Randall Davey Home & Studio Added to National Network

What do you love most?

For me, that’s art.

How about second most?

For me, native plants.

Now think about what you love third most.

In my case, nature and birds and hiking and northern New Mexico.

All of things I love most magically come together in one place: Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary in Santa Fe.

Davey (1887-1964) was a realist painter and leading figure of the Santa Fe Art Colony, a convening of artists from around the nation in the early 20^th century.

In 1920, Davey converted an 1847 Army sawmill into his studio and residence, living and working there for the next four decades as a portrait, landscape, and equestrian painter in the modern realist tradition. He was a successor of the Ashcan School and Taos Society artists, two groups I adore.

The property, gifted to the National Audubon Society in 1983 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, functions today as both a wildlife sanctuary and an artists' site, with docent tours of the preserved house and studio.

I mentioned in last week’s article that I live in Florida. I was first turned on to Davey not in Santa Fe, but at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. His portrait of Paul Robeson is one of the best portraits in American art history. He sensitively captures the great man’s humanity.

I was thrilled to learn that Davey’s Santa Fe home and studio have been added to the Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios program, a diverse coalition of museums that were previously the homes and working studios of American artists.

Randall Davey in his studio. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors photo Archives(NMHMDCA) Neg.No.020335.

Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios

Art museums and galleries display creative output. The inspiration, process and effort leading to that output can best be experienced in the artist’s studio and home. The Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios network does just that.

Founded in 1999 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios program commemorates sites of great American artistic achievement. The nationwide coalition now totals 93 sites.

The network spans big cities and rural outposts coast to coast. From Georgia O’Keeffe’s second home in Abiquiu, NM and the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, MT, to the Louise Bourgeois Home and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Studio in Manhattan. It is the only national organization dedicated to telling a site-specific story of our country’s art history.

Through that art history, visitors learn American history writ large. The Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios program should be celebrated like our National Parks with citizens “collecting” visits and planning vacations around them. I do. These are the sites of America’s artistic heritage.

Thomas Hart Benton, Eanger Irving Couse, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner.

All are featured in the program.

Less familiar names as well.

Exterior of the Randall Davey House in Santa Fe. Photo credit Judy Kohn.

2026 Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios Additions

Thirteen new member sites, including the Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary, were announced in May of 2026 by HAHS. The 2026 class reflects the breadth and depth of American artistic practice across more than two centuries. The new sites represent painting, sculpture, ceramics, and furniture making. These additions deepen a coalition that continues to grow in geographic reach, cultural representation, and artistic range.

The Western U.S. is well represented through the following additions:

• Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts, Ojai, CA. The Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts preserves the studio and legacy of Beatrice Wood (1893-1998), one of the 20th century's most original ceramicists, who lived and worked in Ojai's Happy Valley until her death at age 105. Wood was a central figure in the New York Dada movement before relocating to California, where her luminous lusterware glazes earned her recognition as a California Living Treasure and an Esteemed American Artist by the Smithsonian Institution. Her studio remains intact.
• Charles & Ray Eames Foundation, Los Angeles, CA. The Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, was designed and built in 1949 by Charles Eames (1907-1978) and Ray Eames (1912-1988) as their home and studio. A National Historic Landmark and one of the most celebrated works of postwar architecture in the world, the house embodies the couple's pioneering approach to design using prefabricated, industrial materials.
• Ilan-Lael: James Hubbell Home and Studio, Julian, CA. Ilan-Lael is the hand-built compound of artist James Hubbell (1931-2024), a sculptor, painter, and designer whose organic architecture and intricate mosaics, stained glass, and ironwork have graced hundreds of public and private spaces in Southern California and around the Pacific Rim. Over more than six decades, Hubbell and his wife Anne constructed 13 structures on 10 acres of oak woodland in the mountains east of San Diego, creating an environment that bridges the boundaries between art, architecture, and nature.

Ilan-Lael Center. Photo © John Durant; Courtesy Ilan-Lael Foundation.

Visiting Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary

Find the Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary by taking Canyon Road out of downtown Santa Fe – all the way out. Past the pavement. You never new Canyon Road went on so far. It’s less than four miles from the Santa Fe Plaza, but feels much further.

The grounds encompass more than 135 acres of pinyon-juniper woodlands, ponderosa forest, and native plant gardens. Those native plant gardens attract what can only be described as swarms of hummingbirds. Uncountable. They swirl around your head, flittering, mixing with the butterflies in a fantastical display of fragile, colorful, flight.

Even the most amateurish of photographers with only a smartphone can snap amazing pics of the birds and butterflies from a distance of a foot or two.

Guided tours of the house and studio are offered on Friday afternoons from 2:00-3:30pm. Book tickets in advance as space is limited. While access to the grounds, hiking trails, and parking is free, tours cost $8.

The site of course includes the historic Davey House and art studio, as well as a fruit orchard, environmental education classrooms, event spaces, and now a Nature Discovery Area. There’s a large play area and lawn for kids to run around, as well as short hiking trails – less than a mile. The Santa Fe River runs right nearby.

The grounds are closed the month of January.

The Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary is not the best place to see Davey’s work; it’s not an art museum the way the Nicolai Fechin House in Taos is. The mission at the Center is sharing the place where Davey found inexhaustible creative inspiration; I’m guessing you will find a piece of that there as well.