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- 09/02/10
- Bill Davenport
The new Visual Arts Center at UT Austin has announced its premier lineup, a slew of shows scheduled to begin later this month, when the center opens its doors. Five exhibition spaces kick off with five new shows: an installation by LA artist Ry Rocklen; a sumi-ink party with Lucky Dragons, an experimental artist duo and music group, also from LA; 8 various artists deconstructing totality; a solo exhibition by Mexico-based artist Magali Lara; and "Unveiled," an exhibition composed of work from students and alumni from the Department of Art and Art History. And a partridge in a pear tree.
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- 09/02/10
- Bill Davenport
Even the renowned Huffington Post is calling for an end to the madness! In a lengthy and well-researched blog, Daniel Grant interviews dozens of critics, dealers, curators and artists who ought to know what they're talking about, and nearly all of them have no use for that scourge of the contemporary artworld, the artist's statement. Just say no!
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- 09/01/10
- Bill Davenport
The latest email from Dallas artist Tracy Hicks has him two weeks into his Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, looking for a $1000 microscope attachment to photograph the skins of frogs preserved in the Smithsonian's collections. It's part of his emotionally charged, cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional comparisons of human and frog skin.
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- 09/01/10
- Bill Davenport
Weather and vandalism have dimmed Paintbrush Alley's funky glory. The San Angelo landmark needs a face lift and The Downtown San Angelo group is asking artists to help on September 18, “redo day” for the eccentric art-filled corrodor between West Twohig and West Concho avenues, created in 2005 by Sue Rainey, Julie Raymond, Melodie McDonald, Ellen Lasatter and dozens of other local artists and volunteers. Sketches of proposed painting, sculpture, and graffiti projects are being collected now. “We’re willing to look at anything,” said Brenda Gunter, vice president of the downtown group.
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- 08/31/10
- Bill Davenport
Dallas Artist Doug MacWithey passed away unexpectedly last Thursday at age 58 of a blood clot. A memorial service has been scheduled for 2pm Saturday, September 4 at Grace United Methodist Church in Dallas, with a reception at the home of arts writer Dee Mitchell, a longtime friend and recent collaborator of MacWithey's, afterwards.
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- 08/31/10
- Bill Davenport
Hanger Orthopedic Group, a maker of prosthetic devices, is holding a contest to find art for it's new headquarters in Austin. Texas artists will vie for a $10,000 prize plus display space for at least two years in the company's offices. Ten finalists will also receive $500 awards. According to the press release, submissions should reflect the theme "moving lives forward," not the myriad of darker images that immediately suggest themselves. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 19.
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- 08/30/10
- Bill Davenport
Cris Worley, former Director of PanAmerican ArtProjects will open her own gallery in Dallas in September, co-habiting with Marfa's Gallery Urbane under one roof at 2277 Monitor Street, Dallas. The new Cris Worley Fine Arts will kick-off its new gallery space with an opening reception for “Epic|Epoch” on Thursday, September 9, from 5:30 – 8:30pm.
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- 08/30/10
- Bill Davenport
Austin's OK Mountain Collective is on a roll. Thay have created a new video installation, Water, Water Everywhere So Let's All Have a Drink, a satirical send-up of mass media that's on at the Austin Museum of Art through Nov. 14 as part of the New Works series, quarterly shows that focus on local and regional art. Following its display in Austin, the piece will be included in the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans’ Prospect 1.5 exhibition later this year.
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- 08/29/10
- Bill Davenport
Arthouse in Austin has lined up a scintillating series of visiting curators to lecture and give studio critiques over the next few months, including Nicolaus Schafhausen, Artistic and Financial Director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Paul Ha, Director of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and ex-Texan Franklin Sirmans, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Each visitor will give a public talk and select a handful of local artists to meet for studio visits. Arthouse members from Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties can apply by October 1 for consideration.
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- 08/29/10
- Bill Davenport
San Antonio muralist Claudio Aguillon has just finished a prominent piece on the side of La Gloria Ice House at PearlBrewery. The 38-year old painter's work adorns many SA walls, including Picante Grill and Taco Haven, the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center, Southwest High School, and Taquería Mexico, where he got his start as an art student looking for a few bucks to pay his tuition. Aguillon is interviewed as a Mexican-American successs story in today's SA Express-News.
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- 08/28/10
- Bill Davenport
A judge in Brownsville on Thursday set a January trial date for 20-year-old Ernesto Ivan Martinez, accused of the grisly murder of Barry Horn, director of the Brownsville Art Museum on the morning before the museum's annual gala last year. Martinez pled not guilty at his arraignment in Feruary, but a judge in May ruled that a videotaped confession obtained by police in which Martinez admits to stabbing the museum director, claiming he was drunk and angry because Horn had raped him two weeks previously, will be allowed during trial.
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- 08/28/10
- Bill Davenport
The Old Jail Art Center in Albany, TX has announced the appointment of Thomas W. Jones as its new Executive Director. Jones, was formely director of the Museum of the Southwest in Midland. Conversely, in june the The Museum of the Southwest's Board of Trustees announced the resignation of its Executive Director Thomas W. Jones after 16 years of service to pursue "new challenges."
