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FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Return of the Buffalo
On a road trip across the former rangelands of the American bison, Cannupa Hanska Luger envisions a new monument.
March 20, 2026
From the EditorVol. 13 The Road
From the Editors: Southwest Contemporary Vol. 13 — The Road
Southwest Contemporary: The Road reconstitutes even the busiest Southwest arteries as byways that tether far-flung places and people.
March 20, 2026
Loneliness and Longing on Paco’s Trails
An archeologist seeks the carvings of a 20th-century sheepherder, tracing stories of lust and loss across a threatened landscape.
March 20, 2026
Tether
In the essay "Tether," Anika Todd meditates on speed and flight, using history and a tethered camera to question how technologies shape perception, power, and the landscapes we inhabit.
March 20, 2026
FeatureSouthwestVol. 13 The Road
Marfas Everywhere
A million-dollar gambit in New Mexico is one of many small-town projects chasing the fabled success of Marfa, Texas. Can it actually be replicated?
March 20, 2026
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Evidence, Epistle, and the Evolutionary: A Response to the Works of Johannes Barfield
Poet Laura Neal discovers new roads in the collected works of Albuquerque-based artist Johannes Barfield exploring alternative states of being and imagining in Black culture.
March 20, 2026
Heaven, Hell, and H-E-B: Archeological Artistic Strategies Excavate Complicated Pasts, Presents, and Futures
Wagon tracks of the doomed Donner Party, detritus of present-day migration, football stadiums as future ruins—Sean J. Patrick Carney traces archeological strategies invoking the Southwest’s complicated past, present, and futures.
March 20, 2026
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Inside Southwest ContemporarySouthwestThe Road
Ghost Roads: How AI Almost Infiltrated the Editorial Process at Southwest Contemporary
Our call for pitches for “The Road” was regurgitated back to us by AI writers around the world. We almost fell for one of them.
March 17, 2026
“I’ll Be in Debt”: What it Takes for Artists to Show at International Biennials
Accepting an invitation to a major biennial is one thing, closing gaps in institutional support is another. Three Southwest artists sound off.
March 10, 2026
For Her First Major Museum Solo Show, Cara Romero Does It in Her Own Time
Over six years, artist Cara Romero and curator Jami C. Powell resisted the art world’s rush to capitalize on Native art. Their show just arrived in Phoenix.
March 05, 2026
Southwest Art News: March 2026
Texas university cancels ICE-critical exhibition, History Colorado expands its Borderlands initiative with Ken Salazar, and more top Southwest art news for March 2026.
March 03, 2026
Letter to the Editors: Paula Castillo on Moving Beyond “Hybridity” to Frame Mestizaje
In response to Joshua Ware's critical reflection on her Denver public artworks, Paula Castillo warns against flattening lived inheritance into a “surface mixture.”
March 02, 2026
How Phoenix Art Museum’s First “Local Art” Curator Built a Regional Launchpad
Christian Ramírez's scope is technically local at Phoenix Art Museum, but the assistant curator channels years of Southwest connections from Tucson to El Paso.
February 12, 2026
SITE Santa Fe Taps London-Based Curator Ekow Eshun for 2027 International
The just-announced curator of SITE Santa Fe's next biennial reveals his multi-venue ambitions for a show punctuated by immersive "moments of encounter."
February 03, 2026
From our Sponsors
SponsoredNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Photography Meets Place: CENTER Santa Fe’s Spring Exhibitions and Workshops Explore New Mexico’s Living Landscape
CENTER Santa Fe presents two photography exhibitions this spring—Elements of Wonder and A New Mexican Burial—alongside a statewide printing workshop series designed to help artists grow their practice.
March 20, 2026
SponsoredTexasVol. 13 The Road
Meet the McNay: Opening Doors for Connection and Discovery
Texas's first modern art museum, the McNay brings together 23,000 works, a landmark Spanish Colonial estate, and deep community roots in the heart of San Antonio.
March 20, 2026
Gebert Contemporary Returns to Scottsdale Art Week 2026 with a Roster of Strong Talent
Discover Gebert Contemporary at Scottsdale Art Week, March 20-22, 2026. Featuring works by John Randall Nelson, Barbara Rogers, Pascal Piermé, and more.
March 02, 2026
Artists
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FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Evidence, Epistle, and the Evolutionary: A Response to the Works of Johannes Barfield
Poet Laura Neal discovers new roads in the collected works of Albuquerque-based artist Johannes Barfield exploring alternative states of being and imagining in Black culture.
March 20, 2026
InterviewTexasVol. 13 The Road
Arts Activism in the Shadow of SpaceX: An Interview with Nansi Guevara
Artist and activist Nansi Guevara on how art can help protect the Rio Grande Delta from colonial encroachment in Brownsville, Texas.
March 20, 2026
Studio VisitNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Willie Lambert: Road Dog
Route 66 survives in fragments. In a handmade atlas, Willie Lambert pieces New Mexico's 500-mile stretch back together.
March 20, 2026
Studio VisitArizonaVol. 13 The Road
Alanna Airitam: Black Diamonds
Working in her Tucson, Arizona studio, artist Alanna Airitam counters cultural erasure with a photographic series highlighting the Chosen Few, the nation’s first racially integrated outlaw motorcycle club.
March 20, 2026
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
The Road: Moira Garcia
An older name for New Mexico anchors Moira Garcia’s mixed-media mapping of Nahua migration, cosmology, and return.
