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.

A man with short gray hair and glasses, wearing a collared shirt, looks at the camera against a black background.

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.

A woman with long dark hair wearing a coral shirt sits outdoors, resting her chin on her hand, with greenery and flowers in the background.

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.

A woman with straight brown hair wearing a dark turtleneck and long, beaded earrings poses against a plain white background.

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).

A person with shoulder-length brown hair and a patterned shirt stands in sunlight, with a faint red blur at the bottom of the image and a window in the background.

Robin Babb

Robin Babb (opens in a new tab) is a writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the associate editor of edible New Mexico and The Bite. She has worked in newspaper and magazine editorial for ten years, and her work has been published in the Kenyon Review, Phoebe Journal, New Mexico Magazine, Eaten, Civil Eats, Southwest Contemporary, and other places. In 2024 she was awarded the New Mexico Writers Annual Grant and the Center for Regional Studies Fellowship. She likes to write about animals, books, video games, and the end of the world. She is currently working on a collection of essays.

Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), Agnes Sims, 1946. Gelatin silver print. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Bequest of the artist; P1979.130.955. © 1979 Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Filling Gaps in the Archive: The Complexity of Queer Art, Community, and the Historical Record Out West

At the entrance to the gallery, a quote on the wall provides context and raison d’être for the Out West exhibition. It’s from Santa Fe author Walter Cooper’s recent book Unbuttoned: Gay Life in the Santa Fe Art Scene: So much of our queer history has been swept under the rug, it’s almost as if we never existed. People tend to underrate or ignore “the queer factor,” the enormous impact gay folk have made on New Mexico’s unique cultural life.

Billy Schenck, Cliff, 1990. Oil on canvas. 50 × 55½ inches. Collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Gift of Bill Schenck, 2005 (2005.17.1).

The Southwestern Connection

Whenever Billy Schenck came by Elaine Horwitch’s gallery in Santa Fe, the whole staff stopped what they were doing to talk to the handsome cowboy painter. Wearing his beat-up old cowboy boots and with a bandana always hanging out of the back pocket of his blue jeans, Schenck cut quite the figure amidst the refined Santa Fe art world. At the time, Schenck was known to bring some of his larger paintings to the gallery in his horse trailer, requiring one to navigate horse manure while unloading.