What Do You Get When Two Cows and a Conceptual Art Icon Walk Into a Tucson Gallery?
Clever conceit or curatorial cop-out? In Cassidy Araiza / Robert Barry / Jocko Weyland, experiment and open-endedness might be the objective.
April 21, 2026
Exhibitions
The Context of Humanness: Yes &… at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Wants Proof of Life
Yes &..., curated by Tobias Fike and Donald Fodness, advocates for human ingenuity in the face of AI ascendance. But is that a sufficient curatorial framework?
April 02, 2026
Editor’s Picks: Southwest Contemporary’s Spring 2026 Exhibition Guide
Looking for a spiritual awakening this spring? Arts editor Natalie Hegert traces a visionary and esoteric throughline among thirty-seven of this season’s top exhibitions.
March 27, 2026
What Does Migration Look Like Outside Anti-Immigrant Crisis Narratives?
Tierras Reimaginadas: Migration at ASU Art Museum centers immigrant voices and reimagines migration across species, cultures, geographies, and time.
March 26, 2026
Los Encuentros Models a More Accountable Marfa—But Can it Last?
At Ballroom Marfa, five Latinx artists scramble Marfa's mythologies with humor and ferocity. They leave behind a mural, and a challenge.
March 20, 2026
A First Glimpse of Into the Time Horizon, the Future-Forward, Evolving Exhibition Unfolding Over Time
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.
March 20, 2026
Suburban Phoenix is a Vortex and Mirror in Eric Fischl’s Sprawling Retrospective
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.
March 20, 2026
In Altered States in the Acid West, Psychedelia and Surrealism Subvert Mythologies
Filled with beauty, tragedy, and oddities, UMOCA’s Altered States in the Acid West encompasses the storied contractions inherent to the American West.
March 20, 2026
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 13 The Road
Lucy R. Lippard’s Notes from the Radical Whirlwind Archives a Six-Decade Evolution
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.
March 20, 2026
Peripheral Vision: Abby Flanagan Decenters the Visual in an Exhibition that Feels Truly Ecological
How can art plumb the depths of an aquifer? Abby Flanagan’s exhibition design in To Move Through Stone activates the peripheries to visualize the intangible flows of an ecological system.
March 12, 2026
Adama Delphine Fawundu Brings the Congo (and Beyond) into Conversation with Salt Lake
Adama Delphine Fawundu submerses herself into the Great Salt Lake, activates the UMFA’s African collection, and brings the region into a global dialogue around decolonization.
February 19, 2026
Charlie Chaplin’s Cabin, and Western Mythologies, Teeter on the Edge at Cookie Factory
In the cyclonic installation Rush, Gary Simmons critically blurs history, cinema, and Western propaganda. He also makes space for wishful grief.
February 05, 2026
Editor’s Picks: Southwest Contemporary‘s Winter 2025-26 Art Guide
The Southwest art world doesn't hibernate. SWC editorial director Jordan Eddy selects thirty-five exhibitions—and three hot trends—for the cold season.
December 16, 2025
In Truths Be Told, 15 Artists Prove Tradition is the Future of Resistance
Fifteen contemporary artists reimagine traditional art forms to address social justice, colonialism, and climate change at Museum of International Folk Art.
December 09, 2025
Southwest Art Museum Shatters Its Permanent Display for a Grassroots Rebuild
In Colorado Springs, an art center's landmark reinstallation of its collection reconsiders the Southwest—breaking the old shape of regionalism in art history.
December 04, 2025
On the Edge Explores “California Cool” Through the Collection of Joan and Jack Quinn
Discover works by Basquiat, Warhol, Mapplethorpe, and Hockney that defined California's anti-conformist creative spirit, on view at the Tucson Museum of Art December 13, 2025–May 10, 2026.
December 02, 2025
Abstraction, Accumulation, and Activism: Three Artists Confront the Dangers of Extraction
In Shifting Topographies, three artists’ varied approaches find common ground in exposing the deadly threat of extractive industries.
November 26, 2025
Bless Me, Cecilia: What Happens When a Star Curator Arrives in Santa Fe?
Cecilia Alemani rolled out an exhibition like no other in Santa Fe—its visionary weirdness will hit everyone a bit different.
November 20, 2025
Tongue Firmly in Cheek, Safwat Saleem’s Unrequited Love Institute Counters the “Otherness” at the Heart of Xenophobia
Safwat Saleem uses satire to share his experiences as an immigrant father living with cultural assimilation and loss in the 2024 Arizona Artist Awards exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum.
November 06, 2025
In Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country, Twelve Tewa Artists Come into Dialogue with Works Created by Georgia O’Keeffe
With works by twelve artists, scholars, and culture bearers from the six Tewa Pueblos in New Mexico, Tewa Nangeh/Tewa Country opens a critical dialogue around sacred landscapes, Indigenous belonging, and cultural ownership at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
October 28, 2025
In Seven Days by Chuck Ramirez, Foodscapes Become Community Portraits
A series of still life photographs by late San Antonio artist Chuck Ramirez capture the essence of a Texas community and subculture.
October 23, 2025
The Publisher’s Picks: Southwest Contemporary’s Fall 2025 Art Guide
Just in time for cooler temps, SWC publisher and editor Lauren Tresp picks twenty-two must-see exhibitions across the Southwest.
October 14, 2025
Sandy Skoglund Brings Natural Havoc to Rule Gallery in Marfa
Experience Sandy Skoglund's Natural Havoc at Rule Gallery's Marfa location, October 10–November 29. Rare outtakes, sculptures, and drawings reveal her iconic creative process.
October 08, 2025
Remain in Light: James Perkins Buries Paintings to Reveal the Sublime
In his first museum exhibition, Burying Painting, James Perkins shows evanescent process- and land-based artworks "harvested" from the Atlantic Ocean and the Sonoran Desert.
October 07, 2025
Landmark Exhibition Reimagines FAC’s Permanent Collection
Gathering Place marks the first major reinstallation of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College in nearly a decade.
September 24, 2025
To Affect Social Change, These Artists Put One Foot in Front of the Other
In Step After Step at Kimball Art Center, artists leave their studios behind to claim the moving body as a revolutionary artistic method.
September 05, 2025
SponsoredColoradoVol. 12 Obsession
Beau Carey’s Brightness Bound Reimagines Landscape Painting Through Memory and Movement
Catch Beau Carey's innovative landscape paintings at Visions West Contemporary in Denver, October 3-November 15, 2025, with an opening reception on October 3, 6-8 pm.
September 05, 2025
ReviewColoradoVol. 12 Obsession
Kent Monkman’s History Paintings Are Anything But Traditional
Kent Monkman’s exhibition at the Denver Art Museum is a provocative and stunning survey that champions the marginalized while subverting history.
September 05, 2025
ReviewArizonaVol. 12 Obsession
Rasquachismo and Resilience: Ya Hecho Transforms Found Objects into Borderland Narratives
Artists working along the U.S.-Mexico border bring the rasquachismo aesthetic to Ya Hecho: Readymade in the Borderlands as the U.S. government escalates its anti-immigrant stance.
September 05, 2025
In the Shadows, Our Ghosts Lurk Creepily Resonates at a Time of Mass Surveillance and Obscuration
Curator Fabiola Iza brings together eleven artists for an exhibition that investigates the shadowy corners of perception.
September 05, 2025
