Exhibition Opening: Inheriting the Void
Please join us for Inheriting the Void, a performance-installation and video essay. Come witness a speculative interaction between a bear and a ventriloquist that asks: On whose behalf do we […]
March 31, 2026
Tucson
Studio VisitArizonaVol. 13 The Road
Alanna Airitam: Black Diamonds
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.
March 20, 2026
How Phoenix Art Museum’s First “Local Art” Curator Built a Regional Launchpad
Christian Ramírez's scope is technically local at Phoenix Art Museum, but the assistant curator channels years of Southwest connections from Tucson to El Paso.
February 12, 2026
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
Studio light | space: Where Contemporary Art Breathes in Tucson’s Historic Barrio Viejo
Founded by artist Beverly Fisher in an 1850s adobe home, Studio light | space is Tucson's intimate gallery for contemporary art that rewards sustained presence. Featuring nationally recognized artists in thoughtful, light-filled exhibitions.
November 18, 2025
Places Planted in the Mind: Jorge Ruiz Brings Together Cross-Border Towns, in Miniature
Jorge Ruiz intertwines Tucson and Nogales in his exhibition at Arizona's Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures. His "imperfect" process is grueling.
October 28, 2025
Fall Road Trip: The Art Season is Just Starting in Arizona
Arizona's art scene heats up when the weather cools down. Chart a fall road trip through every must-see show, festival, and art experience.
September 23, 2025
All Vibes Must Die: Industry and Virality in the Lisa Frank Warehouse
Lisa Frank, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, offers up a rainbow-bedazzled mirror to the emptiness of the American dream.
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
MOCA Tucson’s New Executive Director Brings “Bicultural” Vision to the Borderlands
Venezuelan curator Gabriela Rangel and her international circle discuss her "double viewpoint" of the Global North and South, and what it means for MOCA Tucson.
August 28, 2025
Arizona Artist Residencies: The Grand Canyon State Beckons
Whether you're a local Arizonan looking for community support or a visitor looking for an idyllic new setting to inspire, let our roundup of Arizona Artist Residencies guide you to your next opportunity.
August 19, 2025
Modern Nature: The Contemporary Art Guide to Southwest Botanical Gardens
Southwest botanical gardens have reshaped their grounds as living museums for stunning—and challenging—contemporary art. Discover seven culture-filled desert oases.
July 03, 2025
Hank Willis Thomas’s Pop Culture Platitudes Belong to an Alternate Timeline—Not the One We’re Living In
Hank Willis Thomas's LOVERULES offers a comprehensive survey of a decade's worth of artwork but flounders in our current political crisis.
May 02, 2025
ArtistsArizonaVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Urgent Care Art
Urgent Care Art’s pop-ups in quotidian Tucson spaces juxtapose the healing and fear inherent to queer visibility.
March 07, 2025
Karima Walker’s “Grief Rituals” Seek the Non-Linear Wisdom of Walking in Circles
The Arizona-born artist’s MOCA Tucson exhibition draws inspiration (and soil) from the Santa Cruz River, melding body and land.
December 23, 2024
A Hundred Years On, Surrealism’s Desert Dreamworlds Continue to Inspire
The desert—in all of its arid, minimalist, color-block permutations—permeates this selection of Surrealist artworks.
November 19, 2024
Immersive Exhibitions Redefine Art and Language at MOCA Tucson
Graves for the Rain and 500 Places at Once blend sound, performance, and poetry engaging visitors in ecological narratives. On view through February 16, 2025.
September 24, 2024
The Youth are Our Future: the Hamrah Arts Club Brings Refugee Youth Together on a Journey of Self-Expression
The Hamrah Arts Club, founded by artist Nazafarin Lotfi, uses art and creative expression to foster solidarity between refugee and asylum-seeking communities for youth in Tucson.
September 13, 2024
FeatureArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
The Ants of Biosphere 2
Seeking fresh hope in the 20th-century futurisms of Arizona architectural marvels Biosphere 2, Taliesin West, and Arcosanti.
September 06, 2024
ReviewArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Feminist Theory and a Family Trucking Business Inform Fay Ray’s New Visions of the Borderlands in PORTALS
PORTALS at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona features new works by California-based artist Fay Ray, who imagines radical futures in the Sonoran Desert and Southwest borderlands.
September 06, 2024
How International Arts Collective The Place Where Clouds Are Formed is Shifting Borderland Narratives
Artists and poets from Indigenous nation bisected by U.S.-Mexico border join with myriad voices to counter borderland crisis narratives in Tucson.
July 18, 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
An Essential Retrospective of Hopi Artist Duwawisioma at Tucson’s Andrew Smith Gallery
Duwawisioma’s (Victor Masayesva Jr.) retrospective exhibition Màatakuyma at Andrew Smith Gallery in Tucson solidifies the Hopi artist’s importance in contemporary photographic and Indigenous artistic discourse.
March 05, 2024
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 9 Living Histories
Modernware: The Allure and Tension in Defining Nampeyo, An Iconic Pueblo Potter, as a Modernist
An art world debate over the modernist credentials of iconic Hopi-Tewa potter Nampeyo surfaces tense questions about art, craft, Indigeneity, and the meaning of modernity.
March 01, 2024
The Tucson Art Scene Impresses with its People Power
Tucson, Arizona is home to an incredible community of creative people. Southwest Contemporary visited in November 2023 to discover the local art scene.
February 16, 2024
Work in Progress with Perla Segovia
Perla Segovia, a Peruvian immigrant who has made Tucson her home for the past ten years, advocates for the value of immigrants through textile, embroidery, glass, and painting techniques.
February 13, 2024
BLAC Empowerment: New Tucson Gallery Bolsters Black Artists
Blue Lotus Artists’ Collective, or BLAC, is a new Tucson gallery—and perhaps the first of its kind—dedicated to elevating local, national, and international Black artists.
February 06, 2024
Snakebite Creation Space: An Artist-Run Haven for Experimental Exhibitions
Snakebite Creation Space’s Geneva Foster Gluck and Racheal Rios invite artists to install exhibitions that push their practices in new directions while challenging the constraints of a typical gallery show.
February 02, 2024
MOCA Tucson is an Incubation Space and “Not Just Arbitrators of Archives”
Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, known as MOCA Tucson, supports regional and local artists through grants, community events, peer connections, and more. Here’s why artists and curators say that matters.
January 30, 2024
Tucson Museum of Art’s Centennial Celebration Unveils Temporal Tapestry in Time Travelers
Time Travelers: Foundations, Transformations, and Expansions at the Centennial reconsiders the complex relationships of select artworks in relation to the past, present, and future. On view at the Tucson Museum of Art March 17–October 6, 2024.
January 16, 2024
