New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs welcomes you to subscribe and support our state’s cultural treasures.
The tradition of coloring, or at the least applying a little tint, goes way back to the dawn of photography... Color photography is so ubiquitous that it is easy to forget there was a time when the world was captured only in black and white. From about the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, black-and-white gelatin silver prints ruled all things photographic, and the only color photographs were images that had been hand-colored.
Categories: Framework
BY MAXINE E. MCBRINN AND ROSS E. ALTSHULER Attend any gathering — whether ceremonial or civic — of southwestern Native Americans and you will discover that almost everyone, old and young alike, is wearing turquoise jewelry. As in antiquity, turquoise today is important to the region’s cultures for more than just its intrinsic beauty. (more…)
Categories: Uncategorized
BY VALERIE K. VERZUH In fine art, postmodernism embraces diversity and contradiction, destabilization, and multiple perspectives, as does Coyote — a trickster archetype of indigenous narrative. [wonderplugin_slider id="113"] (more…)
Categories: Visual art
BY CODY HARTLEY Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world—life as I see it. – Georgia O’Keeffe, 1937 [wonderplugin_slider id="114"] (more…)
Categories: Featured, Visual art
BY KATE NELSON Mix desert soil with sun and water and you can produce one of the strongest building materials the world has ever known. Inflict sun and water on that same building material, however, and you just might render a disaster. [wonderplugin_slider id="115"] (more…)
Categories: Uncategorized
Indigo and Cobalt in New Spain BY ROBIN FARWELL GAVIN In 1957, as renovations were being made to the Conquistadora Chapel in the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi, one Franciscan friar was on hand to oversee the work. [wonderplugin_slider id="116"] (more…)
Categories: Featured
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…)
Categories: Visual art
BY AMANDA CROCKER Phoenicia — not New Mexico — is the land of purple. However, purple will get the spotlight this summer at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, the living museum just south of Santa Fe. Las Golondrinas will participate in the Summer of Color by rounding out the color wheel with history’s most elite and sought-after color. [wonderplugin_slider id="118"]
Categories: Uncategorized
BY JONATHAN BATKIN This summer the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian celebrates the opening of the Jim and Lauris Phillips Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry. This new wing comprises two galleries, a classroom, curatorial workspace, and an expansion of the museum’s sales shop, the Case Trading Post. [wonderplugin_slider id="119"] (more…)
Categories: Visual art
The spectacular exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art, The Red That Colored the World, has been years in the planning and is only here for the summer. You should not miss it. Curators Barbara Anderson, Nicolasa Chávez, and Carmella Padilla have assembled from around the world diverse works of art, fashion, and material culture which have at least one thing in common: their color derives from a little bug.
Categories: Editor's Letter
![A woman in traditional Native American attire stands at the doorway of an adobe building, wearing a fringed dress, beaded accessories, and moccasins. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Color-in-Color_1-400x225.jpg)
![Cover of the book Turquoise, Water, Sky featuring strands of turquoise jewelry against a black background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Turquoise-Water-Sky-Meaning_1-400x225.jpg)
![A group of people, including a man in a white cowboy hat, share a meal at a long table; others stand behind them, with mountains, houses, a dog, and a parrot in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Postmodern-Trickster_3-400x225.jpg)
![Two purple ovals partially obscured by a vertical blue-green fold on a soft, pale background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Color-Line-Composition_6-400x225.jpg)
![Two people apply adobe plaster to a wall; one stands on a ladder, while the other works on the roof. A window is visible on the right side of the building. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Adobe-Summer_2-400x225.jpg)
![Wooden statue of a bearded man in a blue robe, holding a book in one hand and a rosary with a cross in the other, standing on a decorated base. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Bue-on-Blue_2-400x225.jpg)
![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)
![Colorful skeins of yarn are laid out in rows, transitioning from yellow to green to red and purple, with small bowls of natural dye materials placed beside them. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Color-Purple_2-400x225.jpg)
![A wide, textured gold cuff bracelet with an inlaid red stone shaped like a hand and blue and green inlays inside the band. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Navajo-Pueblo-Jewelry_3-400x225.jpg)
![A traditional red Japanese kimono with gold embroidered waves and crests, displayed against a black background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Red_5-scaled-1-400x225.jpg)