Norman Bel Geddes’ compass always pointed forward. From his design of the Palais Royal nightclub in 1922 to his plans for a pilot television studio for NBC in 1954, Bel Geddes proved to be a fearless and imaginative dreamer who was convinced that art, design and architecture enriched people’s lives immeasurably. The exhibition I Have [...]
At this point in the winter calendar, I’m ready to be transported far from all things Western. Noble Change: Tantric Art of the High Himalaya, a small, stunning exhibit at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas, fits the bill perfectly. Eleven tantric Buddha sculptures dating from the late 17th through the early 20th [...]
What did the art world’s favorite rock star do on a rare day off during his recent U.S. tour with St. Vincent? Following their fantastic “Love This Giant” show at SMU’s McFarlin Auditorium, the band boarded their tour bus for the long ride from Dallas to San Diego. Byrne diverged, heading instead to Waxahachie to [...]
ATTENTION FUTURISTS: Report to Austin, Texas on Thursday November 1 by 7:30 p.m. for author/futurist/design visionary Bruce Sterling‘s kick-off speech at this year’s Harry Ransom Center’s Flair Symposium, “Visions of the Future”. This event is free and open to the public at Jessen Auditorium, across the plaza from the Ransom Center at 300 West [...]
Mexican artist Yvonne Domenge‘s 13-foot abstracted yellow sphere, “Tabachin Ribbon”, could be heading to Fort Worth in the next few weeks. For the last year and a half, the carbon steel sculpture has been on temporary display at Chicago’s Millennium Park, along with three other outdoor sculptures by Domenge. The artist requested that when the [...]
In the not so distant past, being a photographer required more skills than being able to point and shoot. Beginning in the early 19th century, portrait photographers grappled with metal plates and chemicals and landscape photographers doggedly lugged cumbersome 8 x 10 bellowed cameras, lenses, and tripods into uncharted terrain to capture nature’s most spectacular [...]
Ever since the mid-1970s, I’ve traveled to Houston whenever it was time for a good art fix. Back then, there were just a handful of fine art galleries to visit. The Museum of Fine Arts was a long way from becoming one of the largest museums in the United States. And the Contemporary Arts Museum [...]
No need to panic when you turn the corner of the second floor gallery at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and discover Melissa Miller‘s epic painting The Ark is MIA. As of August 22, it’s gone, but not for long. The museum has loaned it to Abilene’s Grace Museum for a major Melissa [...]
If great cities are measured by their cultural institutions, Fort Worth is extraordinary. Its Cultural District is compact, pedestrian-friendly and internationally famous for the five renowned museums lined up right next to each other. Designed by a stellar roster of blue chip architects, including Pritzker Prize winners Philip Johnson and Tadao Ando, each building has [...]
The 1930s marked a complex intersection of events in America. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing collapse of the American economy set the course for what was to come in the following decade. Documentary photography ended up playing a key role in the economic recovery. Concurrent with an upsurge in industrial mass [...]
Few things are more universally maligned by artists than a canvas full of bluebonnets. I admit I have been guilty of disparaging the shameless embrace of bluebonnet landscape paintings, prominently hung with pride on the living room wall of just about every bubba this side of Fredonia. I shudder to think about how many dime-a-dozen [...]
Vernon Fisher started off his art career as an abstract painter, but by the mid-1970s that line of inquiry came to a screeching halt. He began making small books instead. The books evolved into multi-media narrative paintings in which a short story was laid out in large type over a seemingly unrelated, large-scale black-and-white photographic [...]
Christina Patoski explores the jam-packed world of Julie and Bruce Webb, owners of Webb Gallery, an outsider art wonderland in Waxahachie. Christina Patoski is a journalist and photographer who lives in Fort Worth. A former NPR reporter, she has been published in Newsweek Magazine, The New York Times, Life Magazine, and USA Today. Her [...]
Turning fifty can provoke people to do unpredictable things, as it did Andy Warhol in 1978. Following his sixteen-year reign as the Prince of Pop, Warhol made an unexpected about-face and decided to try his hand at abstract painting. One of his first forays into the non-figurative netherworld is a series known as the Oxidation [...]
No question about it, Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum is a world-class museum, but it’s never been known for its cutting edge exhibitions. Enter Malcolm Warner, a 56-year-old Brit, and before you know it there’s an out-of-the-box exhibition of imaginative film installations based on five pieces in the Kimbell’s permanent collection. Time Magazine was impressed [...]
