Albuquerque Museum opens expansive Route 66 exhibit in centennial year

Albuquerque Museum has opened a Route 66 exhibition that trades nostalgia for a harder look at who actually lived, worked and moved along Central Avenue. The Other Route 66: 100 Years of People, Identity, and Place in Albuquerque opened June 6 and will remain on view through January 3, 2027, with more than 300 historical artifacts, ephemera, photographs and local stories.

The museum is pitching the show as a corrective to the familiar neon-and-classic-car version of Route 66. Curator Alicia Romero said the goal was to focus on communities that have been othered in the road’s history, including immigrant and refugee communities that built businesses along Central, LGBTQ residents and people who experienced homelessness. The exhibition includes Native American clothing, old tools, maps and classic cars, underscoring that the road’s story in Albuquerque has always been about labor, migration, commerce and survival as much as tourism.

That broader frame arrives as Albuquerque moves through a citywide Route 66 centennial campaign tied to the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Numbered Highway System on November 11, 2026, the date the city says effectively created Route 66. City officials and Visit Albuquerque describe Albuquerque’s 18-mile stretch as the longest continuous urban stretch of the Mother Road in the country, a distinction the city continues to use in its branding and public programming.

The museum’s exhibit is one piece of that effort. Another is Route 66 Remixed, a public-art project with murals, sculptures and augmented reality installations reimagining the city’s 18-mile corridor. Downtown, the Route 66 Information Station at 320 Central Ave. SW sits at 4th Street and Central Avenue, the spot Visit Albuquerque describes as the place in the United States where Route 66 crosses itself.

Programming around the exhibit has been built to deepen the historical frame. Opening day included a talk and book signing by Candacy Taylor, and a July 15 event is scheduled with Route 66 author Michael Wallis. The exhibition was supported by a $100,000 Humanities in Place grant from the Mellon Foundation, the first Mellon grant received by the Albuquerque Museum Foundation. Mayor Tim Keller said the grant is an investment in Albuquerque’s story and in the city’s Route 66 heritage during the centennial year.

For Bernalillo County, the exhibit places Central Avenue back at the center of a local story that is still unfolding. It argues that Route 66 in Albuquerque is not just a backdrop for souvenir culture, but a corridor shaped by people whose identities were formed where movement and place met.