Complete Editors List

1913: Edgar Lee Hewett (1865–1946) founded the School of American Archaeology, followed by the Museum of New Mexico in 1909. Hewett then founded El Palacio in 1913 because he needed to promote these institutions and their projects. The first issue of El Palacio was published in November 1913 by the Archaeological Society of New Mexico; it focused on Southwest archaeology and Museum of New Mexico news. Paul A.F. Walter was the inaugural editor and the acting director of the Museum of New Mexico at the time. Walter served as editor of the magazine for forty-four years until 1957—the longest of any editor in El Palacio’s history so far.

1918: El Palacio transitioned from quarterly to weekly issues in July 1918. Paul A.F. Walter claimed the magazine was the  “only [known] weekly museum journal published in the United States.” However, labor and material shortages as well as the cost of printing soon led to less frequent issues by 1919.

1925: Readership had spread far beyond the original audience of the archaeological community in New Mexico. The New York Public Library and the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C., among other institutions, requested back issues of El Palacio in order to maintain a full run in their collections.

1930: The equipment used to print El Palacio was moved from the basement of the State Art Museum to the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. In addition to printing El Palacio, it functioned as an academic press for the growing university.

1936: During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed six people at the Museum of New Mexico to work on library projects. One of these projects in 1936 created the first complete general index for all of the then-published issues of El Palacio.

1939: El Palacio moved to a monthly publication schedule in January 1939.

1957: The first El Palacio cover to be printed in color was published in January 1957. This issue also included an announcement of a bimonthly publishing schedule.

1959: Covers underwent frequent design changes throughout the late 1950s. In 1959, El Palacio’s second editor, Bruce T. Ellis, addressed complaints from readers and introduced yet a new design.

1966: Carol Scott Alley became the third editor of El Palacio. During her tenure through 1968, she oversaw a dramatic shift in the magazine’s content: “The magazine’s scope has been broadened from essentially an archaeological journal featuring site reports, to a magazine presenting articles on all aspects of the state museum’s program-archaeology-ethnology, Southwest history, fine arts, Spanish Colonial art, and international folk art.” These changes led to a reported doubling of subscriptions.

1976: The Winter issue—a special issue on the Malaspina Expedition, appears to be the first issue with a glossy cover and that includes a handful of full-color illustrations and photographs.

1984: El Palacio celebrated its 70^th anniversary (and the Museum of New Mexico’s 75^th anniversary) with a special issue.

1985: From 1985 to 2002, issues of El Palacio were printed twice a year on average, with occasional publication of three issues a year. During this period, seven different editors held the role for one or two years each.

1991: The Summer issue is the first that contains paid advertising and is mostly printed in full color. Older issues contained some full color but primarily black-and-white or duotone images.

1994: El Palacio celebrated its 80^th anniversary with an announcement of a brand-new master plan for the Museum of New Mexico, which included plans to fundraise to build a new history museum in Santa Fe.

2000: Ten years after the launch of the world’s first website on the new “World Wide Web,” El Palacio editor Barbara Hagood announced the Museum of New Mexico’s first website in the Summer/Fall issue of 2000. Hagood wrote, “Even as the web is changing our world, just as Gutenberg’s moveable type changed his in the mid-1400s, we cannot know its full promise nor its potential threat to convention.”

2002: Following nearly a century of varying publication schedules, El Palacio began to be published quarterly under editor Barbara Hagood’s tenure.

2005: The Fall issue was the last to bear “The Magazine of the Museum of New Mexico” on its cover. Beginning with the Winter issue of 2005, El Palacio began to be published by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, which had been designated as a cabinet-level department in 2004.

2008: (The Spring issue contained complaints from readers about the preponderance of advertising in the magazine’s new format (p. 12, 14).

2009: A special edition celebrating one hundred years of the Museum of New Mexico was published in the Spring issue, which also won a design award from the Mountain-Plains Museums Association.

2012: The Spring issue commemorated the New Mexico State Centennial and announced that the first decade of El Palacio had been digitized and was available online (p. 22).

2013: El Palacio’s 100 Year Anniversary Issue was published in Winter 2013 along with an announcement that the entire back catalog of El Palacio issues was digitized and available for free online thanks to a partnership with the New Mexico State Library (p. 4). This remains true; back issues can be accessed here.

2021: El Palacio publisher, Daniel Zillmann, and editor Charlotte Jusinski, launched the magazine’s companion podcast, Encounter Culture. Like the magazine, the podcast features guests who speak to the art, history, and culture of New Mexico.