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If you know anything about Lucy Lippard, you know she’s one of the most significant art writers and curators of our time. You may know her thirty published books and countless essays on artists, art movements, and land.
Read six selected Sze poems published in this issue here. At age twenty-one, Arthur Sze hitchhiked from El Paso to Santa Fe in a single day. Knowing no one, and accompanied only by his boundless curiosity, he arrived seeking a place to build a life as a poet.
By Maurice M. Dixon, Jr. Although rare, every so often a convergence occurs of such magnitude that, at the time, little or no thought is given to its consequence by those involved.
![Black and white portrait of an older man with gray hair and glasses, wearing a dark shirt, looking slightly to the left against a cloudy textured background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2-1-1-400x225.jpg)
By Leslie Linthicum “The first thing I should say,” photographer Joel-Peter Witkin told a writer for Vanity Fair decades ago, “is I am not a monster.” His photographic canon—stylized portraits of cross-dressers, amputees, masked nudes, body parts, and corpses —has been called grotesque, perverted, and macabre.
![A person with tattoos stands facing a scalloped-edged backdrop, seen from behind, wearing a polka-dot top and denim shorts in a dimly lit setting. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/TempoTiempo_HierroVilla-Espiritualidad-400x225.jpg)
By Emily Withnall In Frank Blazquez’s photograph Sleepy and his Daughter, Sleepy flashes the prison gang sign for Los Padillas. He is shirtless and covered in tattoos, his arms wrapped around his young daughter, who sits on his lap.
![A man wearing glasses and a bow tie stands beside a scale model of a modern building, with large windows and a landscape visible in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Meem_Meem-400x225.jpg)
By Rachel Preston In the 1930s, the Great Depression had wiped out economies and careers. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal would offer up programs in craft, design, construction, and art that would eventually put more than half of New Mexico’s population—more than 200,000 people—back to work.
In Cara Romero’s black and white photograph Sand & Stone, Chemehuevi and Diné woman Sheridan Silversmith is embedded in earth. Her head and clasped hands are above the surface of the hard, dry dirt, but the rest of her body is not visible.
By Almah LaVon Rice Where does glass come from? From the Phoenicians, ancestors of the alphabet in modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Or perhaps the Sumerians, inventors of the cuneiform, were the first fashioners of glass in what is now southern Iraq.
![Two elderly men in military uniforms with medals stand in front of rock formations in a desert landscape. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2020-07-20_100400-400dpi.cx_-scaled-1-400x225.jpg)
By Emily WithnallPhotography by Kenji Kawano In a black-and-white photograph taken by Kenji Kawano in 2005, two Navajo men stand side by side at a Monument Valley overlook. Their heads are positioned in the gaps between the three famous buttes behind them—West Mitten, East Mitten, and Merrick.
![A woman with long dark hair, wearing a black jacket and beaded earrings, smiles outdoors in a desert landscape with hills in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/KathleenWall_portrait-400x225.jpg)
By Lillia McEnaney with Charlotte Jusinski In the 1960s, potter Helen Cordero (Cochiti Pueblo) turned to her grandfather for inspiration. Known for being an engaging storyteller, Santiago Quintana was always surrounded by children.
