Southwest Contemporary scores honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and New Mexico Press Women, for stories and designs reflecting the range of the publication’s regional arts coverage.
Spring is awards season for journalists in the Southwest, with the Society of Professional Journalists concluding its Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism Competition, and New Mexico Press Women unveiling the winners of its NMPW New Mexico Communications Contest. Four Southwest Contemporary contributors received honors this year in five wide-ranging categories, following awards success for the publication last year and exemplifying SWC‘s commitment to in-depth regional arts coverage.
At the SPJ awards ceremony, held last weekend in Denver, the association’s 75-year-old Colorado Pro Chapter presented two top awards to SWC. Competing against small newsrooms across a four-state region, SWC achieved 1st place for Front Page Design for the 2023 New Mexico Field Guide cover, a back-to-back annual win for publisher and editor Lauren Tresp. The cover features artwork by Karma Henry, one of SWC‘s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know of 2023. In the Criticism category, arts editor Natalie Hegert and contributor Gina Pugliese won 1st place for exhibition reviews of Marguerite Humeau’s Orisons, Nicholas Galanin’s Interference Patterns, and Hyperlink and The Land Report Collective’s Re-Activate.
“Southwest Contemporary‘s reviews of remote art exhibits really make us wish we could put in the same literal legwork (Pugliese) did to visit these spookily altered landscapes,” wrote one Top of the Rockies judge of Pugliese’s Orisons and Reactivate pieces.
In April, SWC scored three awards from the NMPW contest, which advances winning entries to a nationwide competition run by the National Federation of Press Women. The 2023 New Mexico Field Guide took 1st place in the Magazine category, while Hegert and contributor Steve Jansen achieved 3rd-place writing awards. Hegert won for her positive review of Galanin’s Interference Patterns at SITE Santa Fe, while Jansen was honored for his incisive reporting on the near closure of Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe.
The national tier of the NMPW contest, the NFPW National Communications Contest, will reveal its 2024 results on June 22.
