Vol. 13 The Road

FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

On a road trip across the former rangelands of the American bison, Cannupa Hanska Luger envisions a new monument.

Kimberly Suina Melwani • March 20, 2026

From the EditorVol. 13 The Road

Southwest Contemporary: The Road reconstitutes even the busiest Southwest arteries as byways that tether far-flung places and people.

Jordan Eddy and Natalie Hegert • March 20, 2026

EssayUtahVol. 13 The Road

An archeologist seeks the carvings of a 20th-century sheepherder, tracing stories of lust and loss across a threatened landscape.

Chris Shaw • March 20, 2026

EssayUtahVol. 13 The Road

In the essay "Tether," Anika Todd meditates on speed and flight, using history and a tethered camera to question how technologies shape perception, power, and the landscapes we inhabit.

Anika Todd • March 20, 2026

FeatureSouthwestVol. 13 The Road

A million-dollar gambit in New Mexico is one of many small-town projects chasing the fabled success of Marfa, Texas. Can it actually be replicated?

Jordan Eddy • March 20, 2026

FeatureNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

Poet Laura Neal discovers new roads in the collected works of Albuquerque-based artist Johannes Barfield exploring alternative states of being and imagining in Black culture.

Laura Neal • March 20, 2026

FeatureTexasVol. 13 The Road

Wagon tracks of the doomed Donner Party, detritus of present-day migration, football stadiums as future ruins—Sean J. Patrick Carney traces archeological strategies invoking the Southwest’s complicated past, present, and futures.

Sean J Patrick Carney • March 20, 2026

EssayTexasVol. 13 The Road

The “largest art installation in the world” covers the land in Texas once shared by bison, Comanche, and their horses. As a memorial, it represents but does little to repair.

Natalie Hegert • March 20, 2026

InterviewTexasVol. 13 The Road

Artist and activist Nansi Guevara on how art can help protect the Rio Grande Delta from colonial encroachment in Brownsville, Texas.

Rica Maestas • March 20, 2026

ReviewArizonaVol. 13 The Road

Phoenix Art Museum presents forty paintings by Eric Fischl, a New Yorker who seems magnetically drawn to the Valley of the Sun—in all its joy and strangeness.

Royal Young • March 20, 2026

Field ReportColoradoTravelVol. 13 The Road

Colorado’s “second city” has a rich and historic art scene, often overshadowed by the city’s contemporary connections to sports, tech, and the military.

Parker Yamasaki • March 20, 2026

Studio VisitNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

Route 66 survives in fragments. In a handmade atlas, Willie Lambert pieces New Mexico's 500-mile stretch back together.

Peter Warzel • March 20, 2026

Studio VisitArizonaVol. 13 The Road

Working in her Tucson, Arizona studio, artist Alanna Airitam counters cultural erasure with a photographic series highlighting the Chosen Few, the nation’s first racially integrated outlaw motorcycle club.

Lynn Trimble • March 20, 2026

EssayVol. 13 The Road

In Southwest Contemporary Vol. 13: The Road, guest juror Aurora Tang reflects on the featured artists' works in terms of movement, progress, and possibility.

Aurora Tang • March 20, 2026

ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

An older name for New Mexico anchors Moira Garcia’s mixed-media mapping of Nahua migration, cosmology, and return.

Erin Averill • March 20, 2026

ArtistsTexasVol. 13 The Road

Denton-based new media artist Julie Libersat transforms everyday roadside objects into installations that challenge how we navigate public space, belonging, and access.

Emma S. Ahmad • March 20, 2026

ArtistsNevadaVol. 13 The Road

Nevada-based artist Luke Rizotto's multimedia, site-specific installations are vaporous portals into personal psychic pathways.

Royal Young • March 20, 2026

ArtistsUtahVol. 13 The Road

In her paintings of shimmering roadways, Utah-based artist Madeline Rupard reaches for the eternal.

Maggie Grimason • March 20, 2026

ArtistsTexasVol. 13 The Road

Inspired by recurring trips to an almost-ghost town in Texas, Hannah Spector makes haunting multimedia installations.

Emma S. Ahmad • March 20, 2026

ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

For artist Carmen Selam, the road represents freedom, but also displacement. Her practice explores that tension using materials and imagery that speak to contemporary Indigenous experience.

Maggie Grimason • March 20, 2026

ArtistsMexicoVol. 13 The Road

Artist Jessica Sevilla renders poetics, satire, and political ecology into disorienting video collages that interrogate the commodification of ecosystems.

Erin Averill • March 20, 2026

ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

Transdisciplinary artist Adelaide Theriault maps medians, transition zones, and in-betweens through their highway art and roadside ditch field recordings.

Royal Young • March 20, 2026

ArtistsTexasVol. 13 The Road

Iran-born, Texas-based artist Vahid Valikhani photographs American roadsides, revealing friction in liminal zones.

Joshua Ware • March 20, 2026

ReviewTexasVol. 13 The Road

At Ballroom Marfa, five Latinx artists scramble Marfa's mythologies with humor and ferocity. They leave behind a mural, and a challenge.

Madison Garay • March 20, 2026

ReviewNevadaVol. 13 The Road

Artwork by Maya Lin and Ernesto Neto soft launch Into the Time Horizon at the Nevada Museum of Art, examining local and global environmental concerns. 

Max Stone • March 20, 2026

ReviewUtahVol. 13 The Road

Filled with beauty, tragedy, and oddities, UMOCA’s Altered States in the Acid West encompasses the storied contractions inherent to the American West.

Scotti Hill • March 20, 2026

ReviewNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

Lucy R. Lippard: Notes from the Radical Whirlwind traces the sixty-year career of one of the most humane and lucid arts writers of a generation.

Robin Babb • March 20, 2026

PhotographyTexasVol. 13 The Road

Photographer and sculptor Liz Cohen visualizes "radically transformed bodies," revealing how labor reshapes machines and people.

Lynn Trimble • March 20, 2026

SponsoredNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road

CENTER Santa Fe presents two photography exhibitions this spring—Elements of Wonder and A New Mexican Burial—alongside a statewide printing workshop series designed to help artists grow their practice.

CENTER Santa Fe • March 20, 2026

SponsoredTexasVol. 13 The Road

Texas's first modern art museum, the McNay brings together 23,000 works, a landmark Spanish Colonial estate, and deep community roots in the heart of San Antonio.

McNay Art Museum • March 20, 2026