Read All About It: Art Guys and Menil Given a UK-Style Thrashing in HuffPost, UK Way Back in 2011!
In case you missed it, (as I did!) a piece titled “Homophobia and the Arts” co-written by blogger James Payne and artist Michael Petry appeared in the Huffington Post, UK in late December, 2011. In the strongly-worded piece, Payne and Petry mention misleading signage downplaying Rauschenberg’s same-sex relationships at several exhibitions as an example of [...]
BREAKING NEWS: Art Guys say Menil is removing “The Art Guys Marry A Plant”
Glasstire has received the following email from the Art Guys: The Menil Collection has decided to remove “The Art Guys Marry A Plant” from their collection. Tentative plans are to remove the tree and plaque and return them to us soon, perhaps sometime next week, although the specifics have not yet been determined. We offer [...]
More Magritte
Forget iPhone 5. Instead of buying the latest Apple gadget, I’ve added Magritte VI to my credit card bill. Nothing Apple sells stirs my covetousness like a book on Magritte–and when that book adds to The Menil Foundation’s catalogue raisonne, well, Katy bar the door. Unlike its five predecessors, this new one offers color reproductions of all the [...]
THE MENIL CONNECTION
Celebrating the legendary de Menil years of the Rice Museum and Rice Media Center. The Menil Collection’s 25th anniversary this year has had me thinking a lot about its importance in my life and in the cultural landscape of this city. It has also made me think about the much-longer-than-25-years history of John and Dominique [...]
“Silence” at the Menil Collection
The Program Will Begin Shortly… Silence is Toby Kamps’ first major exhibition at The Menil Collection since becoming curator of modern and contemporary art two years ago. You should not miss it. It’s been too long since you visited the Chapel anyway. But silence can be hard to find. We arrive at the Rothko Chapel [...]
Asia Society’s Velders to Direct Alabama’s Mobile Museum of Art
Deborah Velders, Deputy Director of the New Asia Society Texas Center is leaving Houston to take over as director of the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama. She will begin her duties Sept. 15, according to Allen Oaks, M.D., chairman of Mobile Museum’s board. “We’re very excited to have her,” Oaks says. “She’s extremely knowledgeable [...]
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 [...]
Abstraction Triumvirate: Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Jules Olitski
When Richard Serra’s drawing retrospective opened at the Menil Collection, it was SERRAPALOOZA. Throngs of people congregated at the Menil, many of us on the outside lawn in festival fashion, to hear Serra in conversation with the Menil’s Michelle White, one of the exhibition’s curators. Having just spent the last few months working with the [...]
Byzantine Frescos to Go-Go as Chapel Closes Sunday, March 4.
March 4 will be the final day to see the Byzantine frescoes currently nestled in their frosted glass framework at the Menil’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel. The works, which the Menil rescued, then borrowed from the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, are being returned at the conclusion of a 28-year loan. Explorations are underway on how best [...]
Ancestors of the Lake Catalog Wins Menil Prix International du Livre d’Art Tribal
The catalog for last summer’s Menil exhibition Ancestors of the Lake: Art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea has won the third annual Prix International du Livre d’Art Tribal (International Tribal Art Book Prize). An esteemed panel of jurors from Tribal Art Magazine, Sotheby’s, and academia who called it, “a stunning look at [...]
Married But Two Years, the Art Guys Plant Spouse in Menil Lawn, Alive Yet!
In a ceremony officiated by National Book Critics Circle Winner Lawrence Weschler, Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Art Guys will officially dedicate the tree from their 2009 piece “Art Guys Marry a Plant” at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, November 19th in Menil Park in Houston. The piece, originally created for No [...]
Menil Moves to Cement New Talent: Michelle White Promoted to Full Curator
Michelle White, who curated such fascinating, unexpected shows as Imaginary Spaces: Selections from the Menil Collection; Leaps into the Void: Documents of Nouveau Realist Performance, and the recently opened Seeing Stars: Visionary Drawing from the Collection, has been promoted from associate to full curator at Houston’s Menil collection. Menil Director Josef Helfenstein said, “In a [...]
Houston Museum District Day Saturday: Everyone Doing Everything All At Once!
On Saturday, September 17, Sixteen museums congregated in southern Montrose are collectively celebrating themselves by offering free admission and nonstop free events, films and activities: everything from tai-chi to Czech glassblowing, all happening simultaneously between 10am-5pm. A free shuttle bus service will to help you and yours visit as many as possible!
Texas Art Travel: Houston
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 [...]
Cy Twombly dead at 83
America’s first graffiti painter Cy Twombly died in Rome Tuesday at the age of 83. Known for his groundbreaking (or wall breaking) conflation of drawing, painting and writing, he is memorialized in an eponymous pavilion at Houston’s Menil Collection, which has an extensive collection of his works. Oddly enough, his contemporary Donald Judd, also beloved [...]