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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 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 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 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).
Felicia Garcia (Samala Chumash) is a museum scholar and the former Curator of Education at the Indian Arts Research Center, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico. She currently works for the Indigenous data sovereignty initiative Local Contexts, and strives to use her platform to support Indigenous sovereignty within museum spaces and other cultural institutions.
by Felicia Garcia and Lillia McEnaney When the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture opened its flagship exhibition in 1997, it did so with a purpose. Here, Now and Always was to be an exhibition different; an exhibition where Native people in the Southwest were the curators, the narrators, and the authority on themselves. Rooted in Edmund J. Ladd’s (Zuni Pueblo) affirmation that “I am here.
