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Mix desert soil with sun and water and you can produce one of the strongest building materials the world has ever known. Inflict sun and water on that same building material, however, and you just might render a disaster.
[wonderplugin_slider id=”115″]Kate Nelson (opens in a new tab) is a longtime New Mexico journalist who retired as managing editor of New Mexico Magazine where she earned numerous awards from the International Regional Magazine Association.
Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world—life as I see it.
– Georgia O’Keeffe, 1937
[wonderplugin_slider id=”114″]Dr. Cody Hartley is the director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His Ph.D. dissertation, completed in 2005, focused on Santa Fe and the creation of the Museum of New Mexico. Prior to settling in Santa Fe, Cody worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Hartley earned his MA and PhD in art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In fine art, postmodernism embraces diversity and contradiction, destabilization, and multiple perspectives, as does Coyote — a trickster archetype of indigenous narrative.
[wonderplugin_slider id=”113″]Valerie K. Verzuh is an anthropology graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, has studied and cared for Native American artifacts for the last twenty years, first at the Oakland Museum of California and later at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. As curator of the Individually Cataloged Collections, she has worked to increase understanding of Southwest American Indian material culture and accessibly to the museum’s holdings for artists, scholars, and community members.
![A seated man in a military uniform poses for a formal portrait, framed by an ornate gold border with detailed patterns. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Fading-Memories-Echoes-of-the-Civil-War_1.jpg)
The power of a photograph to provide meaning when one is struggling with loss is undeniable. This is especially the case when a loved one goes to war. For those left behind, the likeness of a husband or son fighting in far-off battles provides tremendous solace.
And to the ones in battle, the portrait of a wife or child or parent brings relief from the dread of war. It is no surprise, then, that during the Civil War era, a brisk trade in cased-image photography catered to those in need of comfort. These early photographs—daguerreotype, ambrotype, and tintype portraits—were and are a wonder to behold. Amazingly sharp and with incredible detail, people came alive inside these little cases.
A husband could look longingly at his wife, and a wife at her husband, providing a visual lifeline between them. The well-worn cased images on display in Fading Memories are a testament to the loving and sometimes frightened hands that opened them to gaze upon a cherished family member. The tender nature of these wartime portraits stands in sharp contrast to the graphic horrors of the battlefield as captured by the photographers who documented the war.
The Fading Memories exhibit will open at the New Mexico History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery on May 1, 2015.
Daniel Kosharek (opens in a new tab) is a writer and former photo curator at the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives at the New Mexico History Museum.
Lauren Camp (opens in a new tab) served as the second New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of nine poetry collections, including In Old Sky (Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024), winner of the New Mexico Book Award, which grew out of her experience as Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park, and Is Is Enough (Texas Review Press, 2026). Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, French, and Arabic.
Dreams come true. Certainly mine did. In early 2013, I took over as manager of Jemez Historic Site. Now my job is to tell its story. I educate the public and preserve for the citizens of New Mexico and elsewhere one of the most remarkable historic sites in the country.
[wonderplugin_slider id=”137″] (more…)Matthew Barbour is the deputy director of New Mexico Historic Sites, a division of New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. He has worked for the department since 2002 holds a BA and MA in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. Throughout his decades-long career, he has published more than 200 nonfiction articles and monographs. In 2012 and 2014, he was awared the City of Santa Fe Heritage Preservation Award for Excellence in Archaeology.
BY LOIS P. RUDNICK
[wonderplugin_slider id=”133″]Perhaps in no other comparable area on earth are condensed so many contradictions, or manifested so clearly the opposite polarities of all life. The oldest forms of life discovered in this hemisphere and the newest agents of mass death. The Sun Temple of Mesa Verde and the nuclear fission laboratories of the Pajarito Plateau. The Indian drum and the atom smasher. (more…)
Lois P. Rudnick is professor emerita of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, a resident of Santa Fe, and author of Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds; Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism; and The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan: Sex, Syphilis, and Psychoanalysis in the Making of Modern American Culture(University of New Mexico Press, 2012).
Meridel Rubenstein (opens in a new tab) began her professional career in the early 1970s, evolving from single photographs to extended photographic works, multi-media installations, and environmental social practice. Her focus has been on intersections of nature and culture in relationship to ecological and social imbalance. Threads of ancient myth and the status of nature during periods of war have been woven throughout her projects for decades. Professor of art, photography, and ecology, Rubenstein has maintained her art studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1975. She is currently an adjunct professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.
![A pair of clip-on earrings shaped like birds, featuring red, white, black, and green inlaid stones arranged in a mosaic pattern. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Depression-Jewelry_10.jpg)
Following the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression, spectacularly inventive jewelry crafted from found, repurposed, and plastic materials, appeared for sale from residents of Santo Domingo Pueblo.
[wonderplugin_slider id=”134″]Cindra Kline is an award-winning author, editor, and regular contributor to El Palacio. One of her projects, Awakening in Taos: The Mabel Dodge Luhan Story, was chosen as Best Feature Film Made in New Mexico in 2015 at the Santa Fe Film Festival.
Currently on exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art, Pottery of the U.S. South: A Living Tradition examines a longstanding tradition of European American stoneware as it is practiced today.
[wonderplugin_slider id=”135″] (more…)Karen M. Duffy, PhD is an independent folklorist based in Bloomington, Indiana. A specialist in material culture and traditional arts, particularly those of the United States, she has worked extensively in museums, taught university courses in folklore, and consulted for a number of cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution.
