New Mexico Artist Residencies: So Enchanting, You Might Get Entrapped
Is New Mexico the Land of Enchantment or the "Land of Entrapment"? Apply for one of these eighteen artist and writer residencies, and you're bound to find out.
May 12, 2026
Beloved and Imperiled Christian Folk-Art Relic Salvation Mountain Gets a California Retrospective
A biographical show fortifies the legacy of visionary artist Leonard Knight in Ocotillo, California. If only his rainbow-hued magnum opus were as sturdy.
May 07, 2026
Southwest Art News: May 2026
IAIA fights another proposed federal funding elimination, Acoma Pueblo challenges AI data center developer, and more top Southwest art news for May 2026.
May 01, 2026
Mother-Daughter Show in Arizona Surveys the Melding—and Mitosis—of Artistic Inheritance
In their first-ever joint show in Scottsdale, Beth Ames Swartz and her daughter Julianne Swartz draw from shared esoteric knowledge to astonishingly varied ends.
April 28, 2026
How Clowning Around is Cultivating a Small-Town Avant-Garde Scene in Moab, Utah
Ephemeral Collective's roving performance festival in Moab holds lessons in pooling resources to shape a tiny counterculture.
April 23, 2026
New Mural Guidelines in Phoenix May Support Local Artists—or Restrict Them
As Phoenix overhauls its mural directives, local artists are weighing how more structure could professionalize—or narrow—the field.
April 14, 2026
Seven Days In, the New Mexico Museum of Art’s New Director Sets the Stakes
Marisa Sage’s art-is-for-everybody mandate might sound utopian, but at the helm of New Mexico’s most historically freighted museum, it's a massive administrative challenge.
April 09, 2026
“I Was Told I Couldn’t Do That”: Jody Folwell’s Endless Pueblo Pottery Revolution
In the 1980s, Pueblo artist Jody Folwell jolted Santa Fe Indian Market with political ceramics. Amid her retrospective, she's already pushing toward the next sharp statement.
April 07, 2026
Southwest Art News: April 2026
New Mexico Governor vetoes arts-related funding, Colorado lawmakers propose artist-first business bill, and more top Southwest art news for April 2026.
April 01, 2026
What Does Migration Look Like Outside Anti-Immigrant Crisis Narratives?
Tierras Reimaginadas: Migration at ASU Art Museum centers immigrant voices and reimagines migration across species, cultures, geographies, and time.
March 26, 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
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
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
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
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: Madeline Rupard
In her paintings of shimmering roadways, Utah-based artist Madeline Rupard reaches for the eternal.
March 20, 2026
PhotographyArizonaVol. 13 The Road
Bikini-Clad in the Body Shop, Liz Cohen Reframes Women’s Labor
Photographer and sculptor Liz Cohen visualizes "radically transformed bodies," revealing how labor reshapes machines and people.
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
“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
Kay WalkingStick Takes on American Romanticism Using This Sharp Tactic
In a head-on collision with the Hudson River School at Heard Museum, the Cherokee painter sends Indigenous patterns bristling across the American landscape.
February 24, 2026
Nevada Artist Residencies: Neon Canyons to Open Skies
Experiences for artists abound in Sin City, but Nevada's remote residencies are just as dazzling. Discover nine programs that match any artist's pace.
February 17, 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
Charlie Chaplin’s Cabin, and Western Mythologies, Teeter on the Edge at Cookie Factory
In the cyclonic installation Rush, Gary Simmons critically blurs history, cinema, and Western propaganda. He also makes space for wishful grief.
February 05, 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
Southwest Art News: February 2026
IAIA avoids being federally "zeroed out," historic Native lawmaker and artist Ben Nighthorse Campbell dies, and more top Southwest art news for February 2026.
February 03, 2026
An Artist Who Put His Stamp on the Southwest—and Vice Versa
After Ed Mell’s passing, his Phoenix studio tells the story of a low-key artist whose Southwest images reached the nation on a postage stamp and beyond.
January 29, 2026
Guided by Pueblo Artists, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Unclenches from Foundational Myth
Tewa artists and scholars offer a challenge—along with tea, letters, and a remarkable map—to an institution whose namesake claimed their ancestral lands.
January 27, 2026
