Watson, Steve

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Watson / In Memoriam            75
In Memoriam
Dr. Robert Rankin White (1942–2014) 
Steve Watson
•
Robert Rankin White, preeminent southwestern art historian and author, passed away in Albu-querque, New Mexico, on 17 July 2014. Born 
in Houston, Texas, on 8 February 1942, he graduated 
from the prestigious St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in 
Austin in 1960. He received a bachelor’s degree in geol-
ogy from the University of Texas in 1964, served in 
the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and completed a master’s 
degree in hydrology from the University of Arizona in 
1971. After a two-year stint in Texas, Robert worked for 
the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico as a hydrologist and editor for the 
next fifteen years. He then obtained his doctorate in American Studies at the 
University of New Mexico (UNM) in 1993. During the course of his career, Rob-
ert authored or co-authored over fifty books, articles, chapters, and essays in 
history and the arts.
Robert left many references to his intellectual origins and to how his two 
passions of art and history merged. He was influenced by his father, who com-
pleted a bachelor’s degree in history before going on to a career in engineering. 
Steve Watson received his MA in history from UNM in 1995, and is the archivist for the 
Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center’s History Office at Kirtland Air Force Base, 
New Mexico. He is currently working on a biography of the base’s namesake, Col. Roy C. 
Kirtland, and a study of the contribution the first Army pilots made to the establishment of 
a separate Air Service. He is on the advisory board of the First Aero Squadron Foundation, 
a member of the Historical Society of New Mexico, and was Robert White’s friend since the 
mid-1980s.
76           New Mexico Historical Review / Volume 90, Number 1, Winter 2015
His grandparents owned an E. Martin Hennings painting of New Mexico, 
which launched his curiosity about the Land of Enchantment. Later, in Arizona, 
he happened on another painting by the same artist. As he recalled in 1978, “I 
then determined to learn all that I could about this man.”1 As a student at the 
University of Texas, Robert took a history elective from Dr. George Arnakis—
“For the first time in my college career, I felt that I was in the presence of a true 
scholar”—and briefly considered changing his major.2 While stationed at San-
dia Base in Albuquerque in 1967–1968, he took a UNM Continuing Education 
course in the history of the American West that, he later noted, “reawakened my 
interest in history.”3 He honed his skills by studying the “meticulous research” 
and “lucid writing style” of the works of Robert Taft, a chemistry professor and 
art historian.4 First traveling through and later living in New Mexico, he and his 
first wife, Judy, toured historical sites, galleries, and museums in the early 1970s. 
Robert found his niche in the study of northern New Mexico artists, and devel-
oped a passion for New Mexican and southwestern history from the territorial 
period through the early twentieth century. Indeed, Robert considered the rep-
resentational art of this time to be “a window onto the past.”5
A scant two years after finishing his master’s degree in hydrology, Robert 
began his “conversion on the road to Taos.”6 Although there had been previous 
works on the Taos artists and Hennings, in 1973 at the suggestion of a Santa Fe 
art dealer, Robert went directly to speak with Martin Hennings’s widow. Rob-
ert charmed her into divulging previously unknown stories.7 Four months later, 
he sent his manuscript, “Taos Founder, E. Martin Hennings,” to Southwest Art 
and became a published art historian. Just three years later he had his first major 
piece, “The Lithographs and Etchings of E. Martin Hennings, 1886–1956,” pub-
lished by the Museum of New Mexico Press.
Robert’s methodology and style emphasized accuracy, thoroughness, and 
humor. As a researcher, Robert was intensely persistent. He explained, “On a 
number of occasions, I became interested in a certain subject but finding little 
or nothing available in the literature, began my own research; by the time my 
curiosity was satisfied I had gathered enough information to write an article or 
book on that particular person or event.”8 In 1993 he tracked down the exact 
location where the founders of the Taos Society of Artists, Bert Geer Phillips 
and Ernest Blumenschein, wrecked their wagon in 1898 and experienced the 
light of northern New Mexico—the so-called “Sacred Site.” Robert liked to lace 
his writing with humor. In an article on etchings and James McNeill Whistler, 
Robert recounted an incident in which an artist died before being able to deliver 
two etchings, whereupon Whistler agreed to fulfill the man’s agreement. Robert 
wrote, “Our sympathies to the poor Mr. Luard, but for the sake of future gener-
ations of art-lovers, his death could not have been more timely.”9
Watson / In Memoriam            77
In the early 1980s, Robert turned to more traditional historical and biograph-
ical topics, as well as to the history of New Mexican literature and architecture. 
His outside work sustained his passion, but he also found a way to commingle 
the two interests by producing an article on a U.S. Geological Survey employee 
murdered in New Mexico. Robert produced The Taos Society of Artists, arguably 
his best-known work, during this early period. Published by UNM Press in 1983, 
the book consisted of the meeting minutes and other documents from the Taos 
Society. In the process, Robert dispelled misconceptions and presumptions, and 
explained internal dissent among the artists. The effort earned him praise as a 
superb researcher and fully established him as a respected art historian.
Robert left his job at the Geological Survey in 1989 to become an indepen-
dent scholar and author. He had begun his doctoral education at the UNM 
