Whether you're a local Arizonan looking for community support or a visitor looking for an idyllic new setting to inspire, let our roundup of Arizona Artist Residencies guide you to your next opportunity.
August 19, 2025
Field Report2025 New Mexico Field GuideTravel
Your complete art guide to discover Las Cruces, New Mexico's hidden art scene, with local galleries, craft markets, outdoor adventures, and authentic dining.
May 23, 2025
From the EditorVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Discover how Southwest Contemporary: The Hyperlocal explores art that connects immediate environments to global concerns—from borderland communities to regional myths and climate concerns.
March 07, 2025
In what Time Travel feels like, sometimes, New Mexico–based artist Erika Wanenmacher's major solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe, the artist collapses the distance between the mystical and the everyday.
January 21, 2025
Inside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
Southwest Contemporary's most widely read stories of 2024 reflect some of the most urgent issues within the arts.
January 02, 2025
Catch these must-see art exhibitions across the Southwest for winter 2024–25, featuring Richard Avedon, Nancy Hemenway Barton, Charles Ross, and more.
December 17, 2024
Become a member or make a donation during the month of December and double your impact for arts journalism. Plus, two new resources for SWC Members!
December 01, 2024
Southwest Contemporary owner and publisher Lauren Tresp reflects on our five-year anniversary—and all of the work that is still to come.
September 03, 2024
From the EditorInside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
This spring, Southwest Contemporary welcomes a new editorial director and four new board members, along with award wins, open calls for our next issue, and an opportunity to win $10,000 in funding for emerging media.
May 10, 2024
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 9 Living Histories
Jeannie Ortiz's fiber art practice in her ancestral desert homeland around Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, helps her fill in the gaps in her family's history.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsVol. 9 Living Histories
Santa Fe-based artist Chaz John's (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, Mississippi Band Choctaw, European) latest works explore the characters, stories, and archetypes that crisscross generations and cultures.
March 01, 2024
In 2023, Southwest Contemporary published 300 original articles by seventy-five contributors across eight states about contemporary art in the Southwest. These are readers' ten favorite stories of the year.
January 03, 2024
Southwest Contemporary gives the arts community the focused attention, critical engagement, and depth of storytelling that no other publication can provide to the Southwest region.
December 21, 2023
From contemporary Korean photography to a time-spanning collection of Andean fiber arts and a bubbling biennial on the U.S.-Mexico border, let these exhibitions across the Southwest be bright lights on these short, dark days.
December 19, 2023
From the EditorVol. 8 Medium + Support
Southwest Contemporary publisher Lauren Tresp discusses the publication's role in the arts ecosystem of the Southwest—including some behind-the-scenes work building networks and sharing resources.
September 01, 2023
In the Santa Fe Opera’s 2023 staging of Pelléas et Mélisande, director Netia Jones’s contemporary aesthetics renew Debussy’s mystifying Symbolist opera for present-day audiences.
July 31, 2023
Travel2023 New Mexico Field Guide
WNMU Museum in Silver City, New Mexico, occupies a historic building and houses one of the largest collections of Mimbres pottery and artifacts in the world, as well as other prehistoric Southwestern pottery and artifacts.
May 26, 2023
Southwest Contemporary publisher Lauren Tresp's guide to museum and gallery exhibitions to see across the Southwest this spring.
March 31, 2023
Lauren Tresp, publisher and editor, looks back at 2022, a year of growth, engagement, and relationship-building for Southwest Contemporary.
December 31, 2022
Documenta 15, the globally significant quinquennial, was both an exercise in decentralized curation with a focus on the Global South and a show riddled with unrelenting controversies.
October 26, 2022
New MexicoReviewVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Wo/Manhouse 2022 reconsiders the relationship between gender and domestic spaces on the fiftieth anniversary of the seminal feminist installation Womanhouse in Belen, New Mexico.
August 26, 2022
Southwest Contemporary's 2022 reader survey results are in. Here is what we've learned so far. Plus, meet the feline members of our team.
June 30, 2022
ArtistsColoradoVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
Cherish Marquez is a Denver-based artist who uses videos, animations, still images, and installations, to animate the subtleties of desert life near the U.S.-Mexico border.
February 25, 2022
We’re back with a staff contribution of the 5×5! This week, SWC’s publisher Lauren Tresp shares her top five picks for horror and poetry.
November 04, 2021
From the EditorVol. 4 Winter 2021
Southwest Contemporary Vol. 4 travels across the region to meet artists, brewers, climate-change activists, and DIY-ers to have in-depth conversations about significant and inspiring issues.
October 29, 2021
From Land Art in Nevada to abstraction in Denver, from demons in Dallas to the legacy of Elaine Horwitch in Santa Fe: visit ten art exhibitions across the Southwest before summer ends.
August 06, 2021
Vol. 3 Inhale ExhaleArizonaArtists
Artist Sara Hubbs creates blown-glass sculptures that examine concepts of value, temporality, and care.
July 30, 2021
Lauren Tresp takes over the 5x5 this week with her five picks of things she's been reading, listening to, watching, or otherwise inspired by.
June 10, 2021
From the EditorVol. 2 Flights of Fancy
Welcome to Southwest Contemporary Vol. 2, Flights of Fancy. This issue explores the complexities involved in defining—and staying tethered to—what’s “real."
April 30, 2021
Desert X 2021 offers large-scale, photogenic works that, while politically charged, lack a distinct impact.
April 27, 2021
