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).

Meredith Davidson

Meredith Davidson is a former curator of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Southwest Collections at the New Mexico History Museum. She also edited the book Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest (Museum of New Mexico Press) by author Jack Loeffler.

Sheet music titled O, Fair New Mexico by Elizabeth Garrett, featuring musical notes, lyrics, and notation for voice and piano. [gen-ai]

Radio Killed the Sheet Music Star

BY MEREDITH DAVIDSON AND JAMES M. KELLER Before radio and television, when making music at home was the evening’s entertainment and playing the piano was considered an essential talent among the middle class, sheet music was the music consumer’s gateway to the world. The New Mexico History Museum celebrates this era with sheet music of popular songs about the State of New Mexico, dating from the 1840s to 1960, in the new exhibition The Land that Enchants Me So: Picturing Popular Songs of New Mexico (opens March 2, 2018).

A large group of people, adults and children, posing outdoors on rocks and grass, with a dog sitting on the right side of the image. [gen-ai]

The Art Of Listening

What is a need? Lama founder Barbara Durkee (now Asha Greer), speaking about the 1967 founding of Lama Commune just north of Taos, explains that she knew there was a need for water, and hot water at that; here in New Mexico there is always a need for water. Her needs did not extend much beyond that. Experiencing a back-tothe land lifestyle on the side of a mountain was the real need she was attempting to fulfill. The pursuit of this desire was one of the many products of the rise of the 1960s and 1960s counterculture in the American Southwest.

Two elderly women in coats and hats stand outside on a wooden path, looking at and discussing a large rolled-out paper or blueprint in front of a log building. [gen-ai]

Searching For Mary Colter

BY MEREDITH DAVIDSON AND KATE NELSON While we developed Setting the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy, the New Mexico History Museum’s addition to its main exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now, Colter’s influence seeped into our souls. [wonderplugin_slider id="100"]   (more…)

A young girl in a dark plaid dress sits for a formal portrait, holding a photo case, framed by an ornate gold oval frame and a decorative case. [gen-ai]

Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War

BY DANIEL KOSHAREK, MEREDITH DAVIDSON, AND THOMAS LEECH [M]ay my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I forget the difference between the parties to that bloody conflict. I may say if this war is to be forgotten, I ask in the name of all things sacred what shall men remember? – Frederick Douglass, address at the Graves