Getting the flavor of...New Mexico’s artists haven

New Mexico’s artists haven

Taos, N.M., is a town of “remarkable women,” said Jay Jones in the Chicago Tribune. To mark New Mexico’s centennial, this still-modest alpine settlement is celebrating several women who helped shape its history. A few arrived well ahead of indoor plumbing: Former New Yorker Mabel Dodge Luhan, who founded an artists retreat that still takes guests, came to town in 1916, before “doing the unthinkable”—marrying a Native American. Lucy Harwood, whose home is now a contemporary art museum, arrived the same year. Oil heiress and model Millicent Rogers, a 1947 arrival, also has a namesake museum, where her turquoise jewelry collection shares space with other examples of Southwestern art. Among the other free thinkers drawn to Taos were “some of the biggest names” of the 20th-century avant-garde, including painter Georgia O’Keeffe. The town’s busy gallery calendar suggests that her legacy in Taos also lives on.

Indie-minded Ithaca

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Ithaca, N.Y., is so free-spirited that it even has an alternative currency, said Melanie D.G. Kaplan in The Washington Post. On a recent stopover in this upstate college town, I made it a mission to celebrate the place’s spirit by finding businesses that accept the colorful-looking bills, called Ithaca Hours. Created in 1991 to encourage local purchasing, the currency isn’t accepted by as many business owners as it once was. But I was able to use it at the Ithaca Bakery, GreenStar Natural Foods Market, Collegetown Bagels, and even at La Tourelle Resort & Spa, where I stayed. As home to Cornell University and Ithaca College, Ithaca is “as dense with brainpower as it is with composting bins,” so I grew confident that a few locals could resuscitate Ithaca’s currency by creating a debit card version. They could think it through while exploring the many trails, gorges, and waterfalls that make their lifestyle seem so worth preserving.