Home is not so much a place as it is a concept. Neither television shows nor big box stores can tell us how to achieve it. It grows from an inner directive that looks past fad and fashion and makes choices based on heart. That is what makes a structure not a showplace, but a home. Enter Linda Durham’s gentle old adobe sanctuary and that is what you will find.

You might expect a sophisticated leader in the contemporary art world to own a glass palace with sweeping views. Instead, if you blink, you won’t even see the small sign that points to her walled compound. Even within the parking area, the only hint of the house is a glimpse of bright geraniums behind a low, weathered gate.

Ten years ago, Durham packed up her renowned art gallery and left Santa Fe’s glitzy Canyon Road for Galisteo, a serene New Mexico village southeast of town. Driving there from any direction reveals some of the most glorious countryside on the planet: gossamer light, golden hills, and rocky ridges that poke from the earth like dinosaur backs.

“I saw a tiny ad in a real estate magazine that said ‘mini-estate in Galisteo,’” Durham recalls. “I loved the sound of that and I loved the little picture. I went with the Realtor and as I got to the driveway, I thought, This is it. It’s meant to be. I hadn’t even been in the house.” What she found was a mess. “It was filthy,” she says. “It needed a new roof, it had to be plastered outside, and there were many ugly aspects to it.” Two homemade stained-glass windows, for example, looked from the library into the bathroom.

But no matter, the house had good bones. Its adobe walls were thick as a castle’s, ancient vigas bore the weight of the ceilings, and wood and brick mellowed by time covered the floors. The oldest part of the house, four rooms built shotgun style, dates from the 1820s. The rest—a large living room, library, and master bedroom—were added in more recent times, possibly the 1970s.
Elegance requires restraint. This is something Durham understands. She didn’t try to make the house perfect or modern, but rather embraced its flaws and eccentricities. Wide-planked floors are uneven and worn, but burnished to a quiet glow. A quirky door was clearly once a window. And the small, old corner fireplace in the dining room is so beloved, she won’t have it updated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where changes were necessary, Durham took a minimalist approach. “This floor had rotted away,” she says standing in the oldest room of the house. (It was once a birthing room, her fifth-generation neighbor tells her.) “I had to take it out and put in a brick floor. Most of the work I’ve done on the house has been about restoring and caretaking, not embellishing.”

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