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Just imagine the moment: some of the world’s top scientific minds, after working in secrecy for years in Los Alamos, were at White Sands to witness a test of the first atomic bomb. Among those who had gathered to watch and record the detonation was Julian Mack, physics professor from the University of Wisconsin, who had arrived in Los Alamos via Princeton University.
Categories: Framework, Visual art
Sometimes simplicity captures a child’s imagination more effectively than does the latest cyber toy. I called my four-year-old friend’s attention to a series of paper theater sets lining a hallway at the Museum of International Folk Art. No video, nothing mechanical, just paper figures and scenery within a proscenium. She stared transfixed as I spun out the familiar story of “Sleeping Beauty.” Her fascination set me to investigating a popular mid-nineteenth to early twentieth-century domestic entertainment.
Categories: Visual art
BY KATE NELSON In an age when every cell phone can take a respectable picture, cameras as low-tech as an oatmeal box still beguile a legion of practitioners, both artistic and documentarian. With roots in the ancient discovery of the camera obscura, pinhole photography has enchanted artists from the 1880s through today. [wonderplugin_slider id="149"] (more…)
Categories: Visual art
BY BARBARA MAULDIN Literatura de cordel (literature on a string) refers to small, hand-printed chapbooks of poetry, which address popular themes, folktales, and legends native to the dry, impoverished interior of northeastern Brazil. [wonderplugin_slider id="148"] (more…)
Categories: Visual art
BY KATHERINE WARE Even at the ripe old age of one hundred and seventy-five (depending on when you believe it was born), photography remains one of the youngest art forms. [wonderplugin_slider id="147"] (more…)
Categories: Visual art
BY CYNTHIA BAUGHMAN I vividly remember the electrifying moment when I first heard about Judy Chicago. It was my freshman year at college and I was riding the second wave of American feminism in a privileged place that at times felt searingly like the front lines. (more…)
Categories: Editor's Letter
BY CHRISTINE MATHER Being the witness to a pure act of creation — a time when something new to the artistic world comes into existence — is not an experience many art historians are likely to have for we, as a group, are dedicated to mining the past. [wonderplugin_slider id="145"] (more…)
Categories: Featured
In many ways photographer Donald Woodman is one of the stereotypical free spirits who arrived in New Mexico in a VW van in the early 1970s, searching for a new life unfettered by the conservative conventions and stodginess of the East Coast, to experiment with new-found freedoms involving hallucinatory drugs and liberated sexual exploration. And yet, Woodman’s long, personal aesthetic trajectory, which continues today, is uniquely his own.
Categories: Featured, Visual art
Few women in recent history have midwifed their own second birth as has Judy Chicago, re-inventing herself according to her will and the kind of wisdom that comes with a keen mind, an unflagging diligence, and an indomitable determination to follow her own path. As a female art student at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s, Chicago asserted her individuality and independence, often flying blind while she explored what it meant to be a “woman artist” in an era that found the very idea as likely as watering houseplants on the moon.
Categories: Featured, Visual art
On a bright day in January, Museum of International Folk Art curator Laura Addison sat down with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s new director of curatorial affairs, Cody Hartley, for a conversation about Hartley’s long engagement with the long history of art in New Mexico and his vision for its future. Addison: I just have to ask, was the artist Marsden Hartley your great, great, great uncle?
Categories: Featured, Interviews, Visual art
![Black and white image of an early-stage nuclear explosion, showing a bright central blast and a developing mushroom-shaped cloud against a dark background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/PinholeAtom_1-400x225.jpg)
![A vintage toy theater labeled Urania features painted figures on stage with a detailed backdrop of a castle and trees, surrounded by ornate green and gold decor. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/ChildsPlay_1-400x225.jpg)
![A person stands indoors wearing a suit and helmet covered in rectangular black objects, with white shoes visible; casual shoes and papers are on the floor nearby. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/PInholePhotography_2-400x225.jpg)
![Colorful folk art depicting a man, woman, and donkey with baskets, under a fruit tree and cactus, with birds in the sky; text reads “Alegria de Sertanejo Ivan Borges.”. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/LiteratureDeCordel_2-400x225.jpg)
![Black and white image of several plants with broad leaves growing among rocks and dry grass on uneven ground. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/FocusOnPhotography_4-400x225.jpg)
![Two colorful fish models, one large and one small, are displayed side by side against a white background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/AllCreatures_8-scaled-1-400x225.jpg)
![Six stylized sculptures of howling wolves in various colors and patterns are arranged together on a white background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/AllCreatures_9-400x225.jpg)
![A nude person with long hair sits on a worn wooden floor, leaning against a textured wall in a dimly lit room. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/DonaldWoodman_3-400x225.jpg)
![A large triangular table set with ornate place settings and decorated plates, displayed in a spacious, dimly lit room with dark walls and spotlights. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/JudyChicago_3-scaled-1-400x225.jpg)
![A man in a gray suit and purple tie stands in an art gallery next to a colorful abstract painting with red, green, and blue shapes. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/CodyHartley_1-400x225.jpg)