The New Mexico State University Art Museum holds the largest public collection of retablos—religious images painted on tin plates—in the United States. From 1963 to 1973, an important art collection started with generous donations of several Mexican retablos and objects related to sacred art by Dr. and Mrs. Andrew Babey, Pamela Babey, Dr. Reginald Fisher, Dr. and Mrs. Ezra K. Neidich, Mr. C. Andrew Sutherland, Mr. Fran E. Tolland, Ms. Helen McClure and Mr. Victor E. Clarence, along with a recent 2019 donation by renown Retablo scholar Gloria Giffords. Presently, the Art Gallery holds more than 2,000 retablos. Precedents for these retablos can be traced to paintings on wood, copper, and canvas by European and Mexican artists between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. 

The New Mexico State University Art Museum holds the largest public collection of retablos—religious images painted on tin plates—in the United States. From 1963 to 1973, an important art collection started with generous donations of several Mexican retablos and objects related to sacred art by Dr. and Mrs. Andrew Babey, Pamela Babey, Dr. Reginald Fisher, Dr. and Mrs. Ezra K. Neidich, Mr. C. Andrew Sutherland, Mr. Fran E. Tolland, Ms. Helen McClure and Mr. Victor E. Clarence, along with a recent 2019 donation by renown retablo scholar Gloria Giffords. Presently, the Art Museum holds more than 2,000 retablos. Precedents for these retablos can be traced to paintings on wood, copper, and canvas by European and Mexican artists between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. 

As a contemporary visual arts hub in southern New Mexico, the UAM provides enriching and informative experiences through participatory engagements with historical art, particularly its collection. In 2019 the University Art Museum (previously the UAG) moved its culturally significant art collection from its location in D. W. Williams Hall to a state-of-the-art, fully climate controlled, 21st century museum facility in the newly constructed Devasthali Hall. The new museum offers public access to the incredible permanent collection, now drawing from 2,000 nineteenth-century Mexican retablos, still the largest collection in the United States, more than 1,900 modern and contemporary works, and the Don Gonzales Collection, a collection of ninety World War I and II era propaganda posters.