The Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center is gaining global recognition for its work “connecting past to present and memory to action.”
The History Colorado museum is joining the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the global network whose goal is to harness the transformative power of collective memory to dismantle violence and injustice, paving the way for more equitable and peaceful communities.
A Site of Conscience is a place of memory that prevents the erasure of the past in order to foster more just and humane societies today. Sites of Conscience provide safe spaces to remember and preserve even the most traumatic memories. These sites also enable their visitors to make connections between history and related human rights issues we face now.
“Joining the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience affirms our belief that how we tell history matters,” said Eric Carpio, director of Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center. “Being part of this global network strengthens our commitment to presenting history with honesty and nuance. It also reinforces the work we do in partnership with our community: creating space for dialogue, lifting up diverse voices, and ensuring that the past helps inform a more just and informed future.”
Fort Garland was established in 1858 as a U.S. Army outpost – 10 years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.-Mexico War and ceded vast territories to the United States, forever changing the map of North America.
As a new member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the Fort Garland Museum joins more than 400 sites in 80 countries in a powerful participatory network aimed at preserving places where struggles for human rights have occurred, talking openly about what happened there, and harnessing the strengths of memory, arts, and culture to build more equitable, just, and peaceful communities today and sustain them well into the future.
“We are thrilled to have Fort Garland join our network, and excited to work with them in amplifying historically silenced narratives and promoting dialogue on these crucial topics,” said Elena Del Hoyo, who manages Membership and Stakeholder Engagement for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.
The Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center will continue to highlight southern Colorado’s rich and complex history – with special offerings throughout 2026, which marks 150 years of Colorado statehood and 250 years since the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.This summer, the Fort Garland Museum is collaborating with the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos. to open the exhibition Unearthing Futures / Desenterrando Futuros. This ambitious and sprawling cross-border exhibition explores adobe as a living practice that connects art, architecture and ancestral knowledge across the Southwestern United States. Through unique installations at both locations, artists will show how adobe endures not through permanence but through renewal — its survival bound to the annual acts of maintenance, ceremony and reciprocity that give it life.