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).

Nancy Marie Mithlo, PhD

Nancy Marie Mithlo, PhD (Chiricahua Apache), is an associate professor of art history and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She earned her PhD in 1993 from Stanford University writing on Native American identity and arts commerce in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her book “Our Indian Princess”: Subverting the Stereotype was published by the School for Advanced Research Press in 2009.

Here Now, But Not Always

It’s the 2013 Southwestern Association of American Indian Art’s Indian Market, and I am attending the State of Native Arts symposium at the swank New Mexico History Museum auditorium. Occupying the stage are the best and brightest minds in the business, including leading artists, museum directors, and curators.1 As the discussion turns to exhibition aims and display techniques, a panelist from the Brooklyn Museum argues that Native arts are “ghettoized” in institutions that show only American Indian cultures.