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BY DANIEL KOSHAREK 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. (more…)
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)