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BY ALIX I. HUDSON On a brilliant, hot August morning, I met with Frederico Vigil to speak inside his virtuosic fresco Mundos de Mestizaje, which he created over the course of a decade. Located inside El Torreón at Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center, it measures over 45 feet tall and covers 4,000 square feet; it is North America’s largest concave fresco.
Categories: New Mexican cultures
BY DIANE BIRD As a kid, I never would have imagined today. I will leave the ladder down behind me so girls of color know they can be anything they want to be. Congresswoman Deb Haaland, January 3, 2019. In November 2018, Deb Haaland of Laguna Pueblo and Sharice Davids of the Ho-Chunk Nation became the first Indigenous women elected to the U.S.
Categories: Framework, Indigenous arts and cultures
BY EMILY WITHNALL One of Diego Romero’s favorite activities is watching people react to his art. He keeps a low profile and usually not even the security guards know he’s the artist. Hiding in plain sight, he looks on as people study his Pueblo-inspired pots with comics painted inside them. With work in places like the British Museum, the Cartier Foundation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Romero has lurked in numerous museums around the world over his 30-year career and delights in the groans, sighs, and chuckles his art elicits.
Categories: Artist profiles, Featured, Indigenous arts and cultures
BY CHARLOTTE JUSINSKI Do you smell that?Yeah, me too. It smells like a 2020 model car, fresh off the lot. Or the spine of a book just plucked from the store shelf. Or a new pair of hiking boots with the tissue paper still taped around them in the box. It smells like new stuff. This issue of El Palacio is full of it.
Categories: Editor's Letter
BY CHARLIE M. CARRILLO & FELIPE R. MIRABAL The mystery of the Hermanos or Penitentes that belong to the Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno has baffled and fascinated scholars, journalists, Protestant missionaries, and the local Catholic clergy for decades. The story of the Hermanos Penitentes begins in the Santa Cruz Valley in Northern New Mexico at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Categories: Essays and memoir, Visual art
BY NICOLASA CHÁVEZ New Mexico is a magical place during the holiday season. Farolitos (little lanterns made of a candle in sand in a paper bag), luminarias (bonfires), biscochitos, and tamales abound, and locals and tourists alike enjoy centuries-old traditions unique to our state. Some of the most beloved are dramatizations, often accompanied by music, of the Nativity. Each ceremony has its own regional adaptation unique to the setting in which it is celebrated, but the central messages remain the same.
Categories: Featured, Southwestern history
BY NICOLE PANTER DAILEY Trauma forms people. It frames their actions and reactions. It determines what a person believes and how they move through the world. That the artist Agnes Pelton grew from a frail, sickly, quiet child into a frail, sickly, deeply introspective young woman prone to depression becomes less of a surprise when her personal and family history is explored—and the complexity of her seminal paintings can be appreciated all the more with a clear knowledge of this history.
Categories: Visual art
BY CHRISTIAN WAGUESPACK Since the end of the nineteenth century, artists of European descent have been continuously drawn to New Mexico, captivated by everything that we still treasure as unique to our region: the stunning light, the rich multicultural tapestry, the dramatic natural vistas. But as often as they filled their canvases with Indigenous subjects, golden aspens, or sun-drenched mountains, they were equally fascinated with the Hispanic community that has called New Mexico home for centuries.
Categories: Visual art
![An artist stands on a lift, holding the railing, in front of a colorful mural with large, expressive faces and figures painted on the wall and ceiling. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Frederico_Vigil_01_largeHERO-400x225.jpg)
![Woman with long dark hair sits against a plain background wearing a turquoise patterned blouse, black dress with red and green trim, and silver jewelry. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Courtesy-Office-of-Congresswoman-Deb-HaalandHERO-400x225.jpg)
![Brown and white ceramic plate with a central illustration of two Indigenous figures by water, one standing and one sitting, surrounded by a checkered and swirled border pattern. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/DiegoROmero_M190826006_hero-400x225.jpg)
![Surreal landscape with a dark reclining figure, a floating yellow shape with spiral ends, and a cluster of white stars against a blue and purple sky. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/3-MOA100-AwakeningHERO-400x225.jpg)
![A group of people stands and kneels near a roadside memorial with large crosses in a snowy, rural area bordered by trees and a wire fence. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HP.2014.14.1131_hero-400x225.jpg)
![A person in a costume and hat holds a lantern and a scroll, crouching beside a campfire at night. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/NoPueden_Devil-Darrel-DawsonHero-400x225.jpg)
![A statue of a friar stands on a rooftop overlooking an adobe village, with a cross, bouquet, and hammer nearby under a cloudy sky. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/CheneyHero-400x225.jpg)