A Hundred Years On, Surrealism’s Desert Dreamworlds Continue to Inspire
The desert—in all of its arid, minimalist, color-block permutations—permeates this selection of Surrealist artworks.
November 19, 2024
Evans School Exodus: Denver Artists Prepare to Leave the Historic Former Elementary School
Investors are finally redeveloping Evans School in Denver—and displacing nearly sixty artists from their low-cost studios in the process.
November 12, 2024
Former Curator of Mesa Art Museum Files Federal Lawsuit Alleging Censorship and Discrimination
Tiffany Fairall, former chief curator of Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, sues the City of Mesa in the aftermath of censorship allegations.
November 05, 2024
“This is our power”: Afrofuturists Imagine Radical Futures in Reclaiming Hope: Afrofuturist Visions
Black artists imagine radical futures through hope, healing, and history in Reclaiming Hope: Afrofuturist Visions.
October 29, 2024
Cybele Lyle Queers Desert Landscapes Through Portals, Lean-tos, and Constructed Architectures
Cybele Lyle attempts, in confounding and curious ways, to queer desert landscapes in her current installation Cybele Lyle: Floating Seeds Make Deep Forms.
October 17, 2024
Reclaiming Space through Technology: Santa Fe Uncovers Hidden Histories Through Augmented Reality
The City of Santa Fe’s ArcGIS Storymaps, and its AR component, Ojos Diferentes, peel back the layers of Santa Fe history to tell underrepresented stories with new technologies.
October 15, 2024
Study Up: Here is Southwest Contemporary’s Fall 2024 Art Guide
Don’t miss these essential art exhibitions across the Southwest for fall 2024, featuring major surveys, immersive installations, and artistic dialogues.
October 02, 2024
In Dario Robleto’s The Signal, Love is Imperative
Dario Robleto’s wide-ranging reach—in which the deepest interiors and most distant exteriors mix with popular culture and early analog media—is getting more articulate with each pass.
September 27, 2024
Turning up the Heat: Inside the Controversy Sparked by Drag, Censorship, and Public Funding in a West Texas City
When the Lubbock City Council defunded a popular art event for promoting the “LGBT Agenda,” confirming fears of repressive drag bans in Texas, the art community got fired up.
September 20, 2024
How Do We Remember? How Do We Forget? In Memory Explores Remembrance Through Body and Mind
In Memory presents the work of twenty-one artists who excavate the archives of remembrance to reveal how humans document, distort, and cling to the past.
September 17, 2024
Studio VisitNew MexicoVol. 10 Radical Futures
Mallery Quetawki: Circulatory Systems + Translational Aesthetics
Mallery Quetawki paints cross-cultural translations that help bridge futures between Indigenous communities and science and medical professionals.
September 06, 2024
FeatureSouthwestVol. 10 Radical Futures
Radical Architecture, Radical Imagination: How Will We Live in a Hotter, More Arid Future?
Science fiction authors have provided many visions of dystopian futures in the Southwest. Can architects help avert such disastrous outcomes?
September 06, 2024
InterviewColoradoVol. 10 Radical Futures
“I don’t think there’s going to be any future that’s not radical”: an interview with Pamela Zoline
Pamela Zoline speaks with Noah Travis Phillips about the Colorado Plateau, recent work, and the science that excites her.
September 06, 2024
WritingsColoradoRadical Futures
The Life-Warmth of the Universe
Noah Travis Phillips’s more optimistic, queer, and contemporary “cover” of Pamela Zoline’s feminist collage sci-fi classic “The Heat Death of the Universe.”
September 06, 2024
Accidental Utopia: An Introduction to Radical Futures
In Southwest Contemporary Vol. 10: Radical Futures, curator and conceptual artist Ian Breidenbach ruminates on creative agency and utopian praxis as the guest juror for this issue.
September 06, 2024
ArtistsTexasVol. 10 Radical Futures
Bonny Leibowitz: Radical Futures
Texas-based artist Bonny Leibowitz creates hybridized installations of natural and manufactured materials that reflect the impacts of isolation, environmental degradation, and human conflict.
September 06, 2024
ArtistsTexasVol. 10 Radical Futures
Wills Brewer: Radical Futures
Wills Brewer’s practice is rooted in research and documentation, emphasizing history at its most expansive, geologic scale.
September 06, 2024
Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come: A Sweeping Saga of Everyday Objects in Austin’s Waterloo Park
Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler's colossal new video installation, Past Deposits from a Future Yet to Come, dramatically explores the archeological record of Austin's Waller Creek.
August 20, 2024
Tina Mion Delves Deep Into Family Trauma While Broadening Her Oeuvre at Kouri + Corrao Gallery
Tina Mion ventures into unexplored territory in her exhibition Departures, through death spoon sculptures and paintings about her brother’s death.
August 13, 2024
At SMoCA, Carolina Aranibar-Fernández Uses Soil, Sequins, and Blood to Explore the Impacts of Global Trade
California-based artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernández explores colonization, extraction, and exploitation in the Southwest in her exhibition Oleaje at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.
July 30, 2024
Succumb to Defeat or Persevere: Lessons from Rejected Public Art Proposals at the Arvada Center
I Regret to Inform You: Rejected Public Art explores the process of applying to and proposing a public art project, while grappling with the ubiquity of rejection.
July 23, 2024
Feral with Possibility: Harry Fonseca’s Queer Coyote Takes Center Stage in Small but Resonant Exhibition at the Heard
In the first exhibition to explore Harry Fonseca’s expressions of “queerness” through his beloved character Coyote, queer-Indigenous performativity takes center stage.
July 16, 2024
In Biophilia, Nature is Exalted, But Does it Compel Connection?
"Biophilic design," which emulates the natural environment, is undoubtedly having a moment. So how does the Denver Art Museum’s latest design exhibition expand on this discourse?
July 05, 2024
Journey to the Origin of Images: New Book on Aby Warburg’s 1890s Trek to the Southwest Gives New Insights
A new book from Hatje Cantz, The Snake and the Lightning: Aby Warburg's American Journey, enlivens the German art historian's trek to the Southwest in 1895-96.
June 14, 2024
Suddenly Somebody: Carmen Herrera I’m Nobody! Who Are You? at SITE Santa Fe
In canvases and sculpture created during the last years of her life, Carmen Herrera, an under-sung hero of minimalism and abstraction, receives further attention.
June 04, 2024
Feature2024 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
The Insider’s View: Studio Tours Across New Mexico
Artist studio tours across New Mexico illustrate the enduring power of creative exchange—and give visitors an insider's view of the artistic process.
May 24, 2024
Field Report2024 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
Field Report: Roswell, New Mexico
"Come for the aliens, stay for the art!" sums up the compelling reasons to visit Roswell, New Mexico—a mecca for UFO culture and contemporary art.
May 24, 2024
Reaching for the Light: Daniel Hawkins’s Wild West Dream of a Desert Lighthouse
Daniel Hawkins's surreal, fifty-foot Desert Lighthouse is a glowing, perplexing beacon in the desolate Mojave Desert, on the site of ecological catastrophe.
May 21, 2024
Selling the Southwest Unpacks the Colonialist Mythology and Marketing of the Santa Fe Railroad
This Museum of Northern Arizona exhibition unpacks how the marketing efforts of the Santa Fe Railroad and Fred Harvey Company romanticized and exploited the artistry and culture of Indigenous people.
May 02, 2024
Work in Progress with Ángel Faz
Ángel Faz’s studio practice centers around observation and research, unearthing the shrouded history of the land and those who inhabit it.
April 26, 2024
