Art Galleries in Bisbee

Bisbee occupies a narrow canyon in the Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona, 90 miles from Tucson and a mile above sea level - an old copper mining town that reinvented itself as one of the most authentic artist communities in the American Southwest. The end of mining in the 1970s opened the Victorian-era storefronts of Brewery Gulch and Old Bisbee to artists priced out of Tucson and Santa Fe, and the community that formed around them has endured for decades with a scrappy, unpolished character unlike any other arts town in the region. Galleries here tend to show the work of artists who actually live in town - painters, sculptors, jewelry makers, and photographers drawn by the extreme landscape, the extraordinary light, and a cost of living low enough to sustain a working creative life.

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Guides for Bisbee

Art in the Mule Mountains

Bisbee's transformation from industrial mining town to arts community is one of the great Southwest stories of the late 20th century. At its peak, Bisbee was one of the largest cities in the Arizona Territory, producing enormous quantities of copper from the Lavender Pit and the underground Queen Mine. When the mines closed, the town's extraordinary stock of historic buildings, Victorian mansions, Italianate storefronts, and workers' cottages clinging to the canyon walls, became available at prices that attracted artists, writers, and creative people from across the region. The result is a community with genuine creative depth: working studios, serious galleries, and an independent spirit that resists the tourist-friendly polish of better-known Southwest art destinations. The Bisbee Arts and Social Club and the various independent galleries around town show work that tends toward the experimental and the handmade, with ceramics, jewelry, and photography particularly well-represented. The Cochise County Courthouse and the surrounding historic district give Bisbee a sense of place that frames the art in genuine historical context.