To the Next Five Years and Beyond: From the Publisher
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
Lauren Tresp
From the EditorInside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
Southwest Contemporary Announces New Leadership, Awards, and Eyes the Future
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: 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
Chaz John: 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
The Top 10 Southwest Contemporary Stories of 2023
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
Join Southwest Contemporary to Expand Arts Coverage in 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
Bright Lights for Dark Days: Southwest Contemporary’s Winter 2023-24 Art Guide
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
From the Publisher: Arts Writing as Ecosystem Building
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
Contemporary Aesthetics Renew Debussy’s Mystifying Pelléas et Mélisande at the Santa Fe Opera
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
Unique New Mexico: Western New Mexico University Museum
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’s Spring 2023 Art Guide
Southwest Contemporary publisher Lauren Tresp's guide to museum and gallery exhibitions to see across the Southwest this spring.
March 31, 2023
Looking Back: Southwest Contemporary’s 2022 in Review
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: What You Need to Know About the History-Making Quinquennial
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
Review: Wo/Manhouse 2022
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
The Results Are In: Southwest Contemporary’s 2022 Reader Survey
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
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
Your Weekly 5×5: Lauren’s Picks for Horror and Poetry
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
From the Editor: Vol. 4
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
Worth a Road Trip: Southwest Contemporary’s Summer 2021 Art Guide
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
Sara Hubbs
Artist Sara Hubbs creates blown-glass sculptures that examine concepts of value, temporality, and care.
July 30, 2021
Your Weekly 5×5: Lauren’s Picks
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
From the Editor: Vol. 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 and Bombay Beach
Desert X 2021 offers large-scale, photogenic works that, while politically charged, lack a distinct impact.
April 27, 2021
Southwest Contemporary’s Spring 2021 Art Guide
Take a look at Spring 2021 art exhibitions coming to museums throughout the Southwest.
February 24, 2021
From the Editor: Vol. 1 — Bodies//Boundaries
SWC Vol. 1: Bodies//Boundaries is the first publication of a new journey and an expanded mission: to bring curated, critical arts and culture publishing to the American Southwest, in print and online.
February 08, 2021
Vol. 1 Bodies//BoundariesArizona
Saskia Jordá
Phoenix artist Saskia Jordá’s practice engages in an iterative mapping and remapping to explore concepts of cultural identity, bodies in space, and sense of place.
February 08, 2021
From the EditorInside Southwest ContemporaryNews
Announcing our 2021 Publication Schedule and SWC Memberships
Whether you've valued our content over the last 28 years, or the last 28 days, now is the time we need your help the most.
October 26, 2020
Announcing the Field Guide 2020
The inaugural Field Guide—a guidebook to arts and culture across northern New Mexico —drops in print and online on July 31! To receive an issue delivered to your door, you can pre-order a copy now from our online store.
July 21, 2020
The Arts and the Black Lives Matter Movement
“It’s really brought home to me the way in which literature can connect us to each other and foster and express our shared humanity. Our experiences in this country might be specific, but through art we can interrogate universal truths about what it means to be human. This is why it’s so important for our arts, culture and society to be inclusive of everyone.”
June 24, 2020
From the Editor: The Future of Southwest Contemporary
After careful consideration, and much initial heartbreak, I have decided that Southwest Contemporary will publish one final print edition this year: our new Field Guide publication. We will suspend print publication of The Magazine for the remainder of 2020, with strong and sincere plans to return to print in 2021.
May 26, 2020
