Tag Archives: el palacio magazine

From the Collection

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NMHM/DCA 11731.45

A black, alpaca wool jacket with velvet and rick-rack trim around the neckline and along the shoulders, c. 1904-1913.
This object represents one type of merchandise sold in a general store on the plaza in Chimayo, NM that was owned by Victor Ortega and later his son, Ben. Victor Ortega was heavily involved in the community. He was also a notary public, a postmaster, participated in the 1st constitutional convention of NM and also acted as the director of the local school and served as a probate judge.

Read more about Victor Ortega in this Spring 2012 El Palacio article titled “Don Victor Ortega.“
NMHM/DCA 11731.45

The Palace Press announces a “new” Gustave Baumann book!

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A look at the Gustave Baumann book Indian Pottery Old and New

The Press at the Palace of the Governors

announces with great pleasure

A NEW Book by Gustave Baumann

Indian Pottery Old and New

An entry in the December 31,1919 issue of El Palacio magazine reported an exhibit of woodcut prints by Gustave Baumann. On display were pages of what the article called a “wonder book,” Indian Pottery Old and New, said to have been printed in an edition of 50 copies. That showing, and another in Chicago in 1920, were the last times the work was seen in public, and the book was little-known to collectors and admirers of Baumann’s work for nearly a century. Only a few of the fifty copies planned for that 1919 edition were completed, and no more than a dozen are found today in museum, library or private collections. In 1937 Baumann worked on a much-expanded version, and as late as 1950 he still spoke of his intent to bring out a book on Southwestern Indian pottery. So, like the book’s title, we present a book by Gustave Baumann that is both old and new. It is yet another display of the artist’s wit, ever-sharp eye and sure hand.

The block-book style text and fifteen woodcut studies of Indian pottery were carved within a year of Baumann’s arrival in Santa Fe, and we have followed the design of the booklet as he first conceived it. Variations in its black-only format were suggested by changes in his 1937 prototypes, most notably the introduction of brown background blocks carved for all of the pottery groupings. Those blocks, now in the collection of the New Mexico History Museum, are printed here for the first time. Many of the pots, so skillfully rendered, are in the collections of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the School for Advanced Research.

One hundred forty-five copies of the book were printed by Thomas Leech and James Bourland on Baumann’s remaining supply of Arak paper made by the Whitehead and Alliger Company. That a ream of this paper remained at the time of his death in 1971 may indicate that he had been saving the paper for this very project. Handmade paper covers by Thomas Leech include Baumann’s mouse-chewed canvas tool belt (too far gone to restore), New Mexico mica, and recycled paper trimmings from some of Baumann’s other papers.

The 28-page soft cover book measures 6.75 by 8 inches and comes in a hard-cover folder made by Rosalia Galassi. The price of the book is one hundred sixty dollars, which includes  USPS Priority postage.

How to Order in the Time of COVID-19 

If you wish to reserve a copy of this book, please email your request to: thomas.leech@state.nm.us 

(For Institutional purchases, contact Thomas Leech at the above address)

However, books will be mailed only upon receipt of check, made out to:

Museum of New Mexico Foundation 

and mailed to:

Palace Press, c/o Thomas Leech

2 Casa Del Oro Loop

Santa Fe, NM 87508 

(This is a museum approved teleworking location)

Please include contact information and an address where the book will be mailed.

Author Pam Houston and bluegrass band Breaking Blue headline El Palacio party

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“Party with El Palacio” on Friday, Aug. 5, features a free triple-header of an evening with award-winning author Pam Houston, Albuquerque bluegrass band Breaking Blue and spoken-word poet Carlos Contreras.

The event, hosted by El Palacio magazine, begins at 5 pm, with a reading and book signing by Houston in the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium. (Seating is limited.) At 6:30, come to the Palace of the Governors Courtyard for a toe-tapping and boot-scooting performance by Breaking Blue. (Wear your dancing shoes!). Preceding the band, Albuquerque spoken-word poet Carlos Contreras will perform his poem “Communion in the Desert (A Trip to the New Mexico History Museum).”

All the events are free. Come for one or for all three.

Each performer has a tie to El Palacio, the magazine of the Museums of New Mexico. Houston wrote about why she chose the Western life in the summer issue of El Palacio, “My Ranch, Myself: Making a Home on the Land.” (For an earlier El Palacio interview with Houston, go here.) Breaking Blue wrote a song based on an article in the winter 2008 issue of El Palacio, “Dearest Annie: Letters from Fort Selden.” And an interview with Contreras along with “Communion in the Desert” ran in the spring issue; a video of him performing it in the Palace Courtyard is on the magazine’s web site.

Houston’s new book, Contents May Have Shifted, will be published by W.W. Norton in early 2012. Among her earlier books are Cowboys Are My Weakness, Waltzing the Cat, A Little More about Me, and Sight Hound. Her stories have been selected for volumes of Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. She has won the Western States Book Award, the WILLA award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award, and multiple teaching awards. Director of creative writing at the University of California, Davis, Houston also teaches in The Pacific University low residency MFA program, and at writers’ conferences around the country and the world, including the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference.

She lives on a ranch at 9,000 feet in Colorado near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. You can learn more about her on her web site.

Breaking Blue’s members come from different walks of music – from jazz to heavy metal to classical – but are united in a passion to perform what they call “shabby-chic Americana music.” Along the way, they’ve revived some traditional American “Old Time” songs and lyrics that have been forgotten or re-written over the years.

In 2009, the group won the Santa Fe Bluegrass Festival Song writing contest. Other awards include the 2011 New Mexico Music Award for Best American Song (“Old Roads”); the 2010 Santa Fe Bluegrass Festival Old Time Band Competition; and the 2010 Albuquerque Folk Festival Band Contest. The group’s web site has more information.

Contreras competed on the team that brought the National Poetry Slam Championship home to his native Albuquerque. His awards include the New Mexico Hispanic Entertainers Award for Poet of the Years in 2007. With the Voces program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, he leads workshops in poetry composition and performance. Contreras has published poems in several anthologies, and a book, A Man in Pieces: Poems for My Father.

For “Communion in the Desert,” El Palacio commissioned him to tour the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors and compose a poem about the trip. Read more about him on this web site.

Founded in 1913 as the scholarly journal of the state’s then-only museum – the Palace of the Governors – El Palacio has covered the exhibits, public programs and scholarship of the Museum of New Mexico’s four Santa Fe museums (New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors, Museum of International Folk Art, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, and New Mexico Museum of Art), as well as the Office of Archaeological Studies and the six State Monuments (Coronado, Jemez, Fort Selden, Lincoln, Fort Sumner, and El Camino Real International Heritage Center). For subscription information, go here.