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- 08/27/10
- Bill Davenport
Textbook conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim is interviewed in today's Houston Chronicle by Douglas Britt. Oppenheim's Radiant Fountains, a series of LED-lit giant splash sculptures at Bush Intercontnental Airport are nearing completion. Asked the inevitable, "what's an earth-art guy like you doing art in a place like this? question, Oppenheim's answer is poignant career advice: when "all the museums that want to support you have done so, and there's no one left, you have to go and reinvent yourself."
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- 08/27/10
- Bill Davenport
The Menil bookstore will re-open on September first under the management of veteran art bookseller Paul Forsythe following a two-month renovation. The new store will include a children’s section, an ongoing display of local art that resonates with the Menil and, of course, books.
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- 08/26/10
- Bill Davenport
LA Times art critic Christopher Knight looks to Houston's Menil Collection as a model for what the new Broad Museum of art can do for Los Angeles. Calling the Menil "the nation's most universally admired single-collector art museum," Knight hopes that New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who will design Broad's building will "spend a lot of time in Houston between now and then." now, if they could only fix the Broad collection itself . . .
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- 08/26/10
- Bill Davenport
Joseph Bravo will be the new executive director of the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen. The 50 year former motorcycle racer and all around rock 'n' roll dude promises to focus on local art, saying “If you don’t show it in McAllen, where the heck are you going to show it, right?”
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- 08/25/10
- Bill Davenport
On September 27, The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear Kleinman v. City of San Marcos, in which the city is trying to remove a junked-car sculpture and the artists and owner are fighting to preserve it on first amendment grounds. Michael Kleinman, the piece's owner, held a car-bash to promote his business, then planted cacti in the wreck and comissioned Scott Wade and John Furly Travis to embellish it with paintings. The city wants the piece removed under a junked-car ordinance, sparking another of those entertaining lawsuits in which the courts take up the question of "what is art?" The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the city, deeming legal protections described in an earlier case refer "solely to great works of art.” Tune in for further developments.
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- 08/24/10
- Bill Davenport
The Houston Press' Troy Schulze gripes about a stump in this weeks' paper. The stump, or lump, planted in downtown Houston's Market Square park, is actually a dog carved by James Phillips from a live oak tree killed by Hurricane Ike in Galveston. Though Schulze calls the piece a brown lump, its syrupy varnish makes it seem more like pancakes. Schul;ze gets in a sideswipe at James Surls Point of View whle he's there.
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- 08/24/10
- Bill Davenport
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has proudly, though not unexpectedly, announced that it has gained accreditation from the American Association of Museums, yet again. It's a smallish club: along with the Sam Houston Historical Museum in Huntsville, and the U.S. Army Medical Department Museum at Fort Sam Houston, MAMFW is one of 39 museums accredited in Texas.
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- 08/23/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston artist Trenton Doyle Hancock is putting the finishing touches on A Better Promise at the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park. The site specific piece includes a 25-foot aluminum hand suspended from the PACCAR Pavilion’s ceiling, perforated to reveal wall drawings and nine offertory vitrines ready to receive colored bottle tops deposited by visitors. The opening is on August 27.
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- 08/23/10
- Bill Davenport
The city of San Marcos has been saving up its hotel tax dollars, and is in the process of approving a new permanent sculpture dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon B. Johnson at the intersection og MLK and LBJ Drives. Plans for the monument, known as the LBJ/MLK Crossroads Project, are still in flux, but according to the city, the intersection may represent the only example in Texas of a point where two streets bearing the names of those two men meet.
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- 08/22/10
- Bill Davenport
A San Antonio program enrolling graffiti taggers in a summer art class (sometimes by court order) was dissected in an article in the San Antonio Express-News yesterday. 20 artistically inclined youths repainted their previous, unauthorized, works on the 19th St. Dam with six murals depicting Chicano history, San Antonio, the environment and the river. Described as "cool" by students who appear to be benefitting from the instruction, the program's directors are "realistic" about its utility as a graffiti abatement tool.
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- 08/22/10
- Bill Davenport
The Idea Fund is fixin' to hand out another round of grants to non-traditional art and art-like projects in Houston. Confused? They're also planning a set of information sessions that will tell you just what they're looking for and how to apply. The first is Wednesday, August 25 at 6:30pm at DiverseWorks ArtSpace, followed by others on Wednesday, September 8 at 1pm at Aurora Picture Show, 1524 Sul Ross; and Wednesday, September 15 at 1pm at Project Row Houses, 2521 Holman. Applications are due October 15.
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- 08/21/10
- Bill Davenport
A 25-foot tall steel pickaxe by artist Michael Clapper was delivered to the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso Friday, where it will be sited in athe roundabout at University Ave. and Sunbowl Drive. The piece, titled Mining Minds includes perforations encoding inspirational words from the university's president and lights up at night to boot!
