Queering Cowboy Culture with José Villalobos: It’s a Quick, Rough Ride
José Villalobos: Rough Rider at Arizona State University queers the traditional masculinity inherent in cowboy culture’s objects of desire.
May 08, 2025
Arizona
Hank Willis Thomas’s Pop Culture Platitudes Belong to an Alternate Timeline—Not the One We’re Living In
Hank Willis Thomas's LOVERULES offers a comprehensive survey of a decade's worth of artwork but flounders in our current political crisis.
May 02, 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
Decades After the Creative Class Arrived, Small Arizona Town Confronts Dual Realities
Local artists and art-world power players are next-door neighbors in Winslow, Arizona. Everyone and the mayor is weighing in on the town's creative direction.
March 27, 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
ArtistsArizonaVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Shaunté Glover
Shaunté Glover explores the muscular narrative power—and queer, femme force—of women’s basketball through the lens of South Phoenix.
March 07, 2025
ArtistsArizonaVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Urgent Care Art
Urgent Care Art’s pop-ups in quotidian Tucson spaces juxtapose the healing and fear inherent to queer visibility.
March 07, 2025
ReviewArizonaVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Not Much Is Indigenous About Indian Space Painting, but This Show Looks for Links
A group of white New York painters blended modernist and Native-inspired aesthetics. Space Makers at the Heard Museum pairs them with historical and contemporary Native artists.
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
Karima Walker’s “Grief Rituals” Seek the Non-Linear Wisdom of Walking in Circles
The Arizona-born artist’s MOCA Tucson exhibition draws inspiration (and soil) from the Santa Cruz River, melding body and land.
December 23, 2024
Arizona State University’s Top-Ranked MFA Includes a Three-Year Teaching Assistantship
The School of Art at ASU advances generative art practices driven by research, ideas, and effective public engagement. Attend an info session on December 6, 2024, and apply by January 15, 2025.
November 22, 2024
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
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
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
Work in Progress with Shawn Skabelund
Flagstaff-based artist Shawn Skabelund returns to the storm-swept ravine that birthed his latest show—and explains what a squirrel stick is—in an intrepid studio visit.
September 26, 2024
Immersive Exhibitions Redefine Art and Language at MOCA Tucson
Graves for the Rain and 500 Places at Once blend sound, performance, and poetry engaging visitors in ecological narratives. On view through February 16, 2025.
September 24, 2024
The Youth are Our Future: the Hamrah Arts Club Brings Refugee Youth Together on a Journey of Self-Expression
The Hamrah Arts Club, founded by artist Nazafarin Lotfi, uses art and creative expression to foster solidarity between refugee and asylum-seeking communities for youth in Tucson.
September 13, 2024
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
ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Wabwila Mugala: Radical Futures
Phoenix-based designer and interdisciplinary artist Wabwila Mugala uses chitenge fabric to build a unique visual glossary of diasporic symbols.
September 06, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Jimmy Fike: Radical Futures
Arizona-based artist Jimmy Fike asks, what will the end of the world like like? His answer is weird—and weirdly hopeful.
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
Years in the Making, Exploding Native Inevitable is a Portrait of a Movement in Full Bloom
With a nod to Andy Warhol's most raucous series, this Scottsdale show of contemporary Native art explodes expectations of medium and message.
August 08, 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
