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By Charlotte Jusinski A few months ago, I was perusing the upcoming exhibitions calendar at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos when something stopped me where I stood: Outriders: Legacy of the Black Cowboy. Ever since enjoying a performance of traditional cowboy songs by Dom Flemons (of Carolina Chocolate Drops fame) at GiG Performance Space in Santa Fe back in 2018, I’ve wanted to explore the history and legacy of the Black cowboy.
Categories: Editor's Letter
By Rachel Preston More than one of New Mexico’s great stories starts with a broken wheel… and the account of the Museum of International Folk Art is one of them. Its founder, Florence Dibell Bartlett, got her first taste of New Mexico’s quaint and cordial village life—a style of living perhaps the polar opposite to that of the wealthy hardware heiress and world traveler in 1920’s Chicago—while awaiting a wagon tire repair in Santa Cruz, and she was hooked.
Categories: Featured, International folk art
By Charlotte Jusinski with Jeff Pappas Jeff Pappas. Photograph by Kevin Lange. Now in its third season, the Department of Cultural Affairs’s podcast, Encounter Culture, explores the exhibitions, stories, and personalities of the largest governmental department in New Mexico. Whether focusing on an art exhibition, Indigenous history, or ghostly experiences, Encounter Culture offers a unique look into what makes our state’s cultural institutions tick—and this episode with State Historic Preservation Officer Dr.
Categories: Featured
While photographing the town of Duran for The Story of Structures, I was on a corner, hip-deep in chamisa that was on its crunchy, end-of-season last legs. With only thirty-six residents, hustle and bustle is decidedly not the prevailing vibe in Duran. In fact, in the several hours I had been roaming and photographing, I had only seen one other car on the mostly dirt streets, and no other people.
Categories: Framework
By Jennifer Levin Art Olivas drove a friend to Santa Fe Community Theater and sat in the audience, watching the hopefuls take their turns. He wasn’t there to audition, but the director asked him to read anyway. This was in 1979, and though Olivas doesn’t remember what the play was, he ended up in it. “I’d never been on a stage.
Categories: Featured, Southwestern history
By Almah LaVon Rice Erased from history. Neglected. Overlooked. Hidden. Makes Critical Race Theory haters tremble. These are the words and phrases that alight on photographer Ron Tarver’s mind when he considers the popular iconography of the Black cowboy. “I tried to publish a book in the ’90s [about Black cowboys] and could not get anyone interested,” recalls Tarver, whose photojournalism in The Philadelphia Inquirer garnered a joint Pulitzer Prize in 2012.
Categories: Featured
By Amy Smith MuisePhotographs by Gabriela Campos I met Greg Ball on a fine, hot morning in August, on a weekday when the museum wasn’t crowded. He’s been the livestock manager at the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum for twenty-four years now. Our conversation started about rain, as is often the case in the desert Southwest. Along with his full-time job at the museum, he has a small farm in Mesilla, and as of early August it hadn’t rained much there.
Categories: Farming and ranching, Featured
by Jennifer Levin Art Olivas drove a friend to Santa Fe Community Theater and sat in the audience, watching the hopefuls take their turns. He wasn’t there to audition, but the director asked him to read anyway. This was in 1979, and though Olivas doesn’t remember what the play was, he ended up in it. “I’d never been on a stage.
Categories: Featured
![A man in a light blue shirt and jeans stands smiling in a stone doorway of a rustic, partially collapsed building. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Framework-final-400x225.jpg)
![Six adults in theatrical costumes pose dramatically around a wooden chest onstage; expressions and attire suggest a comedic or whimsical performance. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/01-1-1-400x225.jpg)
![A person wearing a cowboy hat rides a white horse along a wooden fence in a field, with a rainbow visible in the cloudy sky. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Driven_Tarver-DavesLastRide-400x225.jpg)
![A middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and blue shirt sits on stacked hay bales, looking directly at the camera. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/NMHeritageMuseum_11_crop-400x225.jpg)