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- 08/21/10
- Bill Davenport
UNCRATED , the new blog from the Dallas Museum of Art went online on August 10, with a lonely post about the work going on for the installation of their upcoming African Masks show. Written by a team of DMA staffers, the blog promises a "behind-the-scenes look into life at the DMA."
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- 08/20/10
- Bill Davenport
Projects of John and Dominique de Menil, the first book to examine the beloved Houston philanthopists' contributions to art, architecture, film, and the civil and human rights movements is scheduled to come out on November 1, 2010. The 350-page tome was edited by Josef Helfenstein and Laureen Schipsi and includes a complete chronology of de Menil projects, exhibition history, a listing of the Menil film archive, and a selected bibliography.
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- 08/20/10
- Bill Davenport
Last month the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston announced the acquisition of 160 works of decorative art and craft from the exceptional collection of Leatrice and Melvin Eagle of Potomac, Maryland. The Eagle Collection includes ceramics by California-based artists who revolutionized the field such as Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, John Mason, Ron Nagle, Ken Price, and Peter Voulkos.
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- 08/19/10
- Bill Davenport
The Texas Sunflower Project is competing for a $50,000 grant from Pepsi's Refresh Project to plant 50 giant metal sunflowers with rotating, self-sustaining LED lights across Texas. The sculptures, made from recycled solar panels and colored LEDs can soak up sunlight during the day and light up at night under their own power. Howard Weliver, builder of the first such sunflower near White Rock Lake outside Dallas, is an artist/businessman who wants to "create art that produces energy." The project ranks 337th on Pepsi's list right now (only the top ten get funded), and online voting will end on August 31.
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- 08/19/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston artist, gallerist and internet bottom-feeder Cody Ledvina has restarted his "200 and under " blog, which features minute-long youtube videos with fewer than 200 views. If you've got some time on your hands, he's looking for suggestions.
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- 08/18/10
- Bill Davenport
Dr. Thomas Kellein has been appointed the new director of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. Kellein was formerly director of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, where he curated Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955-1968. He replaces longtime Chinati head Marianne Stockebrand. Credited with turning a fledgling organization into one of international stature over her sixteen year tenure, Stockebrand will retire to become Director Emeritus.
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- 08/18/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston do-it yourself gallery The Joanna has relocated to it's former satellite space, known as the Joannex, at 1401 Graustark, catercorner from the furthest edge of the Menil Collection's immaculate lawn.
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- 08/17/10
- Bill Davenport
Valerie Cassel Oliver has been promoted to Senior Curator at Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum, filling the hole left by Toby Kamps as he moves on over to a position at the Menil Collection. A native Houstonian, UT alum, Oliver has been curator at the CAMH since 2006, organizing, among others, Black Light/White Noise, Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft, and the current Jennifer West show. She will assume her new duties on October 1.
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- 08/17/10
- Bill Davenport
With the passage of resolution HCR111 and its signing on June 18, Comedian/juggler Chris Bliss and "MyBillofRights.org" have received approval to release designs and begin fundraising for a Bill of Rights Plaza in front of the Texas Supreme Court in Austin, adjacent to the historic Texas Capitol. The plaza will feature the various provisions of the original Bill of rights on stone benches, surrounded by fancy pavement.
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- 08/16/10
- Bill Davenport
The city of Austin is sponsoring a free workshop on creating new nonprofit tax-exempt corporations in Texas. Featuring attorney Frances Leos Martinez, Executive Director of Texas C-BAR, a statewide business law program for nonprofit organizations.August 18, 1-4pm at Austin City Hall, Boards & Commissions Room 1101.
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- 08/16/10
- Bill Davenport
No, not beaded buckskins! The third annual Houston Fringe Festival kicks off it's three-weekend series of edgy, multi-disciplinary performance this Friday, August 19 at Frenetic Theater. Promising a fun, immersive festival, with performances of 30 minutes or less, and ending with an even more ADD friendly "anything goes" weekend on September 10 and 11.
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- 08/15/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston Center for Photography, the Texan French Alliance for the Arts, and Hermann Park Conservancy are co-sponsoring a "Pics in the Park Photo Contest" featuring the sculpture of Bernar Venet, whose massive steel pieces have littered the Houston park this summer like enormous curly fries. The contest is open to all: just visit the exhibition and take some photos; HCP will include them in an online exhibition, and award prizes in October. The deadline for submissions is September 30!
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- 08/15/10
- Bill Davenport
This December, the Dallas Museum of Art is planning an exhibition in conjunction with Superbowl 45 (Romans, go home!), to be held in Cowboy Stadium next February. The new stadium is already the subject of a lot of gee, whiz! for its unusual and ambitious contemporary art program. On Dec. 5 the DMA will open "Big New Field: Artists in the Cowboys Stadium Art Program," Co-curated by Jeffrey Grove, senior curator of contemporary art at the DMA, and Charles Wylie, curator of contemporary art, who also served on the stadium's art advisory board.
