Select Photographs and Prints from the Collection - 2025-2026

Ignatius Palmer, a Mescalero Apache, was born in about 1922. He served in the U. S. Army Air Corps in World War II, after which he became a construction worker and painter. Following that he attended the Santa Fe Indian School and started painting as early as 1939 but did most of his exhibiting occurred between 1957 and 1962. He provided illustrations for a Bent-Mescalero (NM) Elementary School, specifically Apache stories for bilingual classes. He primarily showed his paintings mainly in the tribal arts center near his home in the Mescalero Apache area. Imagery of Gan Dancers and other ceremonial figures feature in most of these paintings.