FeatureArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
The Ants of Biosphere 2
Seeking fresh hope in the 20th-century futurisms of Arizona architectural marvels Biosphere 2, Taliesin West, and Arcosanti.
September 06, 2024
Jordan Eddy
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 10 Radical Futures
Trying to See the Constellations for the Stars in Vladem Contemporary’s Dizzying Exhibition Off-Center
Off-Center at Vladem Contemporary is a three-decade survey of New Mexico art with myriad bright spots—but how are they connected?
September 06, 2024
Southwest Art News: September 2024
Diné artist joins fight to close uranium hauling loophole on the Navajo Nation, and more Southwest art news headlines for September 2024.
August 30, 2024
Is Teresita Fernández’s SITE Santa Fe Show with Robert Smithson a Duel—or an Act of Generosity?
Iconoclasm is a mercy in Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson, clearing the view of both conceptual artists and their groundbreaking legacies.
August 27, 2024
In Woven from the Center, Native Baskets Bear Capitalist Marks—but Cradle Sovereign Values
Surface-level market forces are no match for ancestral traditions in veteran ethnologist Diane Dittemore’s new basketry book Woven from the Center.
August 16, 2024
Every Artwork is a Cat-and-Mouse Thriller in this Phoenix Exhibition of Eastern Bloc Artists
Even the propaganda is sabotaged in Multiple Realities, a Soviet spy novel of an exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum.
August 06, 2024
Southwest Art News: August 2024
City of Lubbock slashes art walk funding over drag performances, and more Southwest art news headlines for August 2024.
August 01, 2024
Faced with Attributions Controversy, Harwood Museum of Art Publicly Edits Santeros Exhibition
Despite concerns over artwork attributions, the Harwood Museum unveiled its show Unknown Santeros. Now experts are meticulously reshaping it.
July 19, 2024
Jeffrey Gibson’s Rainbow-Wrapped Venice Pavilion Has a Gritty Southwestern Origin Story
Meet the team behind the Santa Fe-based mural project that brought Jeffrey Gibson's Indigenous, queer dreamland to the Venice Biennale.
July 09, 2024
Southwest Art News: July 2024
Barbie mania ends and a new fashion era begins at Phoenix Art Museum, and other recent Southwest art news headlines.
July 03, 2024
Must-See Southwest Art Exhibitions: Southwest Contemporary’s Summer 2024 Art Guide
Don't miss these essential Southwest summer art exhibitions in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Texas, and Nevada.
June 27, 2024
Southwest Art News: June 2024
The arts community goes head-to-head with a sports magnate in Salt Lake City, and other recent Southwest art news headlines.
June 03, 2024
Southwest Artist and Writer Residencies with Summer 2024 Deadlines
Lavish and rugged residency opportunities abound in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
May 21, 2024
From the EditorInside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
An Opening Letter from New Southwest Contemporary Editorial Director Jordan Eddy
Our new editorial director, who joined SWC on April 22, looks back on a challenging decade of arts journalism—and ahead with an ambitious editorial vision.
May 17, 2024
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 9 Living Histories
Modernware: The Allure and Tension in Defining Nampeyo, An Iconic Pueblo Potter, as a Modernist
An art world debate over the modernist credentials of iconic Hopi-Tewa potter Nampeyo surfaces tense questions about art, craft, Indigeneity, and the meaning of modernity.
March 01, 2024
Travel2023 New Mexico Field Guide
Unique New Mexico: Dwan Light Sanctuary
Dwan Light Sanctuary is a prismatic art installation in Las Vegas, New Mexico conceived by influential arts patron Virginia Dwan.
May 26, 2023
Meet Zara Kriegstein, the Forgotten Artist Who Spearheaded Santa Fe’s Most Embattled Mural
The recent destruction of Santa Fe’s Multicultural mural caused fierce controversy, but its little-told history reveals tough questions about authorship and cross-cultural collaboration.
August 12, 2022
Stage Worthy: The Santa Fe Opera Properties Department
Where was the dagger? It was the final act of The Letter, a Santa Fe Opera world premiere that opened in 2009, and forty-mile-per-hour winds were howling across the venue’s open-air stage. The murderous Leslie, played by Patricia Racette, was singing her way towards suicide-by-stabbing. Suddenly, the wind whipped a tablecloth and sent Leslie’s fateful knife skittering down the dining table. This was despite the fact that the properties department had reinforced the linen with a stitch called a swing tack and secured it with a wind skirt.
June 26, 2019
Return to Blackdom
Taos artist Nikesha Breeze met her father for the first time when she was ten years old. He was homeless on the streets of Portland, while she was growing up beyond the city’s southern outskirts in the small town of Sherwood...
March 27, 2019
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival
Much like the movies in its lineup, the inaugural Santa Fe Independent Film Festival had a dogged crew and a bare-bones budget. Jacques Paisner and two like-minded friends...
October 01, 2018
Nascent Atmospheres
At a preview event for Amie LeGette and Courtney Leonard’s exhibition, guests were lost in a literal twilight zone...
August 28, 2018
Mayeur Projects
Christian Mayeur was on a photo scavenger hunt when he took his first trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico...
August 28, 2018
Field Report: Las Vegas, NM
If you’ve read Chris Wilson’s The Myth of Santa Fe—or felt the difference between mud and stucco...
August 28, 2018
Beautiful Test Sites/Now I Am Become Death
“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” quoth J. Robert Oppenheimer from the Bhagavad Gita...
July 30, 2018
Daisy Quezada
Early in her artistic career, Daisy Quezada came across a real-life scene with all the power of an omen. She and her mother had ventured to their old house in Jalisco, Mexico, which was long abandoned.
July 30, 2018
Recall, Recapture, Remember
Tansey Contemporary: The title of this fiber-art exhibition smacks of redundancy—if you couldn’t guess, it’s about memory—but it’s surprisingly economical in other respects. Recall, Recapture, Remember features twenty-two artists from across the Southwest, selected...
June 29, 2018
Floating Worlds: The Santa Fe Opera Scene Shop
“They’ll say, ‘Why won’t it just float there?’” Scott Schreck says with a little smirk. “Then I go, ‘I’ll tell you what, let me work on that antigravity device for you.’” He’s talking through the joys and difficulties of translating artistic visions to brick and mortar...
June 28, 2018
Nikesha Breeze: Within This Skin
Harwood Museum of Art: Late in the process of making artwork for her solo exhibition, Within This Skin, Nikesha Breeze started a series of ceramic and oxide wall sculptures titled Written in Water. She calls the works “death masks,” and each coppery visage was...
June 01, 2018
H2O
“I got tired of auditioning for lame parts,” said Santa Fe actress Jessica Haring at an intimate living room preview for H2O this spring. Last year, she read Jane Martin’s one-act, two-character play from 2015 and knew its female protagonist, Deborah Elling...
May 01, 2018
Work by Women
Harwood Museum of Art: On the walls of major museums, only five percent of artwork is by women. The Harwood Museum flips this number in its current exhibition: there’s a small display featuring some men upstairs, but most of the institution’s galleries are devoted to Work...
May 01, 2018
