WISC

The Women’s International Study Center held its founding ceremony on June 23, 2013, to inspire and enable women to achieve their goals. 

 Inspired by the Three Wise Women of the Acequia Madre House and their work in the arts, sciences, cultural preservation, and business, WISC was founded to carry the women's legacy into the future. The WISC Fellows-in-Residence program provides scholars, artists, authors, and others with “a room of their own”— a residency in a fully furnished house on the Acequia Madre House grounds—to advance their work and engage with our community.

 To date, WISC has supported over 70 individual fellows from 7 countries, covering a vast range of topics and disciplines of local and global interest. 

 The Women’s International Study Center is fortunate to be located on the grounds of the historic Acequia Madre House.

ACEQUIA MADRE HOUSE

 The Acequia Madre House was built in 1926 by Eva Scott Fényes, her daughter, Leonora S. M. Curtin, and granddaughter, Leonora F. Curtin, who later became Mrs. Yrjö Paloheimo. Over the course of 150 years, these three women studied and participated in cultural conservation of the regions in which they lived and traveled, including ethnobotany of Northern New Mexico, Native American languages and songs, Western and Southwestern architecture, and the arts and folk arts of the United States and Finland. They contributed substantially to the communities in which they lived, wrote to each other daily, and saved nearly everything. The result is a remarkable archive--a time capsule covering the period from 1849 to 1999.