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).

Charlene Cerny

Charlene Cerny is a former director of the Museum of International Folk Art and a cofounder of the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market.

View of kitchen, home of Judith Espinar.

The People’s Art

BY CHARLENE CERNY A Gathering of Voices: Folk Art from the Judith Espinar and Tom Dillenberg Collection, an exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art which opens on December 16, 2018, celebrates the promised gift of a stellar collection and invites visitors to consider a kind of  collecting that is less about accumulation than about living surrounded by meaning and beauty. Here, Charlene Cerny, a director emeritus of the Museum of International Folk Art, interviews her friend Judith Espinar about the collection and how it came to be.