Menil, Surls Comment on Art Guys Marry A Plant Removal
Mimi Swartz of Texas Monthly has been busy since Friday, when Glasstire published the Art Guys’ announcement that their controversial piece, The Art Guys Marry a Plant, was to be removed from the Menil Collection’s lawn, where it has been planted since 2011. On Friday, Swartz was CC’d a scathing email from artist James Surls [...]
Michael Findlay Speaks Sanity: Connoisseurship in our Commodity Culture
Culturemap interviewed art dealer Michael Findlay about his new book, The Value of Art, which de-myhologizes some of the current hype surrounding contemporary art prices by putting it in historical context. Findlay spoke at the Menil Collection at a members-only event on Monday, November 19.
Dispatches from Documenta: Part III, Can art change the world?
For Part I, click here. For Part II, click here. Why do certain artworks have such a lasting impact? To stay with me, artworks usually have to affect some kind of change in me. I believe that art can change the world by changing the way you see the world or making your experience as [...]
’bout sound and vision
Experimental Eye and The Sounds of Silence. The next 6 weeks bring Houstonians rare opportunities to see some of the most dynamic experimental films in history- many shown on delicious 16mm film! Four upcoming film screenings–one presented by the Aurora Picture Show, and three co-presented by the Menil Collection and Rice Media Center–showcase a diversity [...]
Glass Satire: Serras Interruptus
Bryan Miller launches his new series, Glass Satire, with scenes from Richard Serra at the Menil.
Interview with Stephen Vitiello
Stephen Vitiello is a sound artist who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has exhibited around the world and collaborated with artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Tony Oursler, Julie Mehretu, Scanner, Nam June Paik and Steve Roden. Vitiellio’s first Texas solo exhibition was at Texas Gallery and the gallery has also produced the 2001 17:48 [...]
Laura Lark Loves You #2: Quake That Thing; California Uber Artists; Where’s a Man to Go?
Questions? Comments? Ideas? Send them to: lauralark@glasstire.com (or leave your message below) Dear Readers, Welcome back to Laura Lark Loves You! Please excuse the lack of an umlaut in the word “uber”–if anyone knows how to do that kind of stuff here, please don’t hesitate to contact me. 1. James Turrell, The Art World’s Original [...]
Picasso Vandalized at Menil Collection
Pablo Picasso’s Woman in a Red Armchair (1929) was vandalized last week when a man in a dark suit approached the piece and stenciled the word “Conquista” and a picture of a bull across the figure’s face. A video uploaded to YouTube shows the whole thing, and dedicates the piece to “the art beast Pablo [...]
A better world is a small thing to ask for: Danny Lyon at the Menil
You need to go see Danny Lyon’s brilliant photographs while they’re up at the Menil. The words that follow contain praise, but also doubt, disappointment and resentment. Should my feelings become obscured by muddled expression, please return to the first sentence. I was immediately disappointed upon entering the small gallery that houses This World Is [...]
Midtown Arts Fest Vies with Menil Community Arts Festivals to Blanket Houston with Art This Saturday
It never rains (or let’s hope not), but it pours: The 13th Midtown VISIONS Cultural Arts Tour returns on Saturday, April 14. From noon to 5 p.m., Midtown galleries, art studios, complexes, parks and museums are having a massive open house. Organized for 13 years by volunteers Vikki Trammell and Benton Russell of Art Supply [...]
Menil Gets Bank of America Grant to Restore Chamberlain Sculptures
The Menil Collection has been granted an unspecified, but “generous” amount of money to restore 12 sculptures by the American artist John Chamberlain through Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project. The Menil is one of four domestic projects awarded a grant. Chamberlain’s steel works “possess inherent vulnerabilities”, from flaking paint to rust, and grime in [...]
Saturday! Sources and Echoes at Richmond Hall Celebrate a Decade of Nameless Sound
This Saturday, a 5-hour marathon of improvised music will fill complement Dan Flavin’s sideshow lighting at the Menil’s Richmond Hall. Eighteen graduates of the Nameless Sound creative music education program will perform back to back, with attendees free to wander in and out of the free event from 2:30-7:30. At 8pm, the concert moves next [...]
As Frescoes Lift Off, De Menil Posits New Uses for the Menil’s Second Chapel of Emptiness
On March 6, workers unscrewed the conveniently removable lid of theMenil’s Byzantine Fresco chapel to remove the sacred bits and Culturemap’s Tyler Rudick was on hand, with a photographer, to interview architect Francois de Menil, Dominique’s son and designer of the frosted glass fantast that has supported the 13th century fragments during their stay in [...]
Smithsonian’s Sheryl Kolasinski to be New Menil CEO and Deputy Director
After a national search, Josef Helfenstein, director of the Menil Collection, has named Sheryl Kolasinski to fill the institution’s newly minted position of Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer. Kolasinski will strategize with Helfenstein on long range plans, while overseeing the museum’s finances, real estate, bookstore, security, information technology, legal matters, and facilities operation and [...]
Happy Queue Year
A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I began binge viewing art documentaries. We started with Herb and Dorothy (2008), the story of an elderly middle-class couple whose private collection of art, amassed over 50 years, directly challenges the preconceived notions of what a prominent New York City art collector looks like. Herb, a life-long [...]
Britt-Darby Guerrila Action On YouTube: Art Guys Plant Piece “Sucks”
Houston Chronicle art Critic and “Art Guys Marry a Plant” dissenter Douglas Britt-Darby Darby-Britt Britt-Darby has a posted a new YouTube video. Filmed on Thanksgiving day, the video, titled “Dario Robleto Knew Nothing About This,” (changed from the original title this morning, “The Art Guys vs. Dario Robleto”) shows a breathless and muttering Britt-Darby Darby-Britt [...]
Menil Launches Online Artists Documentation Program Archive, with Whitney and Harvard
Former Menil chief conservator Carol Mancusi-Ungaro began interviewing artists, in the presence of their works of art in 1990, recording their attitudes and feelings toward the works’ conservation and exhibition. The series of videotaped interviews snowballed into the The Menil Collection’s Artist documentation Program, with 33 artists on record. Now, the ADP interview collection is [...]
At Last, A Menil Cafe! Rice Building Workshop Designs Minimalist Food Truck Pavillion Behind Bookstore.
One upside of the Menil’s continuing moves towards doing things the way other museums do them is the addition of a much-needed cafe, announced yesterday. The Menil Collection and Rice University’s Rice Building Workshop are joining forces to design and construct a café across Sul Ross Street from the museum’s main entrance, on the 50-by-64-foot [...]
Menil curator Kristina Van Dyke takes new job as Director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis
Kristina Van Dyke, Curator for Collections and Research at The Menil Collection has been named the new Director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, MO; she begins work on November 7. At The Menil Collection since 2005, Van Dyke co-managed the Curatorial Department; supervised the Exhibition Department, Archives, and Library; initiated [...]