March 20, 2026
The Road: Julie Libersat
Denton-based new media artist Julie Libersat transforms everyday roadside objects into installations that challenge how we navigate public space, belonging, and access.
March 20, 2026
The Road: Luke Rizzotto
Nevada-based artist Luke Rizotto's multimedia, site-specific installations are vaporous portals into personal psychic pathways.
March 20, 2026
Exhibitions
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Suburban Phoenix is a Vortex and Mirror in Eric Fischl’s Sprawling Retrospective
Phoenix Art Museum presents forty paintings by Eric Fischl, a New Yorker who seems magnetically drawn to the Valley of the Sun—in all its joy and strangeness.
March 20, 2026
Los Encuentros Models a More Accountable Marfa—But Can it Last?
At Ballroom Marfa, five Latinx artists scramble Marfa's mythologies with humor and ferocity. They leave behind a mural, and a challenge.
March 20, 2026
A First Glimpse of Into the Time Horizon, the Future-Forward, Evolving Exhibition Unfolding Over Time
Artwork by Maya Lin and Ernesto Neto soft launch Into the Time Horizon at the Nevada Museum of Art, examining local and global environmental concerns.
March 20, 2026
In Altered States in the Acid West, Psychedelia and Surrealism Subvert Mythologies
Filled with beauty, tragedy, and oddities, UMOCA’s Altered States in the Acid West encompasses the storied contractions inherent to the American West.
March 20, 2026
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Lucy R. Lippard’s Notes from the Radical Whirlwind Archives a Six-Decade Evolution
Lucy R. Lippard: Notes from the Radical Whirlwind traces the sixty-year career of one of the most humane and lucid arts writers of a generation.
March 20, 2026
Peripheral Vision: Abby Flanagan Decenters the Visual in an Exhibition that Feels Truly Ecological
How can art plumb the depths of an aquifer? Abby Flanagan’s exhibition design in To Move Through Stone activates the peripheries to visualize the intangible flows of an ecological system.
March 12, 2026
Adama Delphine Fawundu Brings the Congo (and Beyond) into Conversation with Salt Lake
Adama Delphine Fawundu submerses herself into the Great Salt Lake, activates the UMFA’s African collection, and brings the region into a global dialogue around decolonization.
February 19, 2026
In Print
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FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Return of the Buffalo
On a road trip across the former rangelands of the American bison, Cannupa Hanska Luger envisions a new monument.
March 20, 2026
From the EditorVol. 13 The Road
From the Editors: Southwest Contemporary Vol. 13 — The Road
Southwest Contemporary: The Road reconstitutes even the busiest Southwest arteries as byways that tether far-flung places and people.
March 20, 2026
Loneliness and Longing on Paco’s Trails
An archeologist seeks the carvings of a 20th-century sheepherder, tracing stories of lust and loss across a threatened landscape.
March 20, 2026
Tether
In the essay "Tether," Anika Todd meditates on speed and flight, using history and a tethered camera to question how technologies shape perception, power, and the landscapes we inhabit.
March 20, 2026
FeatureSouthwestVol. 13 The Road
Marfas Everywhere
A million-dollar gambit in New Mexico is one of many small-town projects chasing the fabled success of Marfa, Texas. Can it actually be replicated?
March 20, 2026
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Evidence, Epistle, and the Evolutionary: A Response to the Works of Johannes Barfield
Poet Laura Neal discovers new roads in the collected works of Albuquerque-based artist Johannes Barfield exploring alternative states of being and imagining in Black culture.
March 20, 2026
Heaven, Hell, and H-E-B: Archeological Artistic Strategies Excavate Complicated Pasts, Presents, and Futures
Wagon tracks of the doomed Donner Party, detritus of present-day migration, football stadiums as future ruins—Sean J. Patrick Carney traces archeological strategies invoking the Southwest’s complicated past, present, and futures.
March 20, 2026
Obsession
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Real or Replica? On an Obsessive Quest to Immortalize a Forgotten Artist, a Writer Confronts Himself
He was a Marlboro Man from Moab who sold his art to celebrities in Los Angeles, before dying of AIDS. Why did no one have any record of his art?
February 10, 2026
Places Planted in the Mind: Jorge Ruiz Brings Together Cross-Border Towns, in Miniature
Jorge Ruiz intertwines Tucson and Nogales in his exhibition at Arizona's Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures. His "imperfect" process is grueling.
October 28, 2025
An Artist Who Paints the Landscape of the Brain
After five brain surgeries, Dallas-based Alicia Parham paints neurologically informed, otherworldly compositions in resilience.
September 25, 2025
Obsession at the Museum: Unpacking Alexander Girard’s Gargantuan Santa Fe Exhibition
In a single 1978 acquisition, the Museum of International Folk Art grew by 100,000 objects—and effectively adopted their fervent and eccentric collector.
September 16, 2025
FeatureNevadaVol. 12 Obsession
Empires of Dirt: Michael Heizer’s City
Michael Heizer’s City prompts considerations of obsession, scale, and legacy through the lens of land, labor, and the weight of inherited ambition.
September 05, 2025
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 12 Obsession
Material Monogamy: Three Creators Find Their Prima Materia
Three New Mexico–based artists—c marquez, Susan York, and Judy Tuwaletstiwa—reflect on their relationship with the material that has defined their practice.
September 05, 2025
The Medium is their Message: Compulsion and Identity in Zion
Artists Stephanie Leitch, Angela Ellsworth, and Nancy Rivera use materially obsessive processes to reflect on the mythos of Utah.
September 05, 2025
