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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).
Frances Levine, PhD is an ethnohistorian and historical archaeologist, former director of the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors. Her recent essays for El Palacioinclude: “‘So Dreadful a Crime’: Doña Teresa Aguilera y Roche Faces the Inquisition for the Sin of Chocolate Consumption” (117 [4], Winter 2012) and “Perspective: The Long Road Home: Pecos Pueblo Repatriation” (118 [3], Fall 2013).
![A woman stands in front of a covered wagon exhibit in a museum with framed portraits and historical displays in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Adios-Amigos_1-400x225.jpg)
Many El Palacio readers will have heard the news that I am packing up my wagon and heading eastward. On March 15 I leave the New Mexico History Museum, and on April 15 I begin a new position as CEO of the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. I don’t have to deliberate too long to think about what I have done with the last decade of my life.
I am dirty, ragged and sunburnt, but of best cheer.My life’s work has begun at last. — Adolph F. Bandelier, early September 1880,after his first days of fieldwork at Pecos Pueblo It was believed that the remains would there be found so stratified as to give a cross-section . . . of the development of Pueblo arts and . . .
