Overview Traditional Spanish Market is a juried market of Spanish Colonial art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, run by the Atrisco Heritage Foundation. To show, an artist must prove Hispanic heritage or birth in New Mexico or southern Colorado, then pass an anonymous jury of outside experts. The market runs twice a year: a summer weekend on the historic Santa Fe Plaza and the Winter Spanish Market indoors at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center in December. Admission is free. On site In summer, artist booths fill the Plaza and the four streets around it with retablos, carved santos, tinwork, colcha embroidery and weaving, and a corner of the Plaza holds the youth market. Music and dance groups play the Plaza bandstand through both days while food booths serve the crowd. The weekend opens on Friday evening with an invitation-only art gallery, reception and awards night at the Convention Center. It closes on Sunday morning with a Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, then a procession to the bandstand and a blessing of the artists. In winter the artists move into the Convention Center exhibition hall, with live music on both days. Audience Collectors, Santa Fe residents and visitors from out of state come to buy straight from the artists, who keep all of their sales. Buyers stop at the booths to ask how a santo was carved or a pigment was ground, and many return to the same artists year after year. The winter market draws holiday shoppers looking for handmade gifts. Talent and Influencers Each summer the market honors a master artist. A recent honoree, santero Nicolas Otero, first showed in the youth market as a teenager. Santeros Félix López and Juanito Jiménez have shown for more than half a century and hold the Masters Award for Lifetime Achievement. Master santera Arlene Cisneros Sena has mentored more than 30 youth artists. Work by tin and straw artist Martha Varoz Ewing has gone to a Vatican representative and into a Smithsonian Renwick Gallery exhibition. Santero Charlie Carrillo brings his saints-in-vintage-cars retablos to the winter market. Track record The market started on West Palace Avenue about a century ago and bills itself as the oldest and largest juried show of its kind in the country. The City of Santa Fe guarantees the Plaza each summer to three heritage events: this market, Fiesta de Santa Fe and Santa Fe Indian Market. A Southwest Planning and Marketing study put the summer market's economic impact at more than $7 million. Some families show three and four generations at once. Brand presence One sponsor package covers both markets. Sponsor banners hang at the Plaza and in the Convention Center, ranked by tier, and the announcer thanks sponsors from the bandstand on both days of each market. The market magazine, published with The Santa Fe New Mexican, goes out across the state. The top tier puts its name on the market as presenter and hosts the Friday reception, and summer sponsors can take booth space on the Plaza among the artists.