times of my life, I can tell you, and such a privilege to work in such a charmed place and also to get to know some of the, particularly some of the older crowd of people who knew Taos in a much earlier time. The main challenges when I arrived were, first of all, an existential challenge involving finances, because the state of New Mexico was putting in the very largest part of the budget for the Hardwood. I think it was about $90,000, which was real money in 1982. But they were threatening to take all of that away, which they eventually did, but they ended up stepping it down. And as we stepped up, support from the town of Taos. So that was a major challenge that I had to start with. Thank you.

[04:42] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: I have a question. Did you both come for the job, or were you already in New Mexico? I had been living in Taos off and on since 1947. Mabel Dodge Lujan was my mother's landlady, and my mother had been a volunteer at the library for about five years, from 1947, I think, to 52, something like that. And she died in 1975. And the next year, I started volunteering at the Hartwood as a way of kind of remembering her and following in her footsteps. And then a couple of years after volunteering, I became the executive director. If it's all right, I'd like to follow up something David said, since this is a conversation. I had the opposite experience as far as the finances. When I got there, the UNM was threatening to either cut or eliminate the funding. But fortunately, Taos had two people involved with the Harwood who saved it. Meg Salman, brother in law. She was the president of the board of the Hardwood board, and her brother in law, David Salmon, was the speaker of the House in Santa Fe, and CB Trujillo was Taos senator. And the two of them managed to put the Harwood into the general fund. And so within a month of my becoming executive director, we suddenly had much more money than we'd ever had before. Now, it sounds like peanuts now, but it was 75,000 additional dollars on top of what UNM was funding us. So we were able to hire new staff and dramatically increase the advertisee and public relations arm, which brought in a lot more Hispanics and Native Americans to the Harwood. So I was very fortunate to have those two people helping with the funding of the Harwood. That's great. That leads a little bit into the. My next question, which is, what were your significant accomplishments when you were leading the Harwood? Well, I think for me, the biggest accomplishment was moving the children's library from the main library, where it occupied a tiny space in a corner, to its own separate quarters. In fact, it was the rooms directly below what became David's apartment. It was a large room, and we built a large garden in the back for puppet shows and art projects and all sorts of things. And we introduced storytelling, and the reading is fundamental program, and it brought in so many new people, both the children and their parents. And so to this day, I'm very proud that I was part of the development of the children's library. And the second thing I feel we accomplished was we did radio shows and newspaper columns about the books and the library in Spanish as well as English, and we made a really concentrated attempt to reach out to those communities. And to some extent, the Harwood had been something of an anglo cultural center for years. And in the four years I was there, that increased fairly substantially. And, in fact, both the town and the county reluctantly, but finally agreed that we were serving more of their people and increased our funding. So those are the two accomplishments that come to my mind. Excellent. David. Do you want to just share what you see as your primary accomplishments?

[09:03] JIM LEVY: Yes, and I'm going to list the first one as simply the fact that we went through those almost eight years with no lapse in services, in an environment in which there were, had been multiple spoken fears to the extent that the Harwoods doors might close. There were a couple of things in the Taos news to that effect, and it seemed to be a reality for quite a while. And in doing that, we had to increase revenues as possible from sources other than the state of New Mexico and the University of New Mexico, and also reduce a couple of staff positions, either temporarily or permanently. But I'm very proud that we were able to keep the museum open and the library open through all of that time. One of my major responsibilities was to facilitate the transfer of the library to the town of Taos so that the town could go its own way with a public library fully supported by the town, and so that the University of New Mexico could then concentrate its efforts on the museum. And so I became, for a long time of my tenure, both an agency head, for lack of a better expression, at the University of New Mexico with respect to the museum, and a town of Taos department head, who attended the city managers department head meetings weekly or monthly, or however long those came about. But through those years, we did succeed in getting greater levels of town to tau support, and finally, a commitment for the town to just say, you know, we need to own this. People need to have pride in it as the town of Taos. And I think it all worked out very well. I was a little bit the moses of the situation in the sense that we kind of went through the wilderness in the time that I was there, but I was not the one to go over into the promised land of the Harwood Museum as we know it now, and the beautiful facility and wonderful, robust program that they have, and the equally beautiful town of Taos public Library. So I could go on, but I think I better let the conversation for you.

