Summer 2019

2019 / Vol. 124 / No. 2

Read For the Love of the Little A person kneels on a display platform arranging miniature figurines and buildings in a brightly lit museum with colorful folk art exhibits. [gen-ai]

For the Love of the Little

BY LAURA ADDISON / PHOTOGRAPHS BY KITTY LEAKEN For thirty-seven years, Multiple Visions: A Common Bond has drawn international visitors and attention to the Museum of International Folk Art. This unique installation of some 10,000 toys and folk art objects from Alexander Girard's own collection, designed and installed by Girard himself, was a labor of love and a testament to this modern-design master’s attention to the global handmade.

By Kitty Leaken

Categories: International folk art, Visual art

Read Up in the Air, Back in Aerial view of an arid landscape with a river on the left, a bridge in the distance, and a fenced compound containing buildings and vehicles on the right. [gen-ai]

Up in the Air, Back in

Almost eighty years ago, Coronado State Monument, now Coronado Historic Site, opened on May 29, 1940. At the time, much of the area surrounding Coronado Historic Site was undeveloped. Prior to the installation of Cochiti Dam, the Rio Grande Flood Plain was still active. The river was also much larger and wider. (more…)

Categories: Framework

Read The Fuel of Activism A statue of a woman. [gen-ai]

The Fuel of Activism

BY SUZAN SHOWN HARJO Almost all of decades of meetings and visits with Herman Agoyo in New Mexico involved some kind of food. On lucky days for me, he would share something delicious with green chiles he and his family planted and harvested in that perfect mile-high altitude, mineral-rich soil and rare earth elements of lands and waters at the Rio Grande and Chama Rivers of northern New Mexico: Ohkay Owingeh, the Place of the Strong People.

Categories: Featured, Southwestern history

Read A Girardian Valentine A minimalist green illustration of a girl with a flower-shaped head, leafy branches for arms, and a bird perched on one branch, set against a plain background. [gen-ai]

A Girardian Valentine

The name of Alexander Girard’s permanent installation at the Museum of International Folk Art is Multiple Visions. As we put the finishing touches on the fourth summer issue of El Palacio I’ve had the privilege to wrangle, Multiple Visions strikes me as an apt phrase for what goes into publishing this magazine. Writers, editors, designers, photographers, museum curators, and the publisher contribute multiple visions for stories that must meld into a finished product.

Categories: Editor's Letter

Read Two Poems by Suzan Shown Harjo A man awards a medal to a smiling seated woman during a formal ceremony, with other people visible in the background. [gen-ai]

Two Poems by Suzan Shown Harjo

after-dinner remarks (after dinner with guillermo gomez-pena and the sisters) we are uncommon peoples with much in common          for starters, mutual oppression we are not the half-time show          for the whiteman’s redskins game          or his taco-bell-selling chihuahua          we do not resemble        

Categories: Poetry

Read Spoon to City A sunken red seating area with patterned cushions is surrounded by potted flowers, a gold table, bookshelves, a grand piano, and modern decor in a spacious living room. [gen-ai]

Spoon to City

BY LAURA ADDISON In a 1953 letter to friends back in Michigan, designer Alexander Girard enumerated what appealed to him about Santa Fe, his new hometown. Tellingly, his description engaged all the senses. He spoke of New Mexico’s “crystal clear, crisp air,” the feel of the hot sun, the fires “that smell like incense,” the views of horses, goats, and cows from their home portal, the sound of singing processions, and the multisensory allure of nearby bonfires.

Categories: Featured, International folk art

Read The Grace of Water and the Focus of Rock A mixed media artwork featuring repeated images of a woman in traditional dress, geometric patterns, text, beads, and two circular elements with hanging black strands. [gen-ai]

The Grace of Water and the Focus of Rock

BY PATSY PHILLIPS On September 20, 2019, Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne, Hodulgee Muscogee) will be honored with a symposium at the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., co-sponsored by the Institute for American Indian Arts’ Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe. On the same weekend, the NMAI celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the opening of its museum on the National Mall, and the fifth anniversary of the NMAI exhibition and its corresponding book, titled Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations.

Categories: Essays and memoir, Indigenous arts and cultures, Southwestern history

Read Illustrative Artists A group of tipis and people with horses in a grassy valley, bordered by trees, with tall mountains and a lake in the background. [gen-ai]

Illustrative Artists

BY CHRISTIAN WAGUESPACK America’s land is at the heart of our national visual character. In the attempt to construct an identity for the young country, early Anglo-American artists aligned with the idea that ours was a nation without history—an idea that dismissed the validity of Native American history—and looked at the land as a fertile source to construct a national character.

By Cameron Gay

Categories: Framework, Visual art

Read When Georgia Met Sandro A woman with a scarf smiles while holding a Siamese cat close to her face in front of a wooden wall. [gen-ai]

When Georgia Met Sandro

BY KATE NELSON In the Museum of International Folk Art, curator Laura Addison opens a nondescript flat file among aisles of others in the collections vault. From it, she pulls a delicately rendered water­color by one of the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century. It shows a columbine flower—not in the abstracted style that brought Georgia O’Keeffe fame, but as a wildflower-identification guide.

Categories: Featured, International folk art