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).

Blair Clark

Blair Clark is an illustrative photographer with over thirty years experience in studio and on-site photography and almost twenty-five years in museum photography.

Baumann family marionettes, ca. 1959. Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), neg. no. HP.2011.07.003.

No Untroubled Worlds:

by JenniferLevin Gustave Baumann is best known for color woodcuts depicting Southwestern landscapes—gorgeous compositions of chamisa, piñon, mountains, and sky. He came to New Mexico from the Midwest in 1918 and fell in with other legends of the era like John Sloan, Mary Austin, and Will Shuster—with whom he collaborated on creating the first Zozobra. Credited with helping create the modern era of American Southwestern art, he and his friends often depicted scenes of Pueblo life and Hispanic Catholic iconography.

Thomas J. Barrow, Discrete Multivariate Analysis, 1981. Gelatin silver print photograms with automotive lacquers and epoxy enamel. 16 × 19 ¾ in. Collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Gift of Frank and Patti Kolodny, 1990 (1990.1.1ab). © Thomas Barrow. Photograph by Cameron Gay.

Embroidering the Canon

By Emily Withnall When an eclectic scattering of artists across the United States began pushing the boundaries of what photography could be in the 1960s and ’70s, they did not collectively name themselves. Organizing their movement would have been the antithesis of what they were trying to do. Though it is impossible to fully capture the range of approaches each artist took in creating their work, they were each trying to challenge the idea that photography was a window into reality.

Public Works of Art Collection, Work Projects Administration. Courtesy of the New Mexico State Records Center & Archives. Collection 0200-0201 (#wpa5383).

Found in Collection

By Michelle Gallagher Roberts In early 2007, staff at the New Mexico Museum of Art were implementing the first phase of planned collecting storage renovations that required all artworks from the first collection storage room be removed from the space to allow for the installation of new state-of-the-art compact art storage. More than 1,700 artworks had to be inventoried and relocated in the span of nine days.