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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).
Carmen Vendelin is a former curator of art at the New Mexico Museum of Art. She organized Colors of the Southwest and O’Keeffe In Process in 2015 and is curated Stage, Setting, Mood: Theatricality in the Visual Arts as a complement to the traveling exhibition First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.
![A vintage photo of two people and a cow is overlaid on a southwestern U.S. map with red stripes and graphic shapes. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Finding-a-Contemporary-Voice_2-400x225.jpg)
BY CARMEN VENDELIN In the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art, a group portrait by Fritz Scholder, based on a ca. 1966 photograph, depicts early faculty members who helped shape the curriculum, mission, and direction of the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. [wonderplugin_slider id="76"] (more…)
![A black-and-white illustration of a house with a tower, framed by large, dark trees in the foreground. Mountains are visible in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/SSM_2-400x225.jpg)
BY CARMEN VENDELIN Theatricality draws out emotions in the observer. In the performing arts, “stage, setting, and mood”— the use of backdrops, props, lighting, and sound, and the application of the performers’ craft in the physical space of the theater — work together to evoke sensations and sentiments in the audience. In the visual arts, artists employ theatrical, pictorial means to appeal to the senses.
![A stylized landscape painting featuring blue mountains, rolling green hills, and a reflective blue lake in the foreground. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/OKeefee-in-Process_3-400x225.jpg)
BY CARMEN VENDELIN I was the sort of child that ate around the raisin on the cookie and ate around the hole in the doughnut saving either the raisin or the hole for the last and best. So, probably—not having changed much—when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones—what I saw through them—particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world .
![Black and white illustration of a cityscape with tall buildings, smoke rising, and curving train tracks in the foreground. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/The-Fall-of-Modernism_3-400x225.jpg)
BY CARMEN VENDELIN AND KATHERINE WARE The New Mexico Museum of Art features two shows drawn from its collection of Modernist works, with additional loans from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. [wonderplugin_slider id="108"] (more…)
![A waterfall cascades down rocky cliffs surrounded by trees, with mountains and a partly cloudy sky in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Colors-of-the-Southwest_3-400x225.jpg)
BY CARMEN VENDELIN Contemporary artist Beverley Magennis, describing her first foray into New Mexico in 1975, said, “Roswell blew my mind. I had never been out west. From the minute I set foot in New Mexico I knew I’d never leave. There seemed to be the right amount of space, the right amount of sun.” [wonderplugin_slider id="117"] (more…)
