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).

Dr. Cody Hartley

Dr. Cody Hartley is the director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His Ph.D. dissertation, completed in 2005, focused on Santa Fe and the creation of the Museum of New Mexico. Prior to settling in Santa Fe, Cody worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Hartley earned his MA and PhD in art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Sepia-toned photo of a museum room with shelves displaying pottery and artifacts, and landscape murals decorating the upper walls. [gen-ai]

Positioning an Institution

BY CODY HARTLEY What is now Santa Fe is one of the old places in a region inhabited for at least 12,000 years. Traces of those who have gone before can be found across this ancient and sacred landscape. (more…)

A painting of rolling green hills with deep valleys and some exposed reddish earth at the bottom foreground. [gen-ai]

Context Is Everything

BY CODY HARTLEY There are few artistic figures regarded more highly for their originality and individualism than Georgia O’Keeffe. Iconic and iconoclastic, independent and intrepid, O’Keeffe’s contribution to American culture is characterized by a compelling blend of innovation, revelation, and dogged determination. She was truly one of a kind, but she was not alone. Despite the popular perception of O’Keeffe living in isolation in the desert of New Mexico, she was never far removed from the latest developments in the art world.