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).

Jake Skeets

Jake Skeets (opens in a new tab) is a poet and writer and was named Navajo Nation Poet Laureate in 2025. He is the author of the award-winning collection Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers.

Exhibit entrance designed as a black-and-white illustrated archway with green information panels; artwork and objects displayed inside and on surrounding walls.

Undoing Dominant Narratives

What does it mean to build a museum? For video maker and interdisciplinary artist Chris E. Vargas, building a museum means critiquing the institution itself, where the museum as an artifact interrogates the power of its presence, questions its authority, and reveals its limitations. As the founder and director of the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA), a conceptual museum “forever under construction,” Vargas reshapes how we think about the role of institutions in preserving, categorizing, and exhibiting marginalized histories.