IAIA avoids being federally “zeroed out,” historic Native lawmaker and artist Ben Nighthorse Campbell dies, and more top Southwest art news for February 2026.
News:
Congress Keeps IAIA’s Federal Funding Intact for FY26
Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts announced that Congress approved its full FY26 appropriation in early January, preserving current funding after the Trump administration proposed eliminating it. The decision follows Southwest Contemporary‘s earlier reporting on the threat, when outgoing president Robert Martin said an Office of Management and Budget official told him IAIA was “being zeroed out,”
ICE Out Shutdown Spurs Arts Business Closures Across the Southwest
On Friday, January 30, the “ICE Out of Everywhere” National Shutdown urged people to avoid work and spending, and arts businesses across the Southwest responded with closures or altered operations in solidarity. Local outlets tracked the impact state by state, listing participants in Phoenix, Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Utah, Texas, and more. The reporting offered a snapshot of how the protest landed in different communities, and corresponded with art-world closures across the nation.
Historic Native Lawmaker and Artist Ben Nighthorse Campbell Dies
Ben Nighthorse Campbell died at ninety-two on December 30, 2025, in Colorado. The Northern Cheyenne leader and Southern Ute elder served in Congress from 1993 to 2005, the first time a Native American had held a congressional seat in nearly six decades. Community members will gather in Colorado on April 13 to celebrate a life that also spanned military service, Olympic judo, and acclaimed artistry.
Also:
- SMU DataArts released its latest Arts Vibrancy Index listing the top 100 most arts-vibrant communities. It includes twelve Southwest cities, led by Santa Fe and including Taos, Denver, Boulder, Salt Lake City, Tucson, and Austin.
- Arizona governor Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Commission on the Arts appointed Diné poet and professor emerita Laura Tohe as the state’s poet laureate for a two-year term, recognizing her past service as Navajo Nation poet laureate and her longtime teaching career at Arizona State University.
- Community Arts Stabilization Trust’s Colorado arm secured a $1.9 million award from The Colorado Health Foundation to purchase and steward Trinidad’s East Street School, preserving thirteen affordable live-work units and four artist studios while sustaining the building’s community-facing event and wellness programming.
- In the City of Albuquerque’s first major creative-economy analysis since 2012-14, a University of New Mexico study found that Albuquerque’s creative economy generated $1.75 billion in 2024 and supported 17,682 jobs, or 4.4% of local employment.
- Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts has renewed a partnership with Sealaska Heritage Institute and University of Alaska Southeast to grow Northwest Coast arts education through new credentials, workshops, and artist exchanges, with travel between Alaska and Santa Fe set to begin in spring 2027.
- Vital Spaces celebrated the opening of its newest Santa Fe community arts hub on January 23. The former JoAnn Fabrics on Cerrillos Road hosts twenty-five studios and a podcast studio, lending library, and photo studio.
- The Paseo Project in Taos is shifting its Paseo Festival to a biennial format, with the next full edition returning in September 2027 and an open call for artists planned for fall 2026.
- The Farmington Museum in New Mexico expanded its permanent collection with twenty New Mexico landscape paintings by Austin-based artist Agnes Crowley, bolstering its Southwestern art holdings and planning to exhibit the works statewide.
- Las Vegas performing artist and filmmaker BridgieNix (Bridget N. Scheiner) launched a Democratic campaign for Nevada lieutenant governor, pitching an arts-and-worker-centered platform.
- The Falstaff art center in El Paso has launched The Falstaff Project, a dedicated exhibition space led by guest curator Miguel Bendaña with a three-show series running January to July, 2026. It opened on January 29 with the group exhibition That Lovely Land of Might-Have-Been.
- Houston’s Archway Gallery, billed as Texas’s longest-running artist-owned, artist-operated gallery, will mark its 50th anniversary with Fifty Forward, a landmark exhibition opening April 11.
