Arts writers in hard times: notes from the chopping block
Elizabeth Kramer, an arts journalist who writes for the Gannett-owned Louisville Courier-Journal, escaped massive layoffs on Tuesday, when the paper shed ten percent of its workforce. Kramer wrote on Facebook, “Layoffs today at The Courier-Journal were just awful. Out of 50 at the paper, half were from the newsroom, with several in features. I’m still [...]
El Paso Museum and its Border Biennials get US-Mexico Cross-Border Cooperation and Innovation Award
The El Paso Museum of Art has received an award for US-Mexico Cross-Border Cooperation and Innovation, administered by the Border Research Partnership for its Border Biennial Shows that continue to maintain connections between the art communities in El Paso and Juarez despite escalating violence in the Mexican city. The museum is already planning Border Art [...]
Ai Weiwei freed, China bends to popular outcry
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei was released “on bail” after three months in prison in a secret location. Slightly thinner, but in good health, Ai remains in a sort of house arrest, described by China watchers as a face-saving way of dropping prosecutions that don’t seem worth it, pending the parolee’s good behavior. The release [...]
Claiming art is also reclaiming space, Juneteenth
Juneteenth could possibly be seen as the most significant event in American history after independence itself—the eradication of American slavery. On June 19, 1865, more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the word finally came down to slaves in Texas, the westernmost of the Confederate states. Juneteenth became so significant in [...]
Texan the model online art buyer
Houston oilman Roland Sledge of VAALCO Energy is the archetype of the outsider art buyer the big auction houses are hoping to rope in to what they hope will be an resurgence in online art sales, after a decade of disappointment that proved the obvious: few people are willing to drop four or five figures [...]
Patrick Renner’s Window into Houston set to open at Magnolia; developer Petersen profiled
Patrick Renner’s Window Into Houston installation, the second at Blaffer’s new satellite space in the display windows of the historic Magnolia Ice House and brewery building, is set to open on June 29, and Downtown Houston profiles Jim Petersen, the engineer/developer/ art supporter who donated the space. After major structural renovation, says Petersen, the idea [...]
Scorched: Texas Summer Malaise, in Pictures
When we came back down to visit Texas a few years after moving to New England in a giant green Mercury Continental, I have the distinct memory of stepping out of the car and then climbing right back in, because the air outside was like jumping into hell itself — so freaking, searingly, take-your-breath-away hot. ”How do people survive here? How do they [...]
Michael Guidry at the Galveston Art Center
I love Galveston. But, like Houston, it’s an acquired taste. It’s got lovely old buildings in various states of decay interspersed with not-so-lovely and downright crappy structures. It’s gritty, with a deserved air of melancholy and if it were located on a less hurricane prone coast it would have been wholly gentrified and cutesified by [...]
The Catelope Owns You T-Shirt!
Gary Sweeny, Kristy Perez, and Kimberly Aubuchon are selling custom T-Shirts, including the Catelope (below) at a “T-shirt release party” on June 23 from 6-9pm at MBS Fitness next to the new Liberty Bar in King William. If T-shirts and fitness aren’t your thing, David Shelton Gallery (located right next door to MBS) is opening [...]
New West TX pilgrimage: really big, really slow clock under construction near Van Horn
OK, so you’ been to Roden Crater, You’ve visited Magee’s Hill, Chinati, Spiral Jetty and all . . .what next? Inventor Danny Hillis, futurist Stewart Brand, musician Brian Eno, Wired editor Kevin Kelly and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and a cast of West coast dreamers are all involved in the Long Now Foundation, whose project [...]
Mary’s Lounge Mural Resurrected: Montrose Improvement Bureau Saves Gay Icon
Work begins today on the resurrection of the Mary’s Lounge mural on Westheimer near Montrose in Houston. The painting, which for years identified the iconic Montrose bar as ground zero for the Houston gay scene, has been weathered, papered-over and obscured. The latest project by Cody Ledvina’s Montrose Improvement Bureau is supposed to be finished [...]
Naptistm Interpreted: Is it Art or Just Healthy Living?
The Houston Chronicle‘s Naheeda Sayeeduddin attended Emily Sloan’s Southern Naptist Convention at 14 Pews, leaving confused about the event’s message. Although appreciating Sloan’s piece as religious satire, she sees Sloan’s Napping Affects Performance group primarily as an advocacy org for the health benefits of afternoon naps with albeit kooky ways of getting the word out!
I Like Texas and Texas Likes Me
Who would’ve thought I’d ever be shilling for Texas, with a glass half-full at that? But having recently spent some time back in The Bayou City that’s exactly what I’m about to do. Distance lends itself to a certain amount of objectivity. It also lets one stay out of the back-biting and other acts of [...]
Flow: Dalton Maroney 1982-2011
The Arlington Museum of Art’s current exhibition surveying the career of Dalton Maroney covers one year shy of three decades. His work is inspired by the boat form of Colorado fly fishing, and more specifically to the landlocked eye of North Texas, the canoe. Meticulous handcrafting, hearty wooden frames, and painted hues drenched by the [...]
Don’t Be Afraid of the Ants
Probably one of the most stirring moments in the art world in the past year was the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video, “A Fire in My Belly” from the Smithsonian and the public dissent that followed. The film was initially on display at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery as part of the exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference [...]
Dallas’ Dunn and Brown Split: New Talley Dunn Gallery Emerges
Dunn and Brown Contemporary is splitting up after twelve years at 5020 Tracy St. in Dallas. According to gallery co- founder Talley Dunn, the split reflects the partners’ personal preferences and aspirations; Dunn will continue with a public gallery at the old location, consolidating from a roster of 35 artists to 21. Brown plans to [...]
Guns, Paganism Plague Public Art in Texas
You can’t please everybody: separate sculptural commissions in Fort Worth and Lubbock are each hitting snags as public wrangling over their content, from both ends of the political spectrum: the Vaquero slated to be installed on Main St. near the historic Stockyards in Fort worth is toting a holstered gun; the iconic “Windy Man” reliefs [...]
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston: Crunching the Numbers, Part III
(For Part I and Part II, click here and here.) This series has considered the finances of a number of mid-sized, contemporary U.S. arts institutions outside of the major contemporary arts hubs of New York and Los Angeles. In Texas, these have included the Dallas Contemporary and Arthouse, and, because of the proposed merger, the [...]
Adams, Daniel-Kayne sent to France in TFAA artist trade-off
Reginald Adams, director of the Museum of Cultural Arts in Houston, and artist Daniel-Kayne are travelling to the Centre Léon Bérard Hospital in Lyon, France to paint murals with sick French children. It’s part of an exchange sponsored by the Texan French Alliance for the Arts, which brought two French artists to Houston in 2008 [...]
Sheerin Steps Down as Director of CentralTrak: Fontenot steps up to the plate
A. Kate Sheerin, Director of CentralTrak, The University of Texas at Dallas three-year-old Artists Residency program. In a doleful email the CentralTrak team announced Sheerin’s plans to unfold her life in Austin (director of the Austin Museum of Arthouse?) but brightened up when further announcing portraitist, curator, and current CentralTrak resident Heyd Fontenot as the [...]
