World Views

The Santa Fe, New Mexico, home of Todd and Marjolaine Greentree features art that connects with their travels and interests.

- John O'Hern

Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Democratic Republic of the Congo and El Salvador are places where Todd and Marjolaine Greentree have lived and worked in their careers. He as a Foreign Service Officer and she with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations.

They now live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the City Different in the Land of Enchantment. Todd, who was living in a commune in California hitchhiked through Santa Fe in 1969 “the time of Easy Rider,” he notes. Marjolaine visited Santa Fe with a friend on a tour of the American West in 1989.

The couple met in Africa on 9/9/99 and was married there. When they were living in Newport, Rhode Island, while Todd was at the Naval War College, they began making plans to retire. Todd recalls, “We asked, of all the places we’d been around the world, where did we want to live.” Marjolaine describes their criteria: “We were looking for a place that would be cosmopolitan, have history, mountains, good food and not be enormous. Santa Fe seemed to be the place.”

Todd recalls having posters in his room at the commune and taking an art history class when he was studying at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Marjolaine says, “We grew up with art around us in our home in Switzerland. Our parents encouraged our interest in art and gave me my first watercolor on my 12th birthday. One of the first artists my father responded to was Walter Mafli, who we met—he died last year at 102. My father gave a painting to my sister and one to me, and we still have it in our collection.”