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Glenna Goodacre honored by the Museum of Albuquerque Foundation

Glenna Goodacre, a Santa Fe sculptor whose pieces often depict significant moments and events in American history, was honored by the Museum of Albuquerque Foundation on May 8 as this year’s Notable New Mexican.

Widely known for sculpting the relief of the Shoshone woman Sacagawea on the Millennium Dollar coin released by the U.S. Mint in 2001, Glenna was selected for the honor to recognize “her artistic achievements, strong ties to New Mexico and contributions to the public good.” Other recipients of the Notable New Mexican title include former Gov. Bruce King, artist Wilson Hurley, Ambassador Edward Romero, novelist Tony Hillerman, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici and author Rudolfo Anaya.

Goodacre, a 25-year resident of Santa Fe, sculpted the eight life-size figures that comprise the popular “Park Place” tableaux at the Albuquerque Museum near the city’s Old Town. For the past eight years she has participated in the Albuquerque Museum Foundation’s “Miniatures” fund-raising event and in 2005 she received the Award for Excellence in the Arts from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Her spacious studio in the Santa Fe foothills is surrounded by bronze children and by numerous other bronze figures strategically placed so as to look perfectly at home. “I enjoy creating spaces and environments as much as making the sculptures that go into them,” she recently told a national magazine.

Works representing a long and prolific career are featured in public, private, municipal and museum collections across the nation. One of her most acclaimed large-scale works is the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. She also created the larger-than-life-size bronze portraits of President Ronald Reagan that stand in the entrance to the Reagan Library in California and at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. In 2003 her massive Irish Memorial with 35 lifesize figures, her largest sculpture, was dedicated in Philadelphia, PA.

Goodacre is an academician of the National Academy of Design and a fellow of the National Sculpture Society. She holds honorary doctorates from Colorado College, her alma mater, and from Texas Tech University in her hometown of Lubbock. A street in Lubbock is named Glenna Goodacre Blvd.

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