Contributors

For over a century, El Palacio has been a forum for voices exploring New Mexico’s art, archaeology, history, and landscape. Explore the writers, photographers, historians, and scientists whose perspectives have defined the magazine’s pages—past and present.

Arthur Sze

Arthur Sze is the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of twelve books, including Into the Hush, Sight Lines, and others. Sze’s poems have been translated into fifteen languages, and he is the recipient of the National Book Award among many other honors. He lives in Santa Fe.

Deborah Jackson Taffa

Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a 2024 National Book Award Finalist and was longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Taffa serves as the director of the MFA in creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Cara Romero

Cara Romero is an award-winning contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero’s expansive oeuvre has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art, and commercial photography. She maintains a studio in Santa Fe, regularly participates in Native American art fairs, and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019).

Marsha C. Bol

Marsha C. Bol is a former director of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the past four decade she has wored as a director or curator at the Museum of International Folk Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. She was formerly associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and holds a PhD in Art History from the University of New Mexico. She is a specialist in Native American art and architecture and Spanish Colonial art and architecture.

Beaded square textile with geometric patterns in black, teal, purple, and white, bordered with blue and black beads. [gen-ai]

Spheres of Influence

BY MARSHA C. BOL Extraordinary how a small glass bead from the Italian island of Murano or the mountains of Bohemia in the present-day Czech Republic can travel around the world, entering into the cultural life of peoples far distant. Glass beads are the ultimate migrants: Where they start out is seldom where they end up. The Museum of International Folk Art’s exhibition Beadwork Adorns the World (through February 3, 2019) shows what happens to these beads when they arrive at their final destination.