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).

Christian Waguespack

Christian Waguespack is the director of curatorial affairs and curator of Northwest Art at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington. He is a former head of curatorial affairs and curator of twentieth-century art at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. Waguespack received an MA in Museum Studies with an emphasis on Curatorial Studies and Museum Education and an MA in Art History with an emphasis on Modern + Contemporary Art, both from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He holds a BA and BFA from the University of New Mexico.

Will Shuster, Self Portrait, 1931. Oil on canvas. 30 × 24 in. Courtesy the family of Will Shuster, Santa Fe, and Zaplin Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe.

Bohemian Rhapsody

By Christian Waguespack A century ago, in 1920, serious health issues brought Pennsylvania-born artist William Howard Shuster (1893– 1969) to New Mexico, beginning forty-nine years of creativity, exploration, and community engagement. Though he received some fine-arts training in Philadelphia, it was not until he experienced the inspiration of Santa Fe that he decided to dedicate his life to art. Almost immediately, he famously joined four other young bohemians to become Los Cinco Pintores, and integrated himself into Santa Fe’s burgeoning Modernist art scene.

A statue of a friar stands on a rooftop overlooking an adobe village, with a cross, bouquet, and hammer nearby under a cloudy sky. [gen-ai]

Perceptions of Passion

BY CHRISTIAN WAGUESPACK Since the end of the nineteenth century, artists of European descent have been continuously drawn to New Mexico, captivated by everything that we still treasure as unique to our region: the stunning light, the rich multicultural tapestry, the dramatic natural vistas. But as often as they filled their canvases with Indigenous subjects, golden aspens, or sun-drenched mountains, they were equally fascinated with the Hispanic community that has called New Mexico home for centuries.