Merry Scully, Longtime Santa Fe Curator and Arts Worker, Heads West
Merry Scully, former New Mexico Museum of Art head of curatorial affairs, is leaving the state with a heavy heart but with an eager eye towards Southern California.
Aug 17
News
Aug 15
“Making Art is Like Making Pizza; Layers, Baby!”: Inside the VHS Vic Universe
Utah video artist VHS Vic (Victor Blandon) shows his audience how to find magic in the mundane, the goofy in the serious, and the artistry in making a pizza.
Aug 12
Meet Zara Kriegstein, the Forgotten Artist Who Spearheaded Santa Fe’s Most Embattled Mural
The recent destruction of Santa Fe’s Multicultural mural caused fierce controversy, but its little-told history reveals tough questions about authorship and cross-cultural collaboration.
Aug 10
In a City Besieged by Rent Hikes, Santa Fe Scores an Affordable Housing Complex for Artists
Siler Yard fills a void in Santa Fe’s affordable housing crunch, especially for artists and long-standing residents. Though celebrated, the development faces challenges.
Aug 03
Salt Lake City Cultural Workers Fight for Unionization, Threaten Strike
Clever Octopus’s unionization efforts in Salt Lake City speak out about potential exploitation within creative and arts careers. As living costs rise, unions are becoming more common among underpaid cultural workers.
Aug 01
Southwest Art News: August 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Jul 28
Multi-Site Albuquerque Exhibition Reinvigorates Southwest Cultural Exchange
Son de Allá y Son de Acá brings together sixty contemporary Chicano/a and Latino/a artists from Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas across four Albuquerque art galleries.
Jul 22
Ya La’ford’s Survey Renews Perspectives of the American West
Ya La’ford, Ogden Contemporary Arts’s first artist-in-residence, visualizes a past, present, and future Southwest in Survey: The West.
Jul 20
Never Look Away: Reflecting on the Life and Art of Leonard Fresquez
Albuquerque artist Leonard Fresquez offered a unique glimpse at the possibilities of art in understanding our world. His June 2022 death at the age of forty-one marks a profound loss.
Jul 18
“They Have Always Been Here”: Sister Speaks Up for Marginalized Artists
Sister SLC’s creative, fun, and diverse one-off events are as a safe space for all genders, sexualities, and ethnicities, and increase visibility for Utah’s femme, queer, and nonbinary artists.
Jul 15
Gallery Incomplet, a New Santa Fe Art Space, Only Displays Unfinished Works
Gallery Incomplet in Santa Fe is likely the world’s first art space to exclusively display incomplete works of art, ranging from barely completed paintings to undeveloped rolls of film.
Jul 14
The Exodus Ensemble Will Upend Your Reality
The Exodus Ensemble, an immersive theater group in Santa Fe, combines tactics from television with live performance to create intense, dramatic theater.
Jul 07
Black and Latinx Choreographers Take Center Stage at BlakTinx Dance Festival Phoenix
BlakTinx Dance Festival in Phoenix showcases works by Black and Latin choreographers, who bring their creativity to contemporary issues from Black Lives Matter to COVID-19.
Jul 06
Nuestras Acequias Reimagines Museum Practice and Shares Community Wisdom
Gutiérrez Hubbell House spotlights life-sustaining New Mexico acequias and reimagines museum practice with a new guest-curator program.
Jul 01
Southwest Art News: July 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Jun 28
Arizona’s 2023 State Budget More Than Doubles Arts Funding
Arts advocates in Arizona celebrate a new state budget that includes $5 million for the arts, more than doubling the state’s arts funding.
Jun 27
Three Summer Shows Amplify Floyd D. Tunson’s Powerful Body of Work
Floyd D. Tunson, one of Colorado’s most important contemporary artists, is the subject of three summer exhibitions shedding light on the breadth and scope of his sociopolitical and race-related themes.
Jun 15
Yvonne Force Villareal Launches Brite Force in Marfa
Curator Yvonne Force Villareal inaugurates Brite Force, a new arts initiative in Marfa, Texas, with an exhibition of surreal Western paintings by Will Cotton.
Jun 14
Kim Stringfellow Reckons with Human Impact on the Desert in The Mojave Project
Kim Stringfellow presents the current iteration of her exhibition The Mojave Project, which expands ideas of the Mojave Desert and its inhabitants through transmedia representations.
Jun 13
Fort Worth’s Kinfolk House Draws Artists and Neighbors Together
Kinfolk House’s entry to social practice art is meant to investigate community, culture, and isolation in the venue’s neighborhood of Polytechnic Heights and beyond in Fort Worth.