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- 08/14/10
- Bill Davenport
In September of 2002, God gave Kerrville artist Max Greiner, Jr. a "vision" of large, Christ-honoring sculptures, including a giant cross, displayed in privately owned Sculpture Prayer Gardens, along the major highways of the world. The coming King Foundation, a Texas nonprofit he established in 2004 to realize this vision has erected a 77-foot steel cross atop a hill on I-10 outside Kerrville. The monumental minimalist symbol, titled Open Cross has finally been erected after years of fundraising and controversy.
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- 08/14/10
- Bill Davenport
The new Uptown Blanco Art Center had its grand opening last Friday featuring the layered multi-media work of Blanco-based artist Suzette Connell. The new gallery, in the heart of Bloanco's historic downtown does framing, sells art supplies, and will offer classes for both adults and children, as well as exhibitions.
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- 08/13/10
- Bill Davenport
Austinites will gather this weekend to celebrate the life of Aaron Williams, founder of HAAM, the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and co-founder of AAMP, the Austin Art + Music Partnership, a non-profit org providing resources for visual and perfoming artists, who died last week at his home in South Austin. Williams also invented and patented a product that turns packaging waste into environmentally friendly building products. A memorial service is scheduled at 2pm, August 14th at the AAMP Creative Space, 411 W Monore St. downtown Austin.
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- 08/13/10
- Bill Davenport
UT's Harry Ransome Center is hoping fans will donate $30,000 to restore five dresses worn by actress Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, which will be part of an exhibition marking the oscar-winning movie's 75th anniversary in 2014. The Ransome center acquired the costumes- including the famous "green curtain dress," in the 80's as part of the collection of the film's producer, David O. Selznick. Donations can be made on the Ransom Center website.
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- 08/12/10
- Bill Davenport
Jane Offenbach, former director of external affairs at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas has been named the new president and CEO of Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art, a 55-acre spread in Nashville, Tennessee. Offenbach, formerly Vice President of Marketing for the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, was considered "uniquely positioned" to head the art/garden destination into the 21st century and will asumed ger new duties on September 1.
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- 08/12/10
- Bill Davenport
The Amon Carter Museum will use its recently awarded $150,000 Federal Digitization Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize and catalog nearly 25,000 "priority" photographs in its extensive collection, thus making them avaliable to a larger swathe of humanity. It's one of the six IMLS grants for institutions in Texas, out of 178 nationwide. With roughly 10% of the US population in Texas, shouldn't we have gotten 17? Hmm.
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- 08/11/10
- Bill Davenport
Ubiquitous Chinese gunpowder artist Cai Guo-Qiang will expode a 10-by-162-foot drawing that will line the walls of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's new Chinese art gallery. Cai and his crew will lay 42 panels on the floor and apply gunpowder to them before igniting the drawing with a fuse and manipulating the resulting burn to create the work in a Houston warehouse during a two-day public event on Oct. 5-6. The museum will then install the panels in the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Arts of China Gallery before it opens on October 17. MFAH Director Peter Marzio, who called the video he had seen of Cai's working process "a hoot," said he and Cai "did the deal in about five minutes" after Marzio suggested the commission during a dinner for museum donors the artist attended in the new gallery's raw space. Tickets to watch the fun are free; online reservations begin September 20 on the MFAH's website.
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- 08/11/10
- Bill Davenport
The former owner of a Clayton, Missouri art gallery who disappeared in 2005 was arrested Friday in Texas after being on the lam for five years. Brent A. Farris, 48, pleaded guilty in federal court in St. Louis in 2004 of bankruptcy fraud, admitting that he had concealed the sale of a $300,000 painting by 16th-century Flemish painter Bartholomeus Spranger that he had bought for $750. After his sentencing in 2005, Farris failed to show up at the federal detention center in Louisiana.
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- 08/10/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Found some of those embarrassing undergrad art projects while clearing out the studio? If they're bad enough, the Museum of Bad Art, (MOBA) might be interested. If you aren't already among its legions of fans, check out NPR's story on MOBA and the museum's site.
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- 08/10/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
A new technique called "neuromarketing" blends market research with brain imaging technology. It turns out an electroencephalograph will reveal your preferences more accurately than you will. New Scientist used an EEG to pick the cover of of their magazine and includes an article about neuromarketing. Artists, I smell a project!
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- 08/09/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
A centuries old version of Paris (France, not Texas) lies beneath the city. The Wall Street Journal explores the Paris catacombs, which preserve the city's 17th century layout - in addition to those macabre columns of human bones. (Strolling 65 feet underground sounds pretty appealing when you are above-ground in the Texas heat.)
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- 08/09/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Photographer Jordan Matter's "Dancers Among Us" project captures "guerrilla dance" in NY. Dancers from the Paul Taylor Dance Company perform incredible feats in libraries, parks, restaurants and the Mac Store. Check out the Telegraph's slideshow. And for goofball home-grown Texas guerrilla dance, check out the Sexy Attack blog.
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- 08/08/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Protecting artist's rights gets pretty dramatic when it involves the music industry. The New York Times follows a BMI music-copyright enforcer through bars, restaurants and strip clubs as she tries to get them to pay up for all that music they're playing.
