Peek Inside Mysterious Southwest Land Artworks You May Never Visit
From James Turrell’s Roden Crater in Arizona to Charles Ross’s Star Axis in New Mexico, some Southwest land art is stubbornly elusive.
August 14, 2025
Lynn Trimble
An Artist Who Braids Cultures, from the Porcelain Trade to Beyoncé
Jennifer Ling Datchuk's live-wire practice is rooted in ceramics but branches into performance, installation—and biting cultural critique.
July 24, 2025
Is There “Life on Mars?” This Exhibition Makes the Case for Focusing on Earth
In a David Bowie–inspired show in Scottsdale, Steven J. Yazzie and Erika Lynne Hanson confront earthly disillusionment through landscape-based abstraction.
July 17, 2025
Modern Nature: The Contemporary Art Guide to Southwest Botanical Gardens
Southwest botanical gardens have reshaped their grounds as living museums for stunning—and challenging—contemporary art. Discover seven culture-filled desert oases.
July 03, 2025
An Artist Who Unearths Layers of History, and Stacks Them Again
Informed by his family history, Dean Terasaki uses activist imagery and charged ephemera—including postcards from Japanese American internment camps—to send a present-day "warning."
May 27, 2025
Amid Breathtaking NEA Cuts, Southwest Arts Organizations are Reeling—and Rallying Support
The Trump administration's shadowy National Endowment for the Arts grant retractions have Southwest arts organizations banding together to track the cuts and gather supporters.
May 15, 2025
Shepard Fairey Unveils His First Arizona Mural in a City That Tried to Censor His Work
Shepard Fairey was nearly censored at the Mesa Arts Center. He's back with a monumental artwork—and thoughts on police power, fascism, and art as a "counterwind."
April 24, 2025
A New Art Fair Debuts in the Southwest—Is It a Hit or a Miss?
Local artists and gallerists weigh in on Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week’s debut—and its efforts to bust regional stereotypes and elevate the Southwest on a global stage.
April 03, 2025
An Artist Who Tends the Earth—and then Sculpts It
Arizona-based artist Farraday Newsome's studio extends into her high-desert garden, sprouting ideas for intricate ceramics about nature's self-perpetuating systems.
March 24, 2025
Are an Arizona Museum’s Changes to Transfeminisms Exhibition “Violent” or Pragmatic?
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art made last-minute revisions to a traveling show of women, queer, and trans artists. Museum leadership and a co-curator differ on what happened.
March 13, 2025
Field ReportArizonaTravelVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Field Report: Eclectic Metro Phoenix
Some of best art offerings in metro Phoenix happen off the beaten path. Here’s our eclectic Phoenix art guide.
March 07, 2025
Tempe Artists Seek Answers Amid Alternative Art Space Redevelopment
The City of Tempe says there are no plans to demolish DIY arts hub Danelle Plaza, but the mayor is sending different signals. Local artists are demanding clarity.
February 04, 2025
Keith Haring’s City-Spanning Phoenix Takeover Almost Didn’t Happen
Keith Haring was a Phoenix teacher's second choice for a 1986 art workshop, but the invite made a major mark on the city.
January 14, 2025
Ditch Amazon and Support Local Artists with Our Southwest Holiday Gift Guide
E-commerce has nothing on these holiday shopping experiences at galleries, museums, and community art spaces in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
November 26, 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
Scientists Are “Speaking to the Masses” with Help from Artists in Two Contrasting Phoenix Exhibitions
The traveling exhibition ARX3 pairs artists and scientists, while Brains and Beauty at SMoCA draws on neuroaesthetics, to visualize transformative research.
October 10, 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
ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren: Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren blends critiques of waste culture with "dark beauty" in maximalist installations that speak to 21st-century paranoia.
September 06, 2024
ReviewArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Feminist Theory and a Family Trucking Business Inform Fay Ray’s New Visions of the Borderlands in PORTALS
PORTALS at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona features new works by California-based artist Fay Ray, who imagines radical futures in the Sonoran Desert and Southwest borderlands.
September 06, 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
How International Arts Collective The Place Where Clouds Are Formed is Shifting Borderland Narratives
Artists and poets from Indigenous nation bisected by U.S.-Mexico border join with myriad voices to counter borderland crisis narratives in Tucson.
July 18, 2024
How—and Why—a Contemporary Art Museum in Arizona is Amplifying Mormon History and Theology
New exhibition Materializing Mormonism at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum has ties to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts.
June 24, 2024
Arizona Commission on the Arts Gets a New Director—and a Major Blow to its Budget
Artist Christina You-sun Park becomes executive director of Arizona Commission on the Arts, just as its state funding is slashed by 60%.
June 19, 2024
Work in Progress with Annie Lopez
Phoenix-based artist Annie Lopez's brilliant blue dress forms—tailored from cyanotypes on tamale paper—embody personal, familial, and cultural histories.
May 08, 2024
How a Creative Couple in Arizona is Exploring South Phoenix History Through Photography and Poetry
Photographer Maria Nancy Thomas and poet Rashaad Thomas, a creative couple based in South Phoenix, are using their work to explore a region brimming with the histories of marginalized communities.
April 18, 2024
How Can Mural Artists Take Steps to Protect Their Legal Rights?
Do muralists have a legal right to keep their work from being altered or whitewashed? Experts and artists in the Southwest discuss artist contracts and the Visual Artists Rights Act.
April 11, 2024
Phoenix Artist and Curator Clottee Hammons Highlights Black History, Art, and Culture
Clottee Hammons, the Phoenix artist, curator, and knowledge-keeper who leads Emancipation Arts, has spent decades elevating Black history, arts, and culture while combatting historical and contemporary racism in Arizona.
March 22, 2024
ReviewArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Amalia Mesa-Bains’s Retrospective Mines an Archeology of Memory in Phoenix
Amalia Mesa-Bains, renowned for altar-style installations that helped bring Chicana art into the mainstream, recently had a retrospective exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney: Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney (Diné) draws on personal experience and Navajo, street, and popular culture to create weavings and paintings that defy conventional notions of beauty and Indigenous art.
March 01, 2024