Department of History in the early 1980s, but later transferred to the Ameri-
can Studies department, where he completed his dissertation, “Artists of Ter-
ritorial New Mexico, 1846–1912” (1993). Afterward, he wrote two chapters of 
Bert Geer Phillips and the Taos Art Colony, co-authored with Julie Schimmel, in 
1994. In high demand as a lecturer on territorial New Mexican art, Robert spoke 
extensively at art conferences across the nation, and gallery owners, private art 
collectors, and museum curators sought his expertise. In 1998 UNM Press reis-
sued The Taos Society of Artists with a preface that updated much of the existing 
scholarship on the Society.
Robert participated in numerous cultural organizations including the South-
west Art History Council, the Western History Association, the Westerners, and 
the Santa Fe Trail Association. In 1995 he became the Executive Director of the 
New Mexico Book League, publisher of the literary newsletter Book Talk, until 
the publication ended in October 2001. He served on the board of the Friends 
of the UNM Libraries in the 1980s and the Editorial Board of the New Mexico 
Historical Review from 1990 through early 1998. He was an active member of the 
Historical Society of New Mexico, serving on its Board of Directors beginning 
in 1987, and as its President from 1991–1993.
Robert’s personal journals from 1974 to 2006 and periodic travel journals 
from the 1960s and 1970s are now part of his collection donated to the UNM 
Center for Southwest Research. These journals are a rich trove of information 
regarding the cultural life of New Mexico for that period, and his writing spar-
kles with references to his interactions with the luminaries of the time. Addi-
tionally, the collection contains his personal papers, manuscripts, research 
notes, and historical documents.
Robert’s life intersected with art, history, and literature, as well as music, pub-
lishing, and travel. He lived at a time in New Mexico when it was possible to 
befriend or at least have more than a passing nod with many—if not most—of 
78           New Mexico Historical Review / Volume 90, Number 1, Winter 2015
those folks who created and celebrated its culture and those who preserved it. His 
affable, charming nature introduced him to these circles, but his sharp intellect, 
competence, strength of character, and desire to serve and contribute kept him 
well connected with the movers and shakers in them.
Sadly, Robert was afflicted with severe and prolonged tinnitus beginning 
in November 2000, and some years later, he developed Parkinson’s disease. 
Along with dementia, the disease’s symptoms effectively ended his ability to 
research and write. Complications from Parkinson’s eventually took Rob-
ert’s life. He is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Eleanor and Rich-
ard Viebig of Houston, Texas, and nieces Peggi Bloomquist and Tracy Broyles, 
as well as numerous friends, neighbors, colleagues, and caregivers. Robert 
was interred at the Houston National Cemetery in Texas in late July 2014, 
and a Celebration and Remembrance of his life took place at his home in late 
August 2014. He will long be remembered as a loyal friend, dedicated servant, 
and outstanding scholar.
Select and Chronological Bibliography of Major Works
“Taos Founder, E. Martin Hennings.” Southwest Art 3 (April 1974): 50–52.
The Lithographs and Etchings of E. Martin Hennings, 1886–1956. Santa Fe: 
Museum of New Mexico Press, 1978.
“A Victim of Transition: M. P. Hernandez.” Rio Grande History 11 (1980): 4–7.
“Felix Martinez: A Borderlands Success Story.” El Palacio 87 (winter 1981–1982): 
12–17.
The Taos Society of Artists. 1983. Rev. ed., Albuquerque: University of New 
Mexico Press, 1998.
“Ernest Blumenschein and the Great War.” Ayer y Hoy en Taos 2 (winter 1986): 
3–6.
“The New Mexico Painters, 1923–1926.” Southwest Art 15 (May 1986): 76–81.
“A 1910 Albuquerque Bungalow with an Alvarado Dormer Window.” New Mex-
ico Architecture 28 (May/June 1987): 7.
“The Murder of Colonel Charles Potter.” New Mexico Historical Review 62 (July 
1987): 249–62.
“Augustine M. Hunt’s Book Store, Reading Room, Lending Library, and Art 
Gallery—Santa Fe,  1863–1866.” Book Talk 17 (August 1988): 1–5.
Watson / In Memoriam            79
“Artists of Territorial New Mexico, 1846–1912.” PhD diss., University of New 
Mexico, 1993.
Bert Geer Phillips and the Taos Art Colony. Albuquerque: University of New 
Mexico Press, 1994 (with Julie Schimmel).
New Mexican Genízaros and Turkish Janissaries. Albuquerque, N.Mex.: Las 
Lomas Press, 1994.
“Sacred Site.” Southwest Art 23 (May 1994): 60–66, 100.
“The Southwestern Etchings of Peter Moran: A History and Catalog.” Imprint: 
Journal of the American Historical Print Collectors Society 19 (May 1994): 
11–28.
“A Remembrance of Peggy Pond Church,” Book Talk 23 (September 1994): 4–6.
“Gene Kloss, a Taos Printmaker.” Gilcrease Journal 4 (fall/winter 1996): 44–52.
“Jeno Juszko’s Statue of Archbishop Lamy.” Tradición Revista 6 (summer 2001): 
63–66.
Notes
1. Robert Rankin White, The Lithographs and Etchings of E. Martin Hennings (Santa 
Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1978), author’s preface, inside front cover.
2. Robert Rankin White, New Mexican Genízaros and Turkish Janissaries (Albuquer-
que, N.Mex.: Las Lomas Press, 1994), iii–iv.
3. Ibid., iv.
4. Robert Rankin White, “Artists of Territorial New Mexico, 1846–1912” (PhD diss., 
University of New Mexico, 1993), v.
5. Ibid., 220.
6. Ibid., vi.
7. Travel notes, 22 September 1973, Box 1, Robert R. White Papers, Center for South-
west Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico [hereafter CSWR, UNM].
8. “White, Robert Rankin,” Contemporary Authors, vol. 123 (1988), 465, in Biographi-
cal Information folder, Box 3, Robert R. White Papers, CSWR, UNM.
9. “Whistler and the Junior Etching Club,” Print Review 4 (1975): 38–39.
80           New Mexico Historical Review / Volume 90, Number 1, Winter 2015


In Memoriam: Dr. Robert Rankin White (1942-2014)

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