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- 08/08/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
ArtInfo's Andrew Russeth posted his list of top ten artist websites. Art Fag City's Paddy Johnson found the 90% male list too auction-friendly and retaliated with her own favorites.
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- 08/07/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Arts Journal blogger Regina Hackett asks why artist Will Cotton isn't being credited for the arresting visuals he provided for the 31 million hit Katy Perry video. Cotton, who recently appeared as a guest judge on "Work of Art", uses a teeth-aching amount of candy imagery in his work. (You should brush after watching the Perry video.)
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- 08/07/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Are our interior design choices influenced by our prehistoric predecessors? According to a German study, the way people arrange their bedrooms reflects the security concerns of early man. Does this mean, "The bed looks better on the wall opposite the door" subconsciously translates as "I'll have a fighting chance against a sabre-tooth tiger?"
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- 08/06/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
65 years ago today, the Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Gizmodo presents survivors first-person accounts and photographs of the human aftermath.
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- 08/06/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Round three of The Idea Fund is now open for applications. The $4,000 cash awards will be given to "10 Texas-based, artist-generated or artist-centered projects that exemplify the unconventional, interventionist, conceptual, entrepreneurial, participatory, or guerrilla artistic practices that occur outside the traditional framework of support." Applications due Oct. 15, 2010.
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- 08/05/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The SEC has charged Dallas's billionaire Wyly brothers, Sam and Charles, with hiding $550 million in trading profits by using an “an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies". The Dallas Arts District's Wyly Theater at the AT&T Performing Arts Center is named after Charles Wyly and wife Dee. Does this mean that, a la Enron Field, we'll be seeing the "Minute Maid Theater" at the AT&T Performing Arts Center?
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- 08/05/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The Great Depression in living color? FSA photographers like Russell Lee recorded The Great Depression in starkly beautiful black and white images but they shot color as well. The Denver Post has an amazing slideshow of the images. The color makes the era seem more real, and well, less depressing.
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- 08/04/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
You can't get this on Netflix. Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation's opulent "video-opera," "The Rape of the Sabine Women" will be screened tonight only in Dallas. It's part of the Video Association of Dallas's Second Program biennial exhibition of video and new media art. Angelika Mockingbird Station at 7:30 pm. FREE.
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- 08/04/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The art world's Bernie Madoff, New York art dealer Lawerence Salander was sentenced to six to 18 years in state prison on Monday. Salander was convicted of stealing $120 million from clients, investors and Bank of America.
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- 08/04/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
It took eight months of digging but archaeologists have located the entrance to the tunnel that leads to the galleries beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan. The tunnel was sealed off an estimated 1,800 years ago and the galleries are where the ancient city's dead rulers would have been placed. Archaeologists hope to enter the tunnel in the next few months.
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- 08/03/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Novelist and father of seven, Frank Cottrell Boyce argues that kids helped rather than hindered his art. (Does this mean the Duggars should take up painting?)
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- 08/03/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Scientists are going to study Stendhal syndrome by monitoring the vital signs of tourists as they view Florence's Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Will they swoon or won't they?
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- 08/02/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
A dried deer penis, bootleg "Lost" DVDs, a pitcher of salami, bongs, cow dung toothpaste, guinea pig meat, counterfeit viagra…just a few of the objects seized over five days at JFK Airport. Artist Taryn Simon photographed them all for her upcoming book and exhibition "Contraband." You can check out some of the photos as you answer the burning question "What shouldn't I pack?" in the The New York Times Magazine.
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- 08/02/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The Globe and Mail explores savvy and stupid strategies arts organizations are using to promote themselves via social media.
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- 08/01/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
YouTube has increased its upload limit from 10 to 15 minutes! For some this means their video meisterstück can now play in its entirety. For others this means: "More wacky cat antics!" Go crazy.
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- 08/01/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The arts had a over a billion dollar total economic impact on North Texas in 2009, according to a just released study by the Business Council for the Arts. But, as Peter Simek points out in D Magazine's Front Row blog, the construction of Dallas's AT&T Performing Arts Center singlehandedly generated 2009's positive growth.
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- 07/31/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Turrell fans and Quakers rejoice, James Turrell's Skyspace in the Live Oak Friends Meeting House is open again after a more than two year closure. The roof window, which frames a section of sky, was closed down after a wooden component in the opening mechanism rotted out and the entire system had to be redesigned and replaced. Check out the details in Douglas Britt's Houston Chronicle article. The piece is open for public viewing one hour before sunset on Fridays, Live Oak Friends Meeting House. 1318 W. 26th, 713-862-6685.
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- 07/30/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Whether or not the $45 trove of glass photographic plates bought at a California garage sale is worth $200 million is still being debated. Some experts think they were created by Ansel Adams but now other photographers are being suggested. Get the latest on the controversy here.
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- 07/29/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The last roll of Kodachrome film Kodak produced was developed this July. If you've still got some exposed Kodachrome in a drawer somewhere, one of the only commercial labs in the world that still develops the format is Dwayne's Photo Service in Parsons, Kansas - but you've got to get it to them before Dec. 30, 2010.