[11:51] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: So, David, I'm going to go a bit off. So I have a question for you. So my understanding in that transition time, because that was. I mean, so I just want to back up a little bit and say that, you know, you guys were the directors when I was a kid, so I was six, and when Jim started and I left touts in 1990 or 1989, actually. So, like, the Harvard Public Library was my. At my stomping grounds, I would spend almost every day after school in the library. Well, when I was younger, as a kid, I'd go to the children's library almost every single time we came into Taos. And I participated in all those reading programs, all those book, you know, reading, the summer reading programs, and we checked out books every week. And then it was by place where I would sit in the Imhoff room and study every single day after school, because it was a central place in the middle of town. So for me, it has a very. And I didn't know you guys, of course, but you were the directors at the time, when I was a kid in that space, which is kind of cool. But I want to ask you, David, so my understanding is that in that kind of tumultuous time, when UNM's like, why are we running Taos's public library? That there was the group, the Friends of the public library, that kind of did a letter writing campaign, and there was a grassroots activated activism to save the right, because there was an effort at the time to look at even disbanding what the Harwood was. They found that through kind of community activist action, they couldn't get rid of the art. It was basically supposed to be in Taos in perpetuity, and the artwork and the building had to be taken care of by UNM. So kind of that, like, you know, that forethought by Lucy Harwood to have that in there. And then the citizen action was my understanding of what kind of what was at play in that moment of that transition. Can you share a little bit about what your perspective was on that?

[14:15] JIM LEVY: The Friends of the Harwood were an essential element of that bridge between low town of Taos funding and full town of Taos funding for the library, particularly Jim Levy, left me a to do list when he left, and I got about half of it done. But one of the things he had on there was to rejuvenate the Friends of the Harwood. And there was a, you know, structure with bylaws and so forth, but. But the membership was at kind of a low ebb. And my first step was to send a letter to our membership list as it existed and say, would anyone be willing to serve on a board? As we try to reorganize and rejuvenate the Friends of the Harwood, six people returned a postcard saying that they would serve on the board. We called a meeting. All six people showed up. They rolled up their sleeves and went to work, and we started raising money. And people told us over the years, you know, that's not what a friends organization is for. Your local government should be supporting your library, and the friends should be promoting community goodwill and publicity and providing little enrichment things. And we said, well, that's very well and good, but we're in a bit of a crotch here as far as our existence. So our friends did start to raise money. It wasn't that much in the beginning, maybe five, $6,000 a year. We got up to maybe $15,000 a year just from local people's contributions, and we banked a lot of that money. And then when the leanest years, in about the middle of my tenure, not quite the middle, came along, they were able to pour about $25,000.01 year, and maybe $15,000 the next year into the operating budget. And then after that, they went on to do things like starting the Taos Endowed Book fund, which still exists, and to continue and increased support for children's programs and other kinds of special interests. So, yes, community leadership was an absolutely important part of what we did. And there's not enough time to name all of the people, but there's a hall of fame in my heart. And there are a good number of Taos residents who really came to our Aidan and helped with the whole project of getting the library and museum to the point that they are now with the help of more than help of people like Juniper and Bob Ellis, and Gus Cordova, town manager on the town side, who really took the library and the museum and ran with it to greater heights.

[17:26] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: And David, I'd like to say that you're in my heart, because I think you were the perfect person to handle that transition. I know those years some of those years were tough, and it's so good that it was you and not me, because I would have blown my top and probably alienated all sorts of people at UNM and even in the town because I would have been so angry. But with your even wonderful, kind temperament, you were able to pull it off. So you, I, and the Harvard will always be grateful to you for that.

[18:02] JIM LEVY: That's great.

