Museum of International Folk Art: colorful, engaging, uniquely Santa Fe.

The Museum of International Folk Art is one of those Santa Fe places that doesn't sound like it should be a highlight and absolutely is. World-renowned, with an extraordinary collection of folk art from around the globe — colorful, engaging, uniquely Santa Fe in its scope and ambition.

It sits up on Museum Hill, a few minutes' drive south of the Plaza, alongside the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. That cluster is the second museum nucleus in town, after the Georgia O'Keeffe and the New Mexico Museum of Art near the Plaza, and it's where serious museum days happen. Folk Art is the one we consistently send people to first up there.

What makes it specifically Santa Fe is the Girard Wing — Alexander Girard's vast collection of folk-art objects from around the world, displayed in densely packed dioramas that take up entire rooms. You walk in expecting glass cases and curator labels and instead get a kind of immersive theater of toys, masks, dolls, miniatures, and street scenes from many continents. Kids are riveted. Adults are too. Most guests we send there end up staying longer than they planned.

The other galleries rotate through curated exhibits — contemporary folk artists, regional traditions, themed shows — and they're consistently strong. It's the museum that surprises people. Plan a slow couple of hours and let the rooms unfold. It's not a show-up-and-rush-through visit.

Practical notes. The drive from the Plaza is about ten minutes; from either of our houses on Old Las Vegas Highway, it's about fifteen. There's free parking at the Museum Hill lot. The cluster of museums shares a small café and a bookshop, and the views from the courtyard back across town are some of the best easy-access overlooks in Santa Fe. A New Mexico CulturePass (good for multiple state museums over a few days) is the right buy if you're hitting more than two on the trip.

Pair it with: a stop at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture next door (smaller, focused, excellent), or a lunch back in town afterward at The Teahouse on Canyon Road or Pasqual's near the Plaza. We've also paired Museum Hill with an Atalaya Mountain hike — the trailhead is on the way back into town from the museums, and an art-then-mountain afternoon is a particularly good Santa Fe day.

Worth pairing with lunch nearby and a slower afternoon. Plan two hours minimum; budget three if you're with people who like to read every label. One of the great museums in the country in a town its size, and on the short list every visit.