Artist's widow donates $2.5 million to UNM Foundation

The widow of a prolific painter known for capturing stunning landscapes has given the University of New Mexico a gift to preserve her husband’s work and create a visiting scholar program.

Rosalyn Roembke Hurley, the wife of the late Wilson Hurley, recently gave the UNM Foundation a $2.5 million donation to create an endowment account to fund the study of her husband’s work. Wilson Hurley died in 2008.

The Wilson Hurley Collection Endowment will pay for the acquisition, processing and digitization of 40 years of paintings and fine-art studies into Wilson Hurley’s work. The lawyer-turned-painter focused on landscapes of the American West, seascapes, aviation and outer space.

The endowment will also fund a website portal of Hurley’s work, pay for a UNM graduate fellow to help process the collection and work on related projects, and create a visiting scholars program in which researchers can study Wilson Hurley’s work at UNM.

“We are honored that Rosalyn Hurley has entrusted UNM’s College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences with the legacy of her late husband, Wilson Hurley, whose life and work spans four decades of remarkable landscapes, seascapes, portraits, and still life paintings,” UNM President Garnett S. Stokes said in a statement. “It is our privilege to put her donation to good use as we acquire, care for, and curate Hurley’s art. The entire Lobo community is grateful for Rosalyn Hurley’s generosity and even prouder to provide a good home for Wilson Hurley’s work.”

UNM Foundation officials couldn’t be reached for comment last week.

Portia Vescio, the university archivist, said UNM will obtain numerous records that Wilson Hurley kept throughout his career, such as his correspondence, photographs and sketches.

“These are the sorts of mostly non-published materials that Wilson created over the course of his career as an artist that can be used to do research about his work,” she said.

Wilson Hurley was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and moved to New Mexico as a child and attended Los Alamos Ranch School. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in World War II before going to law school. He practiced in New Mexico before leaving the profession to focus on art.

In 1968, he was recalled to active duty and served in Vietnam, where he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. He created 30 paintings of his experiences in the country.

During his 40-year career as an artist, Wilson Hurley completed 1,300 pieces of artwork; some of it is displayed around Albuquerque, including at the Albuquerque International Sunport and in a reading room at UNM, Vescio said.

“I spent much of my life compiling the records for Wilson’s paintings,” Rosalyn Roembke Hurley said in a statement. “I didn’t want them to be lost. Wilson’s paintings were his legacy. He was a devoted painter who loved his work and showed people what he thought was beautiful. He felt fortunate that he was successful enough to continue to paint.”