Alex Boeschenstein Examines Roswell’s Storied History in New Works
Roswell artist-in-residence Alex Boeschenstein takes inspiration from things seen in the skies in Visionary Rumor at the Roswell Museum.
Oct 19
Essay
Oct 10
The 99th Burning of Zozobra Indulged Y2K Nostalgia and the Primal Urge to Light a Big Man on Fire
Thousands gathered for Zozobra 2023 in Santa Fe to stuff their sorrows into a fifty-foot puppet and watch the effigy burn to the ground.
Sep 01
Semi-Tropical: Stealth Palms
In this essay, Audrey Molloy dissects the stealth palm and the iconographies of the palm tree, telegraph pole, and cell phone tower as visual media that convey myths of Western expansion and technological innovation.
Sep 01
A Letter to the Museum
In this essay, Tyler Stallings pens a letter to the University of Arizona Museum of Art regarding Willem de Kooning’s stolen painting Woman-Ochre.
Sep 01
Photography for the Apocalypse
Meggan Gould speculates on the future of photographic practice and the potential of the anthotype process, in which plant-based photosensitive emulsions create ephemeral prints.
Aug 17
Two Las Cruces Exhibitions Explore the Fallout of Nuclear Weapons Testing
Cara Despain: Specter New Mexico at the NMSU Art Museum and Trinity: Legacies of Nuclear Testing at Branigan Cultural Center examine nuclear fallout impacting local Indigenous and settler communities.
Jul 31
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.
Jul 14
Three Ways of Walking Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field
The Lightning Field—a vestige of the conceptual, minimalist, and earthwork movements of the mid-20th century by Walter De Maria—provides visitors with multiple, discrete ways of encountering the art object.
May 31
Celia Álvarez Muñoz Situates Her Practice at the U.S.-Mexico Confluence
Celia Álvarez Muñoz’s first career retrospective at MCASD presents a rich body of work by the celebrated Arlington, Texas-based artist, who is committed to the complexity of stories from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Apr 28
A-Z West Might Make You Rethink Absolutely Everything
A-Z West, Andrea Zittel’s decades-long art experiment presently stewarded by High Desert Test Sites near Joshua Tree, investigates the architecture of everyday life by stripping items to their most basic components.
Mar 03
A Bird’s Eye View: Water Futures in the Colorado River Basin
EssayVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Simone Johnson writes about her experience living between New York City and Arizona, while also highlighting her explorations of water and time in the Colorado River Basin.
Mar 03
Postcard from the Fair Park Lagoon
EssayTexasVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Artist Trey Burns on the Fair Park Lagoon, an iconic, yet overlooked, land art work by Patricia Johanson in Dallas, Texas.
Jan 30
A Brief History of Sonoran Modern, Illuminated by Tucson Modernism Week
Sonoran Modern shaped Southern Arizona architecture nearly eighty years ago. Tucson Modernism Week makes a dedicated effort to highlight the region’s distinctive mid-century modern style.
Nov 17
“Pornographic” Mural in Salt Lake City Suburb Causes Confusion, Outrage
Midvale, Utah recently instituted a cultural revitalization project to enhance its downtown. A large mural depicting two nude figures and a ghoulish specter has become the talk of the town. […]
Oct 26
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.
Aug 26
Becoming More Cottonwood
EssayNew MexicoVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Cottonwoods, giants of riparian habitats, are dying, branch by branch. Erin Elder reflects on the life and death of these trees and how they foreshadow what is to come.
Aug 26
Elsewhere, NM, USA, Earth
EssayNew MexicoVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Psychoanalytic wordplay about aliens, isolation, space, and place.
Aug 26
Face Value: On Procession Panel
EssaySouthwestVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Briana Olson meditates on Procession Panel, migration, and the biological and aesthetic complexity of the desert Southwest.
Jul 25
Emily Margarit Mason Recontextualizes Photographs Past a Single Moment
Emily Margarit Mason challenges the limits of the still image by placing photos into alternative settings—whether baking one into a cake or rearranging another into an abstract collage.
Apr 27
The Fuzzy Knowledge of Mythic Space at Agnes Martin Gallery
The Agnes Martin Gallery at the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico embodies Yi-Fu Tuan’s concept of mythic space.
Mar 25
Way to Gogh: The Immersive Experience, For Better or Worse, Visits ABQ
If you decide to Gogh, be prepared for decent visuals, a hefty debit charge, and a pun or two at the Beyond Van Gogh projection room at Albuquerque’s Sawmill District.
Mar 07
Good Grief: Theresa Chong, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Repositioning Grief
Writer and poet Laura Neal visits Theresa Chong's Dallas exhibition dedicated to the organization of grief, and finds the power in the familiar and heavy emotion.
Mar 02
Harry Reid, Searchlight, and the Erasure of Life in the Desert
During former Senator Harry Reid’s eulogies, Hikmet Loe heard that Searchlight, Nevada, is a ghost town—which clashed with her experience of a land teeming with life.
Feb 25
A Risk Taker
EssayNew MexicoVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
This autofiction short revisits an outpatient surgery and the drive home through the lens of health, marriage, and fantasy.
Feb 25
Gut Feeling
EssayNew MexicoVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
D. Ward muses on the current and potential roles of the human gut microbiota in collaboration and art in general.
Feb 25
Rile and Error: The Artistic Imperative in Social Progress
EssaySouthwestVol. 5 Collectivity + Collaboration
Art critic Darren Jones on the ways artists lead the way in matters of social progress, in our Collectivity + Collaboration themed issue.
Jan 11
Live, Laugh, Cancel: How Art Disrupts Capitalism
d. ward writes about an art installation around Taos Plaza that disrupts traffic, and the flow of capitalist desires.
Jun 29
Reclaiming Red
During the 2000 presidential race, a behind-the-scenes graphic designer at CNN arbitrarily assigned red as the color of the Republican Party. Overnight, phrases like “red states” entered our language, and political associations have overtaken many of the rich symbolic...
Jul 01
Blue Depths
To most of us, indigo is just blue jeans, a commonplace commodity of global fashion. But to devotees of organic indigo like Aboubakar Fofana, a veteran of the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, it is an evocative color whose handmade variations are evidence of ancient dyeing traditions worthy of a lifetime of study [...]
