Southwest Art News: June 2025
FBI returns stolen paintings to Taos museum, Tulsa institution repatriates Native remains and artifacts, and more top Southwest art news headlines for June 2025.
June 03, 2025
Studio VisitColoradoThe Hyperlocal
An Artist Who Paints the West as Strange as It Is
Colorado artist Grace Kennison paints her way into the reality of the West, a place layered thick with fictional narratives, mythical characters, suppressed histories, and surreal storylines.
June 02, 2025
Texas Artist Michael Tracy Channeled the Violence and Transcendence of the Borderlands
Late artist Michael Tracy hit the Texas border village of San Ygnacio like a "cyclone." His creative aggression melded with an empathic awareness of his adopted home.
May 29, 2025
An Artist Who Unearths Layers of History, and Stacks Them Again
Informed by his family history, Dean Terasaki uses activist imagery and charged ephemera—including postcards from Japanese American internment camps—to send a present-day "warning."
May 27, 2025
Bid Now in Southwest Contemporary‘s First-Ever Benefit Art Auction
Southwest Contemporary's Benefit Art Auction is stacked with beloved regional artists, from Judy Chicago to Virgil Ortiz. Support arts journalism and collect powerful artwork through June 7.
May 25, 2025
Feature2025 New Mexico Field Guide
The People’s Biennial
Charged with reviving SITE Santa Fe’s storied biennial, world-renowned curator Cecilia Alemani unveils Once Within a Time, a citywide chorus of regional and global voices.
May 23, 2025
Travel2025 New Mexico Field Guide
Unique New Mexico: Couse-Sharp Historic Site
The Couse-Sharp Historic Site invites visitors to step into the living legacy of Taos’s early art colony—and consider Taos Pueblo's influence on every brushstroke.
May 23, 2025
Travel2025 New Mexico Field Guide
Unique New Mexico: Scottish Rite Masonic Temple
The Scottish Rite Masonic Temple may be home to a private fraternity, but its ornate theater welcomes all.
May 23, 2025
Feature2025 New Mexico Field Guide
Center Santa Fe Celebrates 30 Years—and It’s Just Getting Started
On its 30th anniversary, Center, a nonprofit focused on sharing lens-based art, is looking to the future while reflecting on all it has already achieved.
May 23, 2025
Feature2025 New Mexico Field Guide
The Spanish Colonial Arts Society Just Hit 100—and Changed the Name of Its Home Museum
Marking its centennial, the Spanish Colonial Arts Society honors its community with an ambitious survey exhibition, new museum branding, and free admission.
May 23, 2025
To Fill Jagged Gaps in the History of Native Slavery, These Artists Use Their Bodies
New Mexico's UNBOUND performance project builds on historical research about Indigenous slavery through intuitive "deep listening" between artists, ancestors, and community.
May 20, 2025
Amid Breathtaking NEA Cuts, Southwest Arts Organizations are Reeling—and Rallying Support
The Trump administration's shadowy National Endowment for the Arts grant retractions have Southwest arts organizations banding together to track the cuts and gather supporters.
May 15, 2025
“What’s Your Side Hustle?”: Hard-Earned Lessons on Artistic Survival from a Southwest Highway Town
The artists of Helper, Utah, have spent the last three decades honing strategies to strengthen their rural community—and make the regional market work for them.
May 13, 2025
Southwest Artist and Writer Residencies with Summer 2025 Deadlines
Apply for artist and writer residencies with summer 2025 deadlines in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
May 12, 2025
Meet the “Sad Little Houses” of Dallas, and the Artists on the Front Lines of the Housing Crisis
Three artists confront the Texas housing crisis with street-level projects using piñatas, murals, gentrification walking tours, and more.
May 06, 2025
Southwest Art News: May 2025
Suki Seokyeong Kang dies amid landmark Southwest show, Nevada Humanities gets a lifeline after NEH cuts, and more top Southwest art news headlines for May 2025.
May 01, 2025
Shepard Fairey Unveils His First Arizona Mural in a City That Tried to Censor His Work
Shepard Fairey was nearly censored at the Mesa Arts Center. He's back with a monumental artwork—and thoughts on police power, fascism, and art as a "counterwind."
April 24, 2025
Anthropology Museums Are Returning Some Objects, But What About the Ones They Keep?
To address misleading historical photos of the Navajo Nation, Albuquerque's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology tapped Diné collaborators to fill in the gaps.
April 22, 2025
Rule Gallery Denver Breaks from the White Cube to Reimagine Art Viewership
Thirty-four-year-old Rule Gallery temporarily steps outside its white walls, presenting site-specific, time-based art experiences in the Denver area.
April 15, 2025
A New Art Fair Debuts in the Southwest—Is It a Hit or a Miss?
Local artists and gallerists weigh in on Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week’s debut—and its efforts to bust regional stereotypes and elevate the Southwest on a global stage.
April 03, 2025
Southwest Art News: April 2025
Meow Wolf announces New York project, Georgia O'Keeffe protégé Juan Hamilton dies, and more top Southwest art news headlines for April 2025.
April 01, 2025
Decades After the Creative Class Arrived, Small Arizona Town Confronts Dual Realities
Local artists and art-world power players are next-door neighbors in Winslow, Arizona. Everyone and the mayor is weighing in on the town's creative direction.
March 27, 2025
Spring Forward: 14 Time-Bending Southwest Art Shows for Spring 2025
Catch these must-see spring art shows across the Southwest, featuring artistic time travelers Kent Monkman, Jorge Rojas, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and more.
March 25, 2025
An Artist Who Tends the Earth—and then Sculpts It
Arizona-based artist Farraday Newsome's studio extends into her high-desert garden, sprouting ideas for intricate ceramics about nature's self-perpetuating systems.
March 24, 2025
Ex-Employees Shed Light on CCA Santa Fe’s Bitter Unionization Battle
Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe kicked off the year with a labor organizing win for staff, but not without union-busting allegations and three staff departures.
March 20, 2025
Rubber-Clad 1970s Art Vigilante Offers Playbook for a Prohibitive Moment
Santa Fe's fifteen-year Rubber Lady project was a master class in fugitive—and funny—social subversion. At Vladem Contemporary, the artist unmasks herself.
March 18, 2025
Are an Arizona Museum’s Changes to Transfeminisms Exhibition “Violent” or Pragmatic?
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art made last-minute revisions to a traveling show of women, queer, and trans artists. Museum leadership and a co-curator differ on what happened.
March 13, 2025
FeatureTexasVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Can Art Stave Off Gentrification? San Antonio Cultural Spaces are Preserving the Westside
Three San Antonio arts organizations leverage a land trust and other strategies to literally hold space on the rapidly growing city's Westside.
March 07, 2025
New MexicoStudio VisitVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Eva Gabriella Flynn: Borderlands Drifter
Las Cruces–based artist Eva Gabriella Flynn's meticulous maps and flags hover in an uncertain space between two nations, to playful and political effect.
March 07, 2025
ArtistsArizonaVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Shaunté Glover
Shaunté Glover explores the muscular narrative power—and queer, femme force—of women’s basketball through the lens of South Phoenix.
March 07, 2025
