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).

Joseph Traugott

Joseph Traugott is the former curator of twentieth-century art at New Mexico Museum of Art, and a member of the Frederick Hammersley Foundation board of directors.

Framed abstract artwork featuring a geometric pattern of interlocking rectangles and squares in shades of black, white, and gray. [gen-ai]

The Science behind Frederick Hammersley’s Modern Art

BY JOSEPH TRAUGOTT I met Frederick Hammersley in the early 1980s. We bonded quickly around our shared penchant for making bad puns in public, and never apologizing to those who suffered from them. After making a particularly obnoxious pun, Hammersley would respond after a long pause, “Yes . . . okay.” Our friendship lasted until his death in 2009.  Puns dominate the titles he chose for many of his works, such as his computer drawing DO YOU Z (a play on the words “Do you see.”).