[18:03] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: So let me ask you, and I'll start with you, Jim. Just can you describe the relationship? And you have talked a little bit about this, but the relationship of the Harwood to the town during this time, if you want to elaborate a little bit more on that, what it was like. Sure. I think David and I have both touched on it indirectly, but I'll be very Frank. When I started, I went to my first town meeting, and I went to my first county commissioner meeting, and in both cases, they said, why should we fund you? You don't serve my people. And I am quoting them almost word for word. I mean, there was no delicacy involved. They just said it outright. And I said, I understand that, and we're going to do something about it. And we did do something about it. It was a very slow process, and I don't think during my tenure it was complete by any means. I think David had to pick up the reins and ride some more with it, because that attitude was deep, deeply embedded in both the hispanic and native american community. We had significant support from the anglo community, particularly Mabel Dodge, who was no longer living, but she had donated much of the art and many of the books, but there were others, too. But the relationship with the hispanic and native american community was pretty fragile, and we addressed it by some of the means. I talked about certainly adding more to the staff, but reaching out to people. I'll just give you one example. We had a lot of excess books. They'd been in storage for years, and they were not suitable for the catalog, for the public library. So we developed a program where we took around every week to the hospital and to the jail and to the senior center, and gave away books, basically to people. And it was slow, but the word got around. The Harwood was really a place for all people in Taos county, and it gradually got through to the commissioners and the town council, who raised their funding. It was still pretty meager in my time. I think the town went up to about $10,000. The county went up to $1,500 and threw in a full time intern. And that was the extent, and I know that David built on that and increased it. So that was the relationship during my four years. David, do you think it changed for you or no?

[21:02] JIM LEVY: I think we tried to keep going in a positive direction there. And there was one significant thing during my tenure that I think contributed to that, and that was the establishment of the community's first adult literacy program through the Harwood Library. I worked with three wonderful mayors of Taos, New Mexico, Phil Lovato, Lawrence Santastevan, and Eloy Gentet. And they were all men who were honest and dedicated and competent, and any community would be proud to have public servants like that. Well, during Lawrence Santa Staven's term, somebody came to us from the federal government's Vista volunteer program and said, you know, we can fund you with a couple of full time employees for a year. You may be able to get it refunded partially for a second year. And so we looked at that, and we talked to people, and I think from our staff, the idea came up, you know, Taos really needs an adult literacy program. And we liked that idea, and we took it, and we were able to hire two people, an adult literacy specialist and a youth literacy specialist, and we started our literacy program. Well, when Lawrence Santa Staplin heard about that, he was so excited, and he said, this is for us. This is for the community. Well, that's the kind of thing we wanted to hear people say from the town of Taos and from the community was the feeling that we were serving them. But that literacy program went on for quite a while, and I don't know if I suspect there is still an adult literacy program in Taos. I don't know who runs it these days, but it was important in building support for us in the town of Taos, government and in the community.

[23:13] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: That's great. And, well, let me ask what. Can you share one of your favorite stories from the time when you were at the Harvard? And I'll start with you, Jim. My story is, how are we doing on time? My story is a little long. I'll try to make it brief. We had a deranged man come in and say he was going to rearrange all the books, and then he went upstairs into the museum and said he was going to rehang all the paintings. So I banned him from the hardwood. And the sheriff called me and said he'd been. The man had been trying to buy a gun. So when he came in again, I escorted him outside and sat down on a bench with him and started to explain to him why we couldn't let him use the hardwood. And Carlos Rendon, who was my head maintenance guy, was out hoeing the flower beds about 10ft away. And it was funny because Carlos never hoed the flower beds. He always had his staff do things like that. And I was very touched because Carlos was there with his hoe, ready to bash this guy in the head if he attacked me. So that's my story. It's only funny to me, but if you knew Carlos, you'd know how funny it is. I'm glad no one got hurt. Nobody got hurt. Of course, now the guy would come in with an ak 15 and kill everybody. But that was a different era back then. Absolutely nothing. David, do you have any particular memories or wild stories?

[25:06] JIM LEVY: I don't have any wild stories. I have memories of numerous, very memorable personalities. One of them was Gilbert Lujan. He was our number two maintenance man, I think, when Jim was there, and he became our sole maintenance mandy during most of my tenure. But Gil was not a. He was not well off financially, and the Harwood job was a. Was a good job for him, and he lived simply. He had friends who'd come over and gather on his porch at home, and. But Gil was a very creative person. He didn't have a lot of education, but he had a great creative spirit. And we had a piano up on the second floor of the Harwood, where the museum main gallery was. Of course, we also had a little auditorium and stage there where we had community performances. But sometimes we would hear Gil upstairs playing on that piano, and his fingers were kind of arthritic and stiff, but yet he could certainly play presentably, and we enjoyed that. He also did some artwork, and I have a little watercolor hanging in my closet here where I am, that Gil made of our staff, and it's about seven of us arrayed together in front of the Harwood. And again, it's a little bit on the primitive side, but you can certainly recognize all of the people there. And just such a great spirit he was of a person who was always positive, with maybe many reasons not to be positive, honest, hardworking, and just a great person to know.

