Don’t sit it out. These sixteen explosive exhibitions across the Southwest will keep the fire lit for your summer of resistance.
Art can be a respite, an escape, or a luxury commodity for some. For others it’s a driver for social change, a way to expose inequity, and to present perspectives overlooked by the mainstream.
There’s been some complaints of late about art being too political. But here in the Southwest, in the borderlands and at the front lines of climate crisis, we say bring it. Exhibitions on mass surveillance, the subversive potential of everyday objects, and subcultural power inform and inspire these sixteen standout shows this summer.
Arizona Art Exhibitions
Michael Afsa: Suburban Paradise
June 14 – September 14, 2025
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Michael Afsa’s first museum exhibition showcases the roots of the sculptor’s minimal-cool aesthetics: the forms and textures of suburban architecture found in everyday Arizona neighborhoods, revealed in Afsa’s early photography.
Route 66: Alternative Perspectives
June 28 – September 27, 2025
Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff
Get ready for a slew of Route 66–related exhibitions, as we round the corner to the historic roadway’s centennial next year. This anticipated exhibition, along with Shades of Route 66 in the Project Gallery, features underrepresented voices and a “decidedly non-nostalgic” take on the “Mother Road.”
Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands
July 3 – November 30, 2025
Tucson Museum of Art
Guest curated by Rigoberto Luna, Ya Hecho features a long lineup of compelling artists from the borderlands experimenting with found materials and everyday objects, including Margarita Cabrera, Gil Rocha, María José Crespo, and many others.
Colorado Art Exhibitions
Sherrie Levine: 1977-1988
June 6 – September 29, 2025
Aspen Art Museum
I wonder what Sherrie Levine thinks about AI.* The work in this exhibition won’t offer any direct clues—it spans the years 1977 to 1988, from Shoe Sale (1977) to stripe paintings—but hopefully some food for thought.
Justice of the Piece
June 7 – October 14, 2025
Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery, Ent Center for the Arts, Colorado Springs
This summer, the inside of UCCS’s Ent Center will be wrapped in murals from three femme artists who deliver social messages in high street style—including the absolute legend of NYC graffiti, Lady Pink, along with Detroit-based Sydney G. James and Denver-based Grow Love.
Nevada Art Exhibitions
Eternal Signs: Indigenous Australian Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection
May 31 – November 9, 2025
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
In 2023, the Nevada Museum of Art received a major donation of Australian Aboriginal art, now on display in this exhibition, forming a cornerstone to the museum’s significant “Greater West Collection,” defined as a “global super-region—from Alaska to Patagonia and from the Australian Outback to the American Intermountain West.”
New Mexico Art Exhibitions
Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line
June 20 – September 21, 2025
Vladem Contemporary, Santa Fe
Alphonse Mucha’s elegant Art Nouveau lines may be timeless, but his flowing aesthetic also recalls an age of countercultural expression, when his florid style inspired the psychedelic art of the 1960s.
Abstracting Nature
June 21 – October 12, 2025
Albuquerque Museum
Including works by Agnes Martin, Judy Tuwaletstiwa, Joanna Keane Lopez, and others, this exhibition promises to be, in part, a love letter to the landscapes of New Mexico, rendered in abstract forms.
Once Within a Time: 12th SITE Santa Fe International
June 27, 2025 – January 12, 2026
SITE Santa Fe
The most anticipated exhibition of the summer—the year—the biennium!—is the SITE International. Read more about it here.
Maggie Thompson: Interactions
July 25, 2025 – January 4, 2026
IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe
The first institutional solo exhibition by Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) will feature the artist’s textile-based works that directly address issues of solidarity, community, and political power, in works like I Can’t Breathe (2024–2025) and F**k This (2025).
Texas Art Exhibitions
Doylene Land: My Ancestors’ Memories Become My Creative Instincts
June 6 – August 24, 2025
Ellen Noël Art Museum, Odessa
The iconography in Doylene Land’s paintings speaks directly to the West Texas landscape, as do its strong horizon lines splitting the canvas. Here, Land draws from both her personal history and the history of the region in works that convey familiar objects in perplexing perspectival shifts.
In the Shadows, Our Ghosts Lurk (En Las Sombras, Nuestros Fantasmas Acechan)
June 6 – October 5, 2025
Contemporary at Blue Star, San Antonio
Curated by Fabiola Iza, this exhibition deconstructing surveillance culture and its psychological effects first appeared at Laguna in Mexico City, and features work by Leo Marz, Daniela Bojórquez Vértiz, Virginia Colwell, Oswaldo Ruiz, and others.
Los Encuentros
July 4 – October 12, 2025
Ballroom Marfa
Guest curated by Maggie Adler, Los Encuentros brings together five Latinx artists—Justin Favela, Antonio Lechuga, Yvette Mayorga, Ozzie Juarez, and Narsiso Martinez—who elevate everyday materials into works that are incisive and playful.
Utah Art Exhibitions
Step After Step
May 30 – September 14, 2025
Kimball Art Center, Park City
As anyone who has navigated a car-centric American city will know, walking can be an act of resistance. This exhibition traces the lineage of walking as art, through works by Richard Long, Marina Abramović and Ulay, Francis Alÿs, and the Museum of Walking (with Angela Ellsworth and KB Thomason).
Les Chingones
June 6 – July 11, 2025
Material, Salt Lake City
As the title proclaims, the artists in this exhibition—Andrew Alba, Kelly Tapia-Chuning, Horacio Rodriguez, and Sara Serratos—embody chingón/chingona, a slang word “used to denote strength, resilience, and a rebellious spirit.”
Something from Everything
June 27, 2025 – January 3, 2026
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City
Featuring artists like Lee Bontecou, Leonardo Drew, Derrick Velasquez, and Sheila Hicks, this exhibition explores unconventional assemblages of everyday materials “as a site of play, experimentation, and meaning-making.”
*Unsolicited, a Google search spit out a 430-word “AI Overview” speculating that “Her work suggests that AI, like other forms of technology and cultural tools, could be seen as a catalyst for challenging traditional notions of authorship, originality, and authenticity in art.”