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- 07/29/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
D Magazine's Front Row blog launches its monthly film series addressing the question “What film do you believe people living in Dallas today need to see?” Public Trust gallery owner Brian Gibb selected the documentary Herb and Dorothy. The acclaimed film tells the true story of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, the postal worker and librarian who amassed a world class collection of contemporary art on their modest salaries. Tonight, 7:30 pm, July 29 at The Public Trust, free drinks and popcorn. To attend, RSVP to rsvp4@dmagazine.com.
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- 07/29/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Austin-based Cantanker Magazine has issued a call for entries for its catalog and exhibition titled "The Ambiguous Object." Jurors for the project are Cook & Ruud, the art think tank and production team comprised of former Glasstire editor Rachel Cook and former ...might be good editor Claire Ruud. Project and entry details here.
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- 07/28/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
As questions about the competition arise, the Guggenheim’s YouTube video art Biennial has announced its panel of judges, which will include the likes of Laurie Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and Shirin Neshat. But if the Iranian Neshat, who won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, is still an Iranian citizen, the competition would ban her. Artists from US-sanctioned countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba are inelligible. Then there is the whole issue of YouTube's anti-nudity policy. So far it is not being altered for the competition. Check out the commentary on Animal New York and Art Fag City.
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- 07/28/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
In her blog, Regina Hackett takes on Donald Kuspit's claim that "artists create but need the intelligence of critics to animate that creation" as she discusses the critics on reality TV shows like Work of Art, Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance.
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- 07/27/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Tar balls and sludge pools from the BP disaster are hard to miss but now black light is being used to find much more subtle and widely spread oil contamination on beaches. UV light helps spot blood and bodily fluids at crime scenes but oil particles also fluoresce under the light, glowing a yellow-orange. Check out National Geographic's slideshow of photos and you may be inspired to pick up a UV flashlight and head to the Texas coast.
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- 07/26/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
With a subterranean building and an excess of controversial art (heavy emphasis on the scatological) Tasmanian mathematician and professional gambler David Walsh is opening the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) just outside Hobart, Tasmanian. Mona will exhibit works as diverse as Anselm Kiefer's lead books and Wim Delvoye’s "Cloaca" machine (which will apparently be perfuming the air as it "digests" beef carcasses from a Jannis Kounellis installation). The Art Newspaper has a feature on Walsh and his museum.
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- 07/26/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
"Roads of Arabia" at the Louvre is, according to a New York Times review, filled with startling revelations. Containing hundreds of artifacts never before seen outside Saudi Arabia and judging from the images available, its not hyperbole. Most incredible are the figurative steles, an example from 4,000 B.C.looks like it came out of Brancusi's studio in the last century. Where are those frequent filer miles when you need them?
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- 07/25/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Geekdom is skewering BP's "incredibly amateur" Photoshopped spill response photos. Gizmodo has a detailed review of all the moronic errors (half a boat and a control tower in the sky) while Wired asks it readers to "Help BP Learn How to Use Photoshop." Exploring a similar theme last month, Chemically Green presented the best of Fark.com's June "Photoshop a Fix to the BP Oil Spill Contest." Duct tape, cat litter, giant maxi pad and Obama as Aquaman were among the solutions offered.
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- 07/25/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
If you are actually still watching Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" you may have noticed that the challenges, well, suck. Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City and Carolina A. Miranda of C-Monster.net are offering up some more interesting options to the producers with thoughtfully suggested sponsors. Ex. Artistic Inspiration: Walter De Maria, Robert Smithson
Sponsor: Caterpillar
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- 07/23/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Less than pleased with their digital royalties, authors like Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Martin Amis, are bypassing publishers and using Amazon to sell e-books straight to readers. The creation of literary agent Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie, Odyssey Editions launched yesterday selling modern classics from Wylie's A-list clients. While an agent essentially acting as a publisher is odd, Amazon offers a royal rate of 70% while publishers are trying to keep current ebook royalties at 25%.
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- 07/22/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Anjali Gupta, Art Lies Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, is leaving the organization to pursue independent projects. A brilliant writer and editor, Gupta was a dynamic force behind the publication, bringing it to international recognition. Gupta joined Art Lies in 2004 as Editor-in-Chief and took on the additional roll of Executive Director in 2008. Assistant Director Elizabeth Murray will assume the post of Interim Director and Associate Editor Kurt Mueller will serve as Interim Editor.
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- 07/22/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
The Video Association of Dallas’ The Second Program opens with Brent Green's quirky and acclaimed film "Gravity was Everywhere Back Then." Described by The New York Times as "A tinkerer’s ode to a tinkerer, and a romantic’s tribute to a romantic" radiating "an oddball homemade charm," the film tells the true story of a man trying to save his wife from cancer by building a house as a "healing machine" for her. Dallas Museum of Art, 7:30 pm. FREE, presented by the Video Association of Dallas, Conduit Gallery and the DMA.
