A list of our most-read articles of 2021 ranges from a Joshua Tree field report to an exhibition review of printmaking works by José Guadalupe Posada.
From news items (an Albuquerque gallery shows work by a member of the Proud Boys) to exhibition reviews (Linda Lomahaftewa at IAIA) to field reports (Joshua Tree and the High Desert) to artist profiles (Joanna Keane Lopez and Helen Levine), Southwest Contemporary covered regional arts like nobody’s business. Here are the most-read stories we published in 2021.
10. Installation Reveals Undertold History of Indigenous Captivity
Jetsonorama’s Unsilenced installation at the Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center dismantles the settler-colonial narrative in the San Luis Valley and amplifies the history of Native enslavement in southern Colorado.
9. Sunbeams 99¢: Friends of the Orphan Signs
For the past ten years, Friends of the Orphan Signs has been placing small moments of wonder on empty, abandoned, and suspended-in-time signs that anchor Albuquerque to its past as a stop along Route 66.
8. Gardens of Northern New Mexico
A guide to public gardens across northern New Mexico from the Albuquerque Biopark to Santa Fe’s Rose Park and Taos’s Overland Ranch.
7. Brick by Brick: Building Their Lives Around Adobe
Joanna Keane Lopez and Helen Levine discuss working with adobe, its history in this region, and how an adobe house is a living thing.
6. Linda Lomahaftewa and the Moving Land
As her retrospective exhibition at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts demonstrates, Linda Lomahaftewa’s artworks vibrantly convey her personal reflections on the changing social landscapes around her.
5. Field Report: Joshua Tree and the High Desert
Maggie Grimason’s guide to Joshua Tree and other High Desert towns, a deeply weird region where art, energies, and aliens are as commonplace as tie-dye and scrub oak.
4. Review: José Guadalupe Posada, Legendary Printmaker of Mexico
A look at iconic printmaker José Guadalupe Posada and Albuquerque Museum’s current exhibition of his work.
3. City of Albuquerque Gallery Under Fire for Exhibiting Painting by Proud Boy
The City of Albuquerque is taking heat for displaying artwork by a member of the New Mexico Proud Boys, an extremist group with white nationalist ideologies, in an open call exhibition.
2. In a Secret Airport Tunnel, Mysterious Mosaics Shine in the Dark
In an off-limits, decommissioned tunnel at the Albuquerque International Sunport, nobody knows the origins of stunning mosaic artworks.
1. 2021 Artist and Writer Residencies in the Southwest
A guide to 2021 artist and writer residencies in the Southwest, including Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.
