Alcario Otero draws packed crowd at Los Lunas museum talk

A standing-room-only crowd filled the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage & Arts on June 13 as Alcario Otero presented three retablos now being added to the museum’s permanent collection. The turnout showed that Valencia County still has an appetite for Spanish Colonial devotional art, especially when the work comes from an artist whose life and craft are rooted here.

The 2 to 4 p.m. program, titled An Afternoon with Santero Alcario Otero, paired the art presentation with an oral history lesson. Otero spoke about his life, what inspires him, the history of Spanish Colonial art and the craft behind his work, giving the audience more than a gallery-style viewing and turning the event into a preservation-minded exchange.

The three works were acquired with funds donated by the Friends of the Los Lunas Public Library & Museum of Heritage & Arts. That detail matters in a county where access to heritage programming is often limited to the institutions that can afford to collect, display and explain it. In this case, community support helped move Otero’s work from individual ownership into a public collection.

Albuquerque Museum lists Otero as born in 1951, from El Cerro and living in Los Lunas. Blue Rain Gallery describes him as a master gesso relief artist who was juried into Spanish Market in 1990, then won Best of Show/Grand Prize and the Gerald Peters Award at the 1995 Spanish Market. The same biography says he also won First Place Bulto Awards in 1993 and 1995, and that one of his bultos was given to Pope John Paul II.

The museum, housed in the old Agustine Archuleta building at Main Street and Luna Avenue, says it preserves the history and showcases the differing cultural arts of Valencia County. It is about a year away from its 20th anniversary, and the addition of Otero’s retablos gives that mission sharper urgency: the county is not only displaying regional religious folk art, it is actively building a record of it before that knowledge and skill set slips further from everyday life.

For Los Lunas and the surrounding valley, the crowd at Otero’s talk suggested more than curiosity about one artist. It pointed to a community that still sees Spanish Colonial traditions as part of its living identity, not just a chapter in a museum case.