[27:05] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: David, I'm so glad you brought that up. Carlos, the head maintenance guy, was a rascal. I won't go into details. I actually had to fire him eventually. But we all loved Gil, and I particularly loved Gil. He was. He was a great spirit, as you say. He was hardworking. He was creative. He was just a wonderful person to have, to have there with us. So I'm glad you brought that up. So I'm curious what role, because, of course, you guys were both directors, as it was more predominantly the museum. Of course, there was a little bit of a collection building from leftover from Lucy Harwood or the Patrocinio Borellas that were on the wall, the Victor Higgins that hung above the fireplace. But really, the primary role was not as a museum. So what. And I know, David, you start. You were in there at the beginning of the transition with David Witt. Came in as curator in 1980 something, right? 1980, 119 81. Okay, so he was actually. There. Was actually a curator the whole time you were there then, David. Okay, so I'm just curious what role art played at the museum. And you guys probably will follow a transition in some ways, starting with Jim. I'll be short. My primary allegiance was to the library, and I didn't have much to do with the museum. I did have built some panels so that we could show more of the collection. And it was really clunky and ugly, and we didn't do a very good job, but we were able to show more of the collection. And then the panels were on wheels, and they. We pushed them to the wall when we had things going on in the auditorium. It was really an awkward situation, but we did the best. But David came in. David Witt, that is. I'm sorry. And he was much more of a professional curator than any of us, and did an excellent job. As I recall, he didn't put on any exhibitions in the auditorium or in the art space, but he did in the Emhoff room that you mentioned earlier, the reading room at the back of the library, and did some wonderful exhibits there. We didn't even have a security system when I started. And we installed some cheap little thing that never worked properly. But I don't feel like I did. I contributed very much to the museum things. And let me just add at this point that I just think it's a miracle that Bob Ellis came along at the right time and created the. Or helped create the museum of art. And I am so, so grateful to everybody who has kept it going and saved the hardwood and made it into such a world class museum. It's just a wonderful thing. Yeah. And the. Well, I'll go to that. But I wanted to ask Jim, I heard that the artwork was stored behind the stage or under the stage. Yeah, the piano was an old chickering piano that David Caffey just mentioned, and it shared the space with the art collection. The borellas were in the second room, the. I'm thinking the east side room. And my mother knew Patrocinio Varela and had owned that book of his images and sculptures. So, being something of a morbid writer, I identified 100% with Perella's work. And I used to go up and. And look at them at times. That was my major relationship to the art. Excellent. And so David like. So David Witt came in as curators. The first curator started the collection. So when you got. And also I noticed when you introduced it, you said, Harwood Library and Museum. Whereas that was really the transition time, I will say, from my perspective as a user of the library, I didn't realize it was a museum at that time. So I'm curious what your experience was there.

[31:46] JIM LEVY: My very first experience and all of my subsequent experiences, in all of those, I saw the library and the museum as both entities and highly valued parts. There was, I think, a very decent art collection for the resources that were available for it, including some gems that are still, I think, starring features of the museum. And as far as the. The library having primacy, there was a priority on that. And I was hired by, or at least at the instance of the Harwood advisory board, which included at least two artists, the chair at that time, Robert Ray, a painter, and Bob Saltzman, a photographer. And I very clearly remember in my job interview, Bob Saltzman, the photographer, is telling us, you know, we value the museum, we value the library, but the library is the critical thing right now, because we have many places in Taos where we can exhibit art, but we only have one place where we can go to check out books and get library services. So there was a priority in that sense, even from the artists. But to me, both of them always deserve a full measure of our effort. And I thank God it. And during my tenure, we got a number of grants, both federal grants and also foundation grants, from the Skaggs Foundation, Nelda and Lutcher Stark foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust. And with some of those, we were able to do a sort of secondary renovation of the museum space. We did a collection cataloging project. And really on both sides in the library and the museum, it's hard to go out and ask for money when you're just saying, you know, poor us, we. We might have to close. If you don't give us money, you always need to be moving forward and trying to do new things. And so we were. We were doing that on. On both sides. And. And, uh, among my accomplishments, I take credit for leaving, which, uh, among other things, made it possible for, uh, Bob Ellis to come in and literally give almost his entire retirement from the University of New Mexico to the task of working with Gus Foster and others to develop the museum into the marvelous resource that you continue to be steward over.