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- 07/21/10
- Bill Davenport
Christie’s will auction off artworks from the collection of Dennis Hopper in New York on November 10-11. Hopper, who famously bought Warhol's first soup can at his first show, was an artist himself and collected the works of the fledgling Warhol, Basquiat, Oldenburg, Schnabel and Richard Prince. The actor-artist’s collection is expected to realize over $10 million.
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- 07/21/10
- Bill Davenport
Ex-Texan Kelly Baum has been named the inaugural Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Princeton University Art Museum. Baum, former assistant curator at the Blanton in austin, and curatorial assistant at the Houston MFAH, Baum has worked for the past two years on the major exhibition Nobody's Property: Art, Land, Space, 2000–2010. Scheduled to open at Princeton this fall.
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- 07/20/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Last week New York University said it did not want the film and video artist Larry Rivers shot of his nude adolescent daughters. NYU is purchasing Rivers's archive from the Larry Rivers Foundation and Rivers's youngest daughter, Emma Tamburlini, wants the material turned over to her and her sister Gwynne Rivers. According to The New York Times, "Mr. Rivers filmed his daughters at six-month intervals, beginning when each was about 11, from 1976 to 1981, for a series that he titled “Growing.” He filmed them either naked or topless and made comments and asked questions about their changing bodies, particularly their breasts." The Larry Rivers Foundation has yet to agree to Ms. Tamburlini's request.
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- 07/20/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Amazon announced that in the last three months, e-book sales have
outstripped hardcover book sales. And no, it’s not a fluke. In just the
last four weeks Amazon's sales shot up even higher, going from 143
digital books sold for every 100 hardcover books to 180.
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- 07/19/10
- Bill Davenport
Famed titan of the graphic novel form, the pop-eyed, irascible Harvey Pekar was found dead in his home in Cleveland, Ohio on Monday at age 70. Nearly as famous for his irritating, subversive appearances on the David Letterman Show as for American Splendor, his seminal series of graphic novels, Pekar was, according to collaborator R. Crumb, "the soul of Cleveland," hence, the soul of America.
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- 07/19/10
- Bill Davenport
Upper Valley Sails, a kinetic sculpture by Canadian artist Doug Taylor is being unveiled at the traffic circle of Country Club Rd. and Upper Valley in El Paso this morning. Said to be "reminiscent of cottonwood seeds" the high-tech whirligig's blades move slower and slower as the wind speed increases, like a reverse wind turbine!
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- 07/18/10
- Bill Davenport
Brown University Archaeologists have unearthed an intact Mayan royal tomb packed with of carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, dating from about 350 to 400 A.D. The tomb, beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz in Guatemala, was discovered in May, but news was made public Thursday. Layers of mud plaster and stone kept the tomb airtight, and preserved many wood, fiber, and organic materials that will, according to researchers take years to unravel.
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- 07/18/10
- Bill Davenport
Itinerant art vendors clogging New York's public parks will be limited by new rules that cap their numbers. The regulations were upheld in federal court on Friday, but vendors plan an appeal. The new rules set aside specific spots for the sale of “materials or objects with expressive content” in Battery Park, Union Square Park, the High Line Park, and heavily trafficked areas on Central Park.
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- 07/17/10
- Bill Davenport
Waxahachie's one and only Webb Gallery is cleaning out its closets today; "tons of great stuff" is out on the porch even now, waiting to be had for "pennies on the dollar"!
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- 07/17/10
- Bill Davenport
The first “QuePASA?” bike ride is taking place this morning, July 17, from 10 am to 12 pm. San Antonio artist Jessica Ramirez leads the “HemisFair Park” tour, which will include a visit to Artpace, ChrisPark, Artpace’s “ Homeland Security” installation at HemisFair Park, and Ken Little’s studio. The ride begins at PASA Studio (400 N. Saint Mary’s Street, Suite 101). Hurry on over!
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- 07/16/10
- Bill Davenport
Fundraising is underway to move Stonehenge II, the roadside attraction on FM 1340, in Hunt, TX, ten miles east to a site at the Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram. J. Cox Construction will handle the move and re-assembly, which is estimated to cost about $50,000. Two fake Easter Island heads also will be moved. Stonehenge II was created by Doug Hill in 1994 for the late Al Sheppard. Sheppard's nephew, also named Al Sheppard, is the 'henge's current owner is donating the sculpture and $18,000 Shepperd the elder collected from visitors' donations to the foundation in his uncle's memory.
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- 07/16/10
- Bill Davenport
Skyspace, Arizona crater-dwelling artist James Turrell's big square hole in the (retractable) roof of the Live Oak Friends Meeting House in Houston is retracting again, after being re-engineered and re-built, and will again be open for viewing on Friday, July 30. The attraction's regular hours are: one hour before sunset on Fridays. Free.
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- 07/15/10
- Bill Davenport
A video of Houston photographer Shannon Reiswig, who comissioned street artist Ack to paint a marriage-proposal mural on a midtown Houston auto parts store, and had himself filmed popping the question to his girlfriend in front of it, has had a rush of viral internet notoriety, with 40,000 hits on Vimeo overnight last week. The 81 second video by Alex Luster includes Jessica, the girlfriend, marking "yes" in the appropriate box. Aaaawww . . .