Grants and Awards:
Creative Capital Supports Southwest Artists in 2026 Grants
Creative Capital will award $2.9 million to 109 artists nationwide in 2026, splitting support between its project-based awards (up to $50,000 for selected new works) and the inaugural State of the Art Prize ($10,000 unrestricted grants across every state and select territories). Southwest recipients include Cara Romero (Santa Fe), Ronald Rael (Antonito, CO), and Delbert Anderson (Kirtland, NM) among the Creative Capital Award winners, plus State of the Art Prize honorees Caroline Tracey (Tucson), Yumi Janairo Roth (Boulder), Samantha Burns (Santa Fe), JJ Peña (Las Vegas), Russel Albert Daniels (Salt Lake City), and Gesel Mason (Austin).
Warhol Foundation Names Southwest Recipients in Fall 2025 Grant Round
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts unveiled its fall 2025 grantees, distributing more than $4 million to fifty-seven visual arts organizations. The Southwest recipients are Access Gallery ($60,000) and Black Cube ($100,000) in Denver; and Women & Their Work ($80,000), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston ($100,000), Project Row Houses ($100,000), and Galveston Artist Residency ($60,000) in Texas.
New Mexico’s Eric-Paul Riege Named a 2026 USA Fellow
Gallup-based weaver, performer, and interdisciplinary artist Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) is among the fifty recipients of the United States Artists 2026 fellowship, which awards $50,000 in unrestricted support across ten disciplines. The twenty-year-old program selects honorees through a yearlong process.
Also:
- The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery unveiled the artist list for its triennial show The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today, and several Southwest-based artists made the cut: Vicente Telles and Stephanie J. Woods of Albuquerque, and Al Rendon of San Antonio. The exhibition runs through August 30.
- New Mexico Arts awarded ten organizations, including cultural anchors like the National Ghost Ranch Foundation and CENTER Santa Fe, Arts & The Military Mini Grants of $2,500 to expand creative programs for New Mexico’s active-duty service members, veterans, and their families statewide.
- Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s newly announced 2026-2028 cohort includes two Southwest-based awardees: Denver sculptor Amy Hoagland and Santa Fe screenwriter Sabrina Saleha (Navajo/Bengali), who will each receive $150,000 in stipend support plus a $36,000 housing stipend.
Leadership Changes and Appointments:
NMSU’s Marisa Sage Tapped to Direct New Mexico Museum of Art
The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs anounced Marisa Sage as executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Vladem Contemporary, effective March 28. Most recently at New Mexico State University’s University Art Museum in Las Cruces, she led a major museum expansion and growth in programming, access, and fundraising. Her selections points to a community-centered, capacity-building next chapter for the state’s flagship art museum.
“Mover & Shaker” Jane Burke Joins RedLine as Chief Curator and Art Director
Denver’s RedLine Contemporary Art Center appointed Jane Burke as chief curator and art director, tapping a veteran arts administrator and curator whose recent roles include executive director of Union Hall, curator at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and a longtime curatorial fellow at Denver Art Museum. Recently named an ArtDesk “Movers & Shakers” honoree, she’ll help steer RedLine’s exhibitions, artist residency program, and curatorial strategy, with her first exhibition slated for mid-March.
Also:
- Denver’s Union Hall selected Sigri Strand as executive director. She is the cofounder of the arts-archiving initiative ArtHyve, and brings more a decade of arts and nonprofit experience across organizations including the Denver Film Society, Denver Art Museum, Historic Denver, PlatteForum, and Denver Union Station.
- New Mexico Historic Sites named new leadership for its northern region, appointing John Anthony Perrotto as site manager at Los Luceros Historic Site and Jaimie Adams as regional site manager for Coronado Historic Site and Jemez Historic Site.
- Utah Arts & Museums bid farewell to longtime museum field services leader Emily Johnson, who supported over 250 Utah museums and helped secure National Endowment for the Humanities funding for key preservation and research initiatives. She departs to join the PacifiCorp Foundation.