Jun 10
Hot Art Summer: Must-See Southwest Art Exhibitions for Summer 2022
Hit the road this summer for Southwest art exhibitions in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
Jun 08
UMFA Highlights Utah in the 1970s, From Spiral Jetty to Voter Rights
Curator Alana Wolf mines the University of Utah’s archives to backdrop the various occurrences of the 1970s—the formative decade in which Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty made its debut.
Jun 03
Meet Shelly C. Lowe, the First Indigenous Chair of the NEH
Shelly C. Lowe (Diné), the first Native American to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities, is approaching her high-profile job at the granting institution through an Indigenous lens.
Jun 01
Southwest Art News: June 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
May 23
Jivan Lee’s Long-Form Painting Meditation: From “Total, Dead Boredom” to Miracles in the Mundane
Jivan Lee’s series 10,000 Mountains represented a fundamental shift for the painter from chasing the light to deep meditations on place that revealed the miraculous through the mundane.
May 20
Live in America Brings Leading-Edge Southwest Performance to Arkansas
Live in America features under-recognized Southwest cities, such as Albuquerque, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and Las Vegas, Nevada, in a debut performance festival in Northwest Arkansas.
May 17
A Brief History of African American Homesteading in New Mexico
The Albuquerque Museum tells the compelling story of African American homesteading in New Mexico in the exhibition Facing the Rising Sun.
May 13
New Mexico Jewelry-Making Program Axed by School Officials
Starting fall 2023, Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque will no longer offer a bench jewelry certificate program for its students.
May 10
Breaking to Build: Andrew Alba’s Carnal Desire to Paint
Utah artist Andrew Alba’s newest series of stoic portraits, on display at Modern West starting later this month, come after years of dark brooding and artistic scuffles.
May 06
The Legacy of Phoenix Graffiti Pioneer Pablo Luna
El Mac reflects on the influential creative output of Arizona-based graffiti innovator Pablo Luna (AKA KAPER), who spent four decades making art before his death last month.
May 02
Southwest Art News: May 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Apr 29
Veterans Off-Grid Teaches the Art and Healing of Green Building
Veterans Off Grid in rural Northern New Mexico helps vulnerable veterans get back on their feet in a setting that’s a model for sustainable architecture, community building, and affordable housing.
Apr 26
On-Site Vigil of the “Dying” Great Salt Lake Moves State Lawmakers
During Utah’s 2022 legislative session, poet and community leader Nan Seymour crafted a site vigil and collective poem, an act of community activism that highlighted the in-flux Great Salt Lake.
Apr 22
Curators Brainstorm Big Dreams for—and Identify Gaps in—Utah’s Contemporary Arts
A believed first-time gathering of Utah contemporary art curators at the 2022 Spring Summit in Green River yields big dreams and ideas for improvement.
Apr 20
Impractical Spaces: 5 Alternative Art Venues in Houston
A book series diving into historical and current alternative art establishments in major stateside cities visits Texas in Impractical Spaces: Houston. Here are five current H-Town favorites from the book.
Apr 15
In a State Rich in Jewelry Traditions, a New Mexico College Considers Choking a Key Pipeline
A jewelry-making program helps train artisans for steady career opportunities in Albuquerque. That may not be enough for the cash-strapped school.
Apr 13
Nika Kaiser Builds the Beginning of the Climate-Changed End
In The Passage, Tucson artist Nika Kaiser reimagines endings and the possibilities of a post-human future inspired by the reemergence of Glen Canyon.
Apr 01
Southwest Art News: April 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Mar 11
12 Southwest Art Exhibitions to Check Out in Spring 2022
Southwest Contemporary's handy roundup of choice spring 2022 art exhibitions includes shows in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
Mar 01
Southwest Arts News: March 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Feb 24
Santa Fe’s Landfall Press Celebrates Fifty-Plus Years of Printmaking
Jack Lemon opened Landfall Press in 1970 and continues to operate it in Santa Fe, having collaborated with Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Robert Indiana, and Lesley Dill, among others.
Feb 16
Paris Perfumery to Launch Tucson, an Arizona Desert-Inspired Scent
Astier de Villatte, a Paris-based brand that’s set to launch a perfume called Tucson, shares what is unique about the scent and their first impressions of the desert.
Feb 11
Utah’s Outsider Art Gilgal Sculpture Garden Might Be Bizarro Defined
Gilgal Garden in Salt Lake City is perhaps Utah’s most unusual homage to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
