POWER in the Contemporary Art World
The implosion of the Austin art world has got me thinking about art world power dynamics, as I mentioned last week in my published correspondence with Rachel Cook. The resignation of Blanton director Ned Rifkin and deputy director for external affairs and operations Simone Wicha’s instantaneous appointment to the position, the elimination of Arthouse curator [...]
Hybrid Art Summit TODAY!
As the culmination of all the hybridizing, canoodling and commingling going on in Austin at the Fusebox Festival, Texas Biennial, and Art Week Austin, the Art Alliance Austin has organized the Hybrid Art Summit 2011 On Saturday, April 30 (hey, that’s TODAY!) 10am-4pm at the AMOA. Participants including artist Jon Rubin of Pittsburgh; Sarah L. [...]
Chinati Community Day
On Sunday, May 1 Marfa’s Chinati Foundation, unscorched amid the recent wildfires, will open it’s doors for Community Day with free brunch, free tours, free Giant Art Project in the Arena, and special lectures by Thomas Kellein, the new director, on Donald Judd’s 100 Works in Mill Aluminum, Rob Weiner, Associate Director, on John Wesley, [...]
Smithsonian peacemaker
Lee Rosenbaum’s Culturegrrl blog reports that an unnamed conservative congressman went to bat for the Smithsonian’s right to show A Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz, relieving some of the political pressure on the institution from right-wing Republicans hoping to make political hay out of the Smithsonian’s curatorial decisions. Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s under [...]
Austin Weekend Cliff Notes April 29-31
There is too much to do in Austin this weekend! So whether you’re from here of need an excuse to visit these are my picks to help you manage your time with events, closings and deadlines. This is the last weekend for the Fusebox Festival. At the end of its two week run of experimental [...]
Brazarre, indeed
Brazarre, and “artful bras” event benefiting the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life Greater Heights will showcase “creatively crafted bras by local artists” which will be auctioned off for charity at G Gallery on April 30 from 6-9pm. Leaving out all the double entendres and risqué puns from the press release, that’s about the whole [...]
Piero Fenci named Texas Master
Piero Fenci has been named Texas Master craftsman of 2012 by the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Fenci is the fourth Texas Master, and will receive a solo show at HCCC in the summer of 2012 and will jury the center’s CraftTexas 2014 exhibition. Fenci has been a teacher and the head of the ceramics [...]
Electronic music for young women
Electronic music artists Bonnie Jones & Suzanne Thorpe are going to be showing young women how to to build contact microphones and use them to turn everyday objects into instruments in a free workshop on Saturday, April 30 from 12-2 pm at labotanica, 2316 Elgin, Houston. The workshop is sponsored by Nameless Sound, labotanica & [...]
Copycat
‘It was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing’ – Anon., ‘The Richard Mutt Case,’ 1917. Who hasn’t copied something? Dress it up with whatever word you’d like, sampling, stealing, reproduction, or, if you want to flex your theoretical muscles, pastiche, quotation, or appropriation. I’m going with the last one. The recent case, Cariou v. Prince, [...]
Despite Galveston, Avis Frank!
“Despite the fact that Galveston is a city of 50,000 and in no way large enough to sustain the sales required for a successful gallery,” the new Avis Frank Gallery is opening its doors for its first art event this Friday, April 29, from 6-9 pm with a group show featuring works by Patrick Medrano, [...]
Hive begins to swarm
On Friday, April 29, Hive Houston is raising awareness (and cash) with musical performances at AvantGarden. What is Hive Houston? It’s a utopian community of creatives inside a tower of repurposed cargo containers- all on paper so far, but teetering ever closer to reality, even as its instigator, Nestor Topchy, whose track record of similar [...]
Rifkin resigns Blanton, Wicha up next
Ned Rifkin, director of the Blanton Museum in Austin and UT prof, is resigning his museum job to focus on research and teaching as of May 31. The footsore Rifkin has already been director of the Hirshhorn in D.C., the Menil Collection, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, as well as undersecretary for [...]
Inner Art Corridor open studios
Houston’s Inner Art Corridor is opening its many studio doors on Saturday, April 30 from 3-9pm. The 6th annual event showcases 100+ artists in the increasingly densely artist infested warehouse spaces in the First and Sixth Wards including Spring Street Studios, Winter Street Studios, Summer Street Studios (there is no Autumn St. in the First [...]
Virtually live: Low Lives 3
Low Lives 3 is an exhibition of live performance-based works transmitted over the web and projected in real time at multiple venues around the world, including Box13 in Houston. Fifty live performances will be streamed over two days: April 29, from 7-10pm, and April 30, from 2-5pm, including “everyone’s favorite exhibitionist” Houston artist Jenny Schlief [...]
They shoot curators, don’t they?
Two Friday’s ago the Texas Biennial hosted a Curator’s Meeting in Austin. The event, supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Linda Pace Foundation, sought to bring together curators and other arts professionals from around the state. It was held at and co-hosted by Arthouse, the organization which had just decided that [...]
Friis-Hansen: “Set the Art Museums on Fire”
Ex-Austin Museum of Art curator and “art conoisseur” Dana Friis-Hansen will share the stage with burlesque dancer Jori Lodes, furniture maker Michael Yates, musician Southpaw Jones, and a squad of other assorted cultural figures at Pecha Kucha #11 in Austin at Seaholm Power Plant on Wednesday night at 8:20pm. His five minute talk is titled [...]
Maria Guzman
Maria Guzman interprets her world into playfully grotesque, allegorical paintings, installations, sculptures and performances. In settings inspired by a mixed cultural identity (Italy, South America and USA) Maria renders herself as Alejandra, an elderly blogger, and her family as troubled elephants and mythical man beasts amongst other incarnations. Visit Alejandra’s blog (Maria’s alter-ego): alejandralejandra.blogspot.com/
There’s a day for that?
Houston Mayor Annise Parker declared April 19 “Mica Mossbacher Day”, in recognition of Mrs. Mossbacher, Honorary Consul to Iceland, as the “citizen responsible for beginning (and seeing through) the process that has given us Tolerance at Harmony Walk.” Parker worked for Mossbacher’s deceased husband, oilman and prolific Republican political fundraiser Robert A. Mossbacher, for 18 [...]
Dueling Houston art fairs
Two competing art fairs scheduled for this fall in Houston have set the CAMH and the MFAH at odds. The Houston Fine Art Fair is scheduled for Sept. 15-18; The Texas Contemporary fair is scheduled for Oct. 20-23. Both are in the George R. Brown Convention Center. Each fair would benefit one of the institutions [...]
Liz Alexander Visual Art Award
The Houston Art Alliance has announced the Liz Alexander Visual Art Award, honoring the memory of Liz Alexander, a longtime HAA staffer who died suddenly in April 2010. The award, a minimum of $1,000 funded by contributions from Alexander’s former colleagues at HAA and other private donations, will go to an emerging visual artist living [...]
