A museum for the whole southwest corner. Between the Rio Grande and Tucson is about 270 miles of towns and schools with no real museum. Victoria explains why time and distance are a barrier for kids, why Silver City is about an hour away for neighboring counties instead of seven hours to the other side of New Mexico, and how tourism will help support the museum.

The pop-up museum. Temporary walls, two museum-quality exhibitions, and ceramics by an artist featured in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Two weekends in a row, to prove that museums change and there is always something new to see.

Why Silver City is an art town. Entrepreneurial artists in the late sixties and early seventies opened galleries and organizations, and the town earned a spot in a book on the best art towns in the United States. Festivals like the Clay Festival followed. The museum, open almost every day, is meant to be the cherry on top.

Meet Leighton Fossum. Born in Thief River Falls in northern Minnesota. He worked in Minneapolis for most of his life as a graphic designer and illustrator, then retired to Tucson and later New Mexico, where he became a fine artist. He sketched at rodeos, Indian gatherings and places way back in the woods.

More than a painter. After he passed away, Victoria’s dealer came across records of his inventions, his patents, his Air Force discharge papers, and an easel covered in drawn faces, like his thoughts scribbled down.

Detail, casein and pen and ink. He painted with fast-drying casein and added tiny pen-and-ink detail, down to every leaf and grain of wood. His illustrations for a fishing-lure company became collector’s items.

The Jefferson Highway connection. Lisa talks about the artists along the Jefferson Highway from Winnipeg to New Orleans, and why the Midwest seems like a little art factory.

Humor, weather and composition. The cow at the gas pump, a tumbleweed flying through the air, and a nose that barely goes past the edge of a building. Victoria believes Fossum knew composition so well that he challenged it on purpose.

Why museums matter. Education, enjoying learning, and giving adults a place to talk about what they see.