Seton Castle Restoration Progress Report

May 2004

What a difference a month makes! May was a fantastic month at Seton Castle. Since September 2003 Academy personnel and a group of fantastic volunteers have been archiving Seton’s collection of paintings, sketches, artifacts and books. Through the end of May, we have archived over 300 artifacts and over 2,000 books, including dozens of books written by Seton, a collection of books dating back to the 1600’s, and an extensive collection of Native American and Southwest History. Click here to see some of our Newest Discoveries!

In addition to the Castle contents, we have been working hard to clear the land of years of rubbish, broken glass and fallen wooden structures. Throughout the month of May, 15 hard-working, energetic volunteers helped us with this project. Lots of sun, glass in our burlap bags, and laughter, and some great tuna casserole! The Castle land now has a renewed life force emanating from it. We’ll be doing more land clean-up this summer on the adjacent 40 acres.

We are also in the midst of forging relationships with local art historians and curators to help us determine how to best work with and restore Seton’s collection. We have commissioned a researcher to investigate the history and background of the collection, as well as the history of the building, and stories of Seton’s life and work there. Working closely with Dee Seton Barber, Ernest Thompson’s youngest daughter and the previous owner of the Castle, we are compiling a written document that will preserve both the history of the collection and the intention that Seton brought to his many lectures and summer schools that he ran at the Castle.

Since January, we have been working with the Santa Fe firm of Spears Architects to direct and design the restoration of the Castle. We are in the process of researching the original Castle plans and determining how best to restore the building so as to preserve the historic structure and remain true to the original design, whilst at the same time updating the property to incorporate modern environmental innovations and enabling it to be used for our educational mission.