Feature2024 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
Trash, Trinkets, and Thingamabobs: Exploring Roadside Attractions in New Mexico
An eclectic guide to New Mexico's so-called outsider art monuments made from all sorts of oddities.
May 24, 2024
Articles
Essay2024 New Mexico Field GuideNew Mexico
Watch Zozobra Burn for the 100th Time
August 2024 will usher in one hundred years of setting Zozobra ablaze—a ceremony of fire, redemption, and the incineration of Santa Fe’s gloom.
May 24, 2024
The Holland Project Shatters the “White Cube,” Curating Reno’s Skyline with Billboard Initiative
Prolific DIY arts organization the Holland Project takes its community-oriented message to the streets.
May 23, 2024
The Other Side of the Tracks Begins its Journey at Ogden Contemporary Arts
The Other Side of the Tracks, a group exhibition that explores the history of the Western railroad, is on view at Ogden Contemporary Arts through July 14, and then travels to RedLine Contemporary Art Center and 516 Arts.
May 22, 2024
Reaching for the Light: Daniel Hawkins’s Wild West Dream of a Desert Lighthouse
Daniel Hawkins's surreal, fifty-foot Desert Lighthouse is a glowing, perplexing beacon in the desolate Mojave Desert, on the site of ecological catastrophe.
May 21, 2024
Southwest Artist and Writer Residencies with Summer 2024 Deadlines
Lavish and rugged residency opportunities abound in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
May 21, 2024
Analyzing Danielle SeeWalker’s G is for Genocide, the Artwork at the Center of a Vail Controversy
The Town of Vail and artist Danielle SeeWalker saw very different messages in her painting G is for Genocide, sparking the cancellation of her long-planned residency.
May 17, 2024
From the EditorInside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
An Opening Letter from New Southwest Contemporary Editorial Director Jordan Eddy
Our new editorial director, who joined SWC on April 22, looks back on a challenging decade of arts journalism—and ahead with an ambitious editorial vision.
May 17, 2024
Oracle Bones: High Desert Divination with Terry Tempest Williams and Gaylord Schanilec
In Oracle Bones from Red Butte Press, a writer and an artist wander the Utah wilderness to discern the future. Then it comes true.
May 15, 2024
From Utah’s Geographical Center, an Argument for Decentralizing Arts Discourse
Granary Arts's Critical Ground advances a bold idea: in the Southwest arts community, the center shouldn't hold.
May 14, 2024
From the EditorInside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
Southwest Contemporary Announces New Leadership, Awards, and Eyes the Future
This spring, Southwest Contemporary welcomes a new editorial director and four new board members, along with award wins, open calls for our next issue, and an opportunity to win $10,000 in funding for emerging media.
May 10, 2024
Inside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
Southwest Contemporary Expands Journalism Awards Slate with Five Prizes Across Two Competitions
Southwest Contemporary scores honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and New Mexico Press Women, for stories and designs reflecting the range of the publication's regional arts coverage.
May 10, 2024
RioBravoFineArt Celebrates Artists Dave Barnett and Dina D’Argo
RioBravoFineArt announces new artist exhibitions in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, for spring 2024.
May 08, 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
Modern Honesty: Wrestling with Maynard Dixon’s Selective Vision of the “Old West”
Cowboy cosplay, broken Spanish, and Indigenous erasure haunt Sagebrush and Solitude, Maynard Dixon's Western retrospective at the Nevada Museum of Art.
May 06, 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
Southwest Art News: May 2024
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
May 01, 2024
Artists Ride, and Reframe, the U.S. Railroad in The Other Side of the Tracks
Carried by the rails that their ancestors laid, rode, or resisted, nine artists challenge dominant histories of the Transcontinental Railroad in this multi-venue exhibition.
April 30, 2024
Reframing the Western Rail Experience: The Railyard Art Project Presents Herstory’s Women of the Rails
Uncover the hidden stories of the Women of the Rails through an illustrative mural project at Railyard Park in Santa Fe, on view through July 31, 2024.
April 30, 2024
Work in Progress with Ángel Faz
Ángel Faz’s studio practice centers around observation and research, unearthing the shrouded history of the land and those who inhabit it.
April 26, 2024
Inside Southwest ContemporarySouthwest
Call for Visions: Tell Us What the Future Will Bring
Southwest Contemporary is entreating its readers to stop, take a moment, and imagine what a new world could hold.
April 25, 2024
The Desert’s Living Skin: A Collaborative Effort to Bring Biocrust Into the Museum
The Biocrust Project reveals the importance of protecting the desert’s biocrust in the face of climate change in an immersive collaboration between art and science.
April 25, 2024
Pie Projects Presents Sam Scott: Deep Nature
Sam Scott: Deep Nature is on view through Saturday, May 18, with an artist talk on Saturday, May 11, at Pie Projects in Santa Fe.
April 24, 2024
Vladem Contemporary Announces Open Call for the Window Box Project
Vladem Contemporary at the New Mexico Museum of Art announces their annual Window Box Project Open Call for artists. Applications are open now through May 5, 2024.
April 23, 2024
Art at the End of the World: A Day at the Bombay Beach Biennale
The Bombay Beach Biennale along Southern California’s Salton Sea is an insurgent arts festival and ongoing ecological discourse.
April 23, 2024
Wading in the Shallows: The Conundrum of Cj Hendry’s Public Pool
Cj Hendry's Public Pool delights some and confounds others, as it celebrates Las Vegas pool party culture while ignoring serious realities of PVC manufacturing, drought, and the wealth divide.
April 19, 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
Diné Writer Brendan Basham Transmutes Words into Worlds
Diné artist, writer, and educator Brendan Basham approaches writing as he does life: as a process of transformation.
April 16, 2024
Interrogating our Performative Impulses at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
In Performing Self at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, seven multidisciplinary artists expand the concept of performance art with works that are extremely personal, even courageous.
April 15, 2024
How Can Mural Artists Take Steps to Protect Their Legal Rights?
Do muralists have a legal right to keep their work from being altered or whitewashed? Experts and artists in the Southwest discuss artist contracts and the Visual Artists Rights Act.
April 11, 2024
