“Carlsbad #1, The Queen’s Chamber” by Will Shuster

By Dwight T. Pitcaithley

In 1924, Santa Fe artist Will Shuster descended into Carlsbad Caverns via a guano bucket and clambered down 750 feet into the cave without benefit of trails or electric lights. Shuster had moved to the City Different in 1920 to recover from being gassed during World War I. He quickly became a creative fixture in the city’s art community, founded the art group Los Cinco Pintores, and in 1925 invented Zozobra, a gigantic puppet-like effigy which is still burned every year during Fiesta. Learning that the caverns had been designated Carlsbad Cave National Monument by President Calvin Coolidge in 1923, Shuster and artist friend Walter Mruk arranged to be guided by rancher Jim White who was developing the cave for tourists. Returning to Santa Fe, Shuster turned his sketches into at least eighteen oil and pastel paintings. Ten years later he returned to the cave as a New Deal artist, and, assisted by newly constructed trails and a system of electric lights, sketched and created four additional paintings. Shuster sold most of the works, and loaned and then gifted five to the National Park Service, and one to the Brooklyn Museum. Today, only twelve of his renderings of Carlsbad Caverns can be accounted for: the National Park Service owns five, the City of Carlsbad six, and the Brooklyn Museum one.

Shuster painting Lower Cave in the 1930s.

The Carlsbad Museum is working to create a master list of as much of Shuster’s cave art as possible before the centennial of the park in 2030. A centennial exhibit featuring Shuster’s art would be a notable way of honoring both the national park and Shuster’s early visual representations of it. Locating the “lost” paintings would assist the museum in conceptualizing such a tribute exhibit. The images range in size from the mammoth “Hall of Giants” which measures 62 by 46 inches to a 12-by-16-inch piece titled “Brown.”

Should anyone be aware of the location of any of Shuster’s “lost” art of Carlsbad Caverns, please contact: Dwight T. Pitcaithley, 575.312.8025, or [email protected].
Images that have been identified as missing include:
“Carlsbad Cavern” 17⅝ x 15⅜ inches
“Blue” 12 x 16 inches
“Carlsbad-Multi Color” 12 x 16 inches
“Fallen Stalactite” 30 x 40 inches
“Yeitso’s Pillar” 30 x 36 inches
“King’s Palace” 30 x 36 inches
“Lower Cave” 48 x 72 inches
“Carlsbad Caverns” 48 x 72 inches
“Rock of Ages” 72 x 48 inches
“Giant Dome” 72 x 48 inches