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
Arizona
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
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
Feral with Possibility: Harry Fonseca’s Queer Coyote Takes Center Stage in Small but Resonant Exhibition at the Heard
In the first exhibition to explore Harry Fonseca’s expressions of “queerness” through his beloved character Coyote, queer-Indigenous performativity takes center stage.
July 16, 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
Journey to the Origin of Images: New Book on Aby Warburg’s 1890s Trek to the Southwest Gives New Insights
A new book from Hatje Cantz, The Snake and the Lightning: Aby Warburg's American Journey, enlivens the German art historian's trek to the Southwest in 1895-96.
June 14, 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
Selling the Southwest Unpacks the Colonialist Mythology and Marketing of the Santa Fe Railroad
This Museum of Northern Arizona exhibition unpacks how the marketing efforts of the Santa Fe Railroad and Fred Harvey Company romanticized and exploited the artistry and culture of Indigenous people.
May 02, 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
Francisco González Castro’s Durational Art Investigates, Illuminates, and Confronts Hegemonic Societal and Power Structures
Francisco González Castro: Does Not Say «I», But Does «I»: Bodies, Limits and Transgressions at the Coconino Center compiles a decade of the artist’s endurance work challenging social structures.
April 08, 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
An Essential Retrospective of Hopi Artist Duwawisioma at Tucson’s Andrew Smith Gallery
Duwawisioma’s (Victor Masayesva Jr.) retrospective exhibition Màatakuyma at Andrew Smith Gallery in Tucson solidifies the Hopi artist’s importance in contemporary photographic and Indigenous artistic discourse.
March 05, 2024
