Coming together: Great Southwestern Antique Show offers vintage wares, art

From antique to vintage, the Great Southwestern Antique Show has it all.

More than 100 exhibitors from 20 states and Canada will be selling vintage and antique finds during the event. A charity sneak preview will take place at 1 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 2, with VIP early bird sneak preview entry starting at 11 a.m. The general admission show takes place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 4. The preview and show will take place at the Manuel Lujan Jr. Exhibit Complex at Expo New Mexico, 300 San Pedro Drive SE.

Great Southwestern Antique Show offers vintage wares, art

Twelve years ago, organizers of the antique show began an endowment with New Mexico PBS and has been working with the public broadcasting station ever since. The charity preview is $100 per person and 100% of the proceeds benefit New Mexico PBS educational and arts programming. The goal of the NMPBS Arts & Education Endowment is to aid New Mexico PBS in continuing to present arts and education programs, as well as outreach activities to central and northern New Mexico, according to a NMPBS news release.

“They’re getting the first opportunity to see things and buy things before the crowd gets there on Saturday,” said Terry Schurmeier, show founder and owner of Cowboys and Indians Antiques. “That’s always attracted, like, Ralph Lauren vintage. The whole team comes out. There’s anywhere from four to six people that come from New York every year to buy at the show, and they (have) now (come to) our show for the last 10 years. They don’t even go to the Santa Fe shows because they find everything they need right here ... We have had people from 27 different countries come to the show. It has a very broad appeal because we don’t restrict it to being just a Native American show or just a cowboy show or just an antique show.”

Vintage clothes, photography, fine art and jewelry are some of the items that can be found at the show.

“There’s a little bit of everything,” Schurmeier said. “You can find a Tiffany lamp there. You can find diamond jewelry, but we probably have the largest inventory of Native American, historic and vintage jewelry. People travel from all over the world, from Japan, from South Korea and China and Europe, because they know they’re going to be able to have the best selection and the best prices here.”

Proceeds raised from the general admission show benefit endowments established by Schurmeier. The first endowment was created for St. Pius X High School in the early 2000s. The money helped build the school a baseball stadium. Schurmeier’s son was a year-round athlete and was on the baseball team that ended up winning the state championship. Her son has since graduated and each year the endowment has helped one or two students from families who are going through divorce or might be in a position where they would have to leave the school.

“My son was going to St. Pius and I was a single mom and I was on the advisory board, and so I was kind of coerced into putting this show on because I lived here and there was somebody who used to produce a show the same weekend and he stopped doing it,” Schurmeier said. “Everybody really needed this to happen in our business. And so they kind of just pushed for me to do it. And so, I took over, but I run a business every single day with our store (Cowboys and Indians Antiques) open. I thought, ‘Well, I don’t need to make the money of being a show promoter.’ I’d rather have people want to do the show because I’m a dealer and I understand what they’re going through.”

From the beginning, Schurmeier decided to not personally profit from the show admission and instead give it away to good causes.

“We set up an endowment at (University of New Mexico) Hospital when we had the Hospital Foundation and that was to pay for the continuing education for the nurse oncology department,” Schurmeier said. “We would pay for three or four nurse oncologists each year to go to the nationals to learn the new protocols and then come back and do workshops to teach all the rest of the cancer nurses here the new protocols for treating the different types of cancers that were being studied with the National Cancer Research Institute. We have $100,000 in donations and an endowment with UNM Hospital and their cancer center.”

Schurmeier said proceeds from the show have allowed organizers to donate more than $500,000 to local nonprofits.

“We (also) do special grants so it doesn’t always go to the three endowments,” she explained. “This year, we’re doing a $5,000 grant to New Mexico Special Olympics. They had a shortfall this year. They didn’t raise enough money to cover the cost for travel, for the Summer and Winter Special Olympics for our Para athletics.”

According to Schurmeier, $5,000 for the grant will be taken from admission proceeds from the general show on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the money will then be split up between the cancer nursing endowment and the St. Pius endowment. Each year, at least $1,500 is donated to the Albuquerque Museum Foundation’s Magic Bus program, which provide students with transportation to the museum and enjoy a free guided one-hour tour.

“My sister and I both started by being avid field trip goers in Chicago, the Chicago art museums,” Schurmeier said. “The Chicago Field Museum had one of the best Native American collections in the world and we spent almost every Sunday there. Field trips for kids is definitely part of our heart. That’s really what the show’s been about from the very beginning.

“We have 100 dealers that come in from all across the country and they bring in great art and antiques and vintage (items). And, most of the concentration is on the Southwest or westward expansion and American history, but we have a lot of tribal art. Besides Native American, there’s South Pacific and African and all kinds of other early tribal arts.

“Because of the interest in tribal arts in Santa Fe, in general, New Mexico is like one of the second-largest art markets in the country. New York and New Mexico and Los Angeles. They all sort of compete for that award, but we’re trying to polish up New Mexico and get people to come back here as a destination point to celebrate Native American art and the Old West.”