[34:37] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: And so, yeah, and Bob, I mean, he came in right after you. Bob Ellis came out of retirement as you to rescue the Harwood or to figure out what to do with this entity up here, and certainly has been transformational. And we would speak to him today if he were still living. But. So did you left. But did you have any interface with Bob Ellis, or was it really kind of shifts in the night?

[35:06] JIM LEVY: I don't recall having any interface with him as far. Yes, I probably did have a couple of meetings just to go over basic things like the budget, but it really wasn't any significant overlap that I recall. But he was someone I had met before. And when I visited Taos from time to time after that, I enjoyed visiting with Bob, and we certainly had a good relationship of mutual respect and so forth. But I'm an admirer of his more than anything else.

[35:46] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: Thank you. And we just have, I think, time for a couple more questions. Right? Five minutes. And so I think I gotta focus on this one. It's just. What are your hopes for the future of the Harwood and the future of Taos? You want me to go, Jim? You want to start with that one?

[36:09] JIM LEVY: Okay, Jim, you take. You take Taos? I'm not able to speak to that.

[36:14] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: Yeah, you can choose however you want to answer it. Okay, I'll take Taos, and you take. Take the museum.

[36:21] JIM LEVY: Well, you can stick to the museum, too, but Taos for sure.

[36:26] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: Well, there's two things that I have thought for many years would benefit Taos in the future. One is that UNM, the University of New Mexico, open a four year college here. I think that it would benefit all the Taos county residents. I also think there's a lot of out of state students that would come, which would help with the economy. They'd come for the skiing and the rafting and the art and the whole atmosphere, so. And the other thing is, and I actually tried to push this years ago, but it didn't go. I think the downtown area, about an eight block area, could make a tremendous place for both tourists and locals. And I'm thinking of Boulder, Colorado. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. San Luis Obispo, California. Places where downtown is a vibrant mix of cafes and hotels and banks and hardware stores, where both the locals and the tourists visit constantly. And so those two things are things I've envisioned for the future of towns. And so, David, I guess, what would you see as the future of the Harwood? Of course, since you've been there, it's, what, 30 years? More than 30 years. So we've as in a totally different.

[37:57] JIM LEVY: Role in those 30 years, by the way, I've continued to be a member of the Taos Harwood Museum alliance, the Taos Friends of the Taos Public Library, and the Taos County Historical Society, although my attendance record is not very good with any of those. But that's the nature of my feeling toward Taos and the Harwood. I'm just very proud of everything that the Harwood has done in the time since, including and since the Bob Ellis era, I see evidence of really committed outreach programs to the community there. And I think that's great. That's wonderful. And I assume Harwood is moving toward as much financial stability as you can attain through endowments, if possible, but other things. And I just hope it stays strong and continues to be the vibrant force that I think it is now.

[39:09] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: So, David, I think it's time for your quote. As we wrap up here, it's been a lot of fun talking to you.

[39:16] JIM LEVY: That was jams.

[39:18] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: Oh, Jim, you had your Nichols. Your quote. Oh, okay. John Nichols said it better than I could ever say it. And here's what he wrote to about the Harwood. A sort of nest, a safe place, a sweet refuge, promising wisdom, comfort, and familiar respite from the storm. And John Nichols is an author in Taos who wrote Milagro Beanfield war, and when he spent many, many days and wrote many books in the public library and is still a part of our community. So thank you so much for giving me a little bit of insight into our past. Thank you. Thank you. Thank everybody. Thanks, Storycorps. And, David, you've been great. Thank you. And, Juniper, it was wonderful. I really enjoyed this opportunity.

[40:20] JIM LEVY: And I'll echo that appreciation to StoryCorps and to juniper for your leadership on this. Hope we've accomplished what you wanted us to.

[40:32] JUNIPER LEHERISSEY: That's great.

[40:33] JIM LEVY: Thank you.