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- 07/15/10
- Bill Davenport
The Art Museum of South Texas was awarded a $150,000 Museums for America grant from the Federal governement's Institute of Museum and Library Services. AMSET will use the money to expand its youth programs. Other Texas orgs that received a slice of this year's federal pie are the Austin Children's Museum $140,756; Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, $149,324; The University of Texas at Austin, $84,681; the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Fort Worth got $150,000; and the Harrison County Historical Society in Marshall, $5,540. 178 institutions across the nation received more than $19.5 million in grants this time around.
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- 07/14/10
- Bill Davenport
The Menil Collection has named Toby Kamps as its new curator of modern and contemporary art! Kamps is currently senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, where his 2008 show The Old, Weird America, won him praise from the International Association of Art Critics and his 2009 No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston won him praise from the townies.
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- 07/14/10
- Bill Davenport
The Pearland Chamber of Commerce will unveil a "permanent artistic monolith" created by Houston artist and gallerist Lori Betz at 4:30 on Thursday, July 15, as a prelude to its annual Patry on the Patio featuring food, cold beverages, music, and networking opportunities. The monolith, a tribute to Perland businesses, will be unveiled at 4:30 P.M. on Thursday, July 15, as a prelude to the annual Party on the Patio, from 5-7pm. The "bronze, aluminum" [sic] monolith will list major contributors, suppliers, and contractors who provided products and services at reduced prices for The Pearland Commerce Center. Betz is founder of Betz gallery in Houston.
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- 07/14/10
- Bill Davenport
The Idea Fund returns for round 3 this fall, in which DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, Project Row Houses, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, hand out money to 10 artist generated projects in and atound Houston that "exemplify the unconventional, interventionist, conceptual, entrepreneurial, participatory, or guerrilla artistic practices." Workshops for the fund will be held in August and September with the call for applications to shortly follow.
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- 07/13/10
- Bill Davenport
Austin performance group Rude Mechanicals have received a $25,00 grant from the MAP fund to support Decameron Day 3: Revolution, an original, site-specific, trans-media performance installation that includes simulated acts of rebellion, scripted vignettes, and sustainable flora! MAP, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation announced its support for40 new projects last week.
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- 07/13/10
- Bill Davenport
The Kimbell Art Museum will sell $60 million in bonds to pay for its controversial Renzo Piano expansion wing through the Orchard Cultural Education Facilities Finance Corp., based in the tiny town of Orchard, TX. Rating authorities give the bonds good marks for the Kimbell's history of solvency based on it's a "deep and stable stream of oil and gas royalties." Get out your checkbooks: the bonds will be available in $5,000 increments through J.P. Morgan and Bank of Texas Thursday.
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- 07/12/10
- Bill Davenport
The City of Austin's knows how art and artists are useful in jacking up the rent in slumpy real estate markets, and is bringing in Matthew Kwatinetz, a project manager at at Heartland, a real estate consulting and investment firm in Seattle to speak today and tomorrow to tell you, too. Tonight, Monday, July 12 from 7-9pm he will talk about "Creative Spaces and Artist Communities" at the Carver Museum & Cultural Center. On Tuesday morning, July 13, Kwatinetz will discuss "The Role of Arts in Enlivening Business Districts" at Austin City Hall from 8-9:30am. Perhaps the ghosts of city-imperiled art happenings like the Enchanted Forest and the Cathedral of Junk will attend.
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- 07/12/10
- Bill Davenport
Author Alison Macor, whose book "Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids: Thirty Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas" chronicles Austin´s colorful movie history will speak at the Houston Museum of fine Arts on Tuesday, July 13 at 6:30pm, and sign books afterwards. Beginning in the 1970s with Tobe Hooper's horror classic, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and proceeding to Robert Rodriguez' Spy Kids, Macor retells the rollicking story of moviemaking on the third coast. Free!
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- 07/11/10
- Bill Davenport
The new KAXM Gallery, at 1135 E 11th St. in Houston Heights opened its inaugural show last night with a red carpet, a taco truck, and many books still on the bookshelves in its ex-court-reporting office space. Gallerist Deborah Shelton promises to show works by established and emerging artists.
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- 07/11/10
- Bill Davenport
Prizewinners in the Lawndale Art Center's catch-all 2010 Big Show were announced at the Friday opening. Selected by juror Paul Middendorf, Co-Director galleryHOMELAND and EAST/WEST Project Berlin, $3000 in cash awards were divided among four artists: two $1,000 cash awards went to Joseph Cohen and Kelly Moore; two $500 cash awards went to Emily Peacock & Catherine Winkler Rayroud; 81 other artists got in the show. Congratulations to all.
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- 07/10/10
- Bill Davenport
The new 17 Seventeen McKinney tower building in Dallas was illuminated with a skin of 86,000 LEDs simulating a waving flag for the fourth, making architects sigh, and commercial landlords cheer. A feature about the new, ever brighter and more complex lighting schemes incorporated into Dallas buildings are the focus of a piece in the Dallