What Do You Get When Two Cows and a Conceptual Art Icon Walk Into a Tucson Gallery?
Clever conceit or curatorial cop-out? In Cassidy Araiza / Robert Barry / Jocko Weyland, experiment and open-endedness might be the objective.
April 21, 2026
Can International Art Star Olafur Eliasson Provoke Urgency to Restore Great Salt Lake?
After decades of decline and political inaction at Great Salt Lake, Olafur Eliasson flies in with a temporary public art project. Can this art-world Hail Mary provoke positive change?
April 16, 2026
The Context of Humanness: Yes &… at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Wants Proof of Life
Yes &..., curated by Tobias Fike and Donald Fodness, advocates for human ingenuity in the face of AI ascendance. But is that a sufficient curatorial framework?
April 02, 2026
The Office of Collecting and Design Leaves Las Vegas to Become a Roving Museum
Founder of the Office of Collecting and Design Jessica Oreck talks about the museum’s move into a trailer, her collecting origins, and how she meets her community on the road.
March 31, 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
Arrows on the Quanah Parker Trail
The “largest art installation in the world” covers the land in Texas once shared by bison, Comanche, and their horses. As a memorial, it represents but does little to repair.
March 20, 2026
Field ReportColoradoTravelVol. 13 The Road
Field Report: Colorado Springs
Colorado’s “second city” has a rich and historic art scene, often overshadowed by the city’s contemporary connections to sports, tech, and the military.
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
On the Road: Guest Juror Aurora Tang
In Southwest Contemporary Vol. 13: The Road, guest juror Aurora Tang reflects on the featured artists' works in terms of movement, progress, and possibility.
March 20, 2026
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
The Road: Carmen Selam
For artist Carmen Selam, the road represents freedom, but also displacement. Her practice explores that tension using materials and imagery that speak to contemporary Indigenous experience.
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
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
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
Lossy Listening: In Defense of Defect and Instability in Itinerant Artmaking
How do we survive distortion in a militarized landscape? Jennifer Seas reflects on land art, lossless technology, and itinerant art practices that respond to the unstable conditions of real life.
February 26, 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
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
Abstraction, Accumulation, and Activism: Three Artists Confront the Dangers of Extraction
In Shifting Topographies, three artists’ varied approaches find common ground in exposing the deadly threat of extractive industries.
November 26, 2025
Bless Me, Cecilia: What Happens When a Star Curator Arrives in Santa Fe?
Cecilia Alemani rolled out an exhibition like no other in Santa Fe—its visionary weirdness will hit everyone a bit different.
November 20, 2025
Tongue Firmly in Cheek, Safwat Saleem’s Unrequited Love Institute Counters the “Otherness” at the Heart of Xenophobia
Safwat Saleem uses satire to share his experiences as an immigrant father living with cultural assimilation and loss in the 2024 Arizona Artist Awards exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum.
November 06, 2025
In Seven Days by Chuck Ramirez, Foodscapes Become Community Portraits
A series of still life photographs by late San Antonio artist Chuck Ramirez capture the essence of a Texas community and subculture.
October 23, 2025
Remain in Light: James Perkins Buries Paintings to Reveal the Sublime
In his first museum exhibition, Burying Painting, James Perkins shows evanescent process- and land-based artworks "harvested" from the Atlantic Ocean and the Sonoran Desert.
October 07, 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
What’s Up With Phoenix’s Latest Gallery Scene Shuffle?
Change is afoot in the metro Phoenix gallery scene due to closures, mergers, and redevelopment plans.
September 11, 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
Studio VisitArizonaVol. 12 Obsession
Gloria Martinez-Granados: Borderless Creative
Working in her Phoenix studio, artist Gloria Martinez-Granados creates works countering the nation’s anti-immigrant obsession.
September 05, 2025
All Vibes Must Die: Industry and Virality in the Lisa Frank Warehouse
Lisa Frank, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, offers up a rainbow-bedazzled mirror to the emptiness of the American dream.
September 05, 2025
PhotographyTexasVol. 12 Obsession
Phoebe Shuman-Goodier Transfigures Trash into Tender Monuments of Care and Possibility
Phoebe Shuman-Goodier’s photography marks her sculptural collaborations with her father, and a shared obsession with transforming a junkyard into art.
September 05, 2025
Guest Juror Raphael Fonseca on OBSESSION
In Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12: OBSESSION, curator and guest juror Rafael Fonseca finds a surprising scope and range of artistic obsessions.
September 05, 2025
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 12 Obsession
Obsession: Luca Berkley
Multimedia artist Luca Berkley (AKA Jack Lope, Jenn Deere, and Piper Pelligrini) critiques narratives surrounding white American ranching through cheeky yet reverent performance, online as well as on stage.
September 05, 2025
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 12 Obsession
Obsession: Taylor Engel
Artist Taylor Engel’s varied and chaotic artworks envelop viewers in a shared experience of all-consuming obsession, codependency, and repetition.
September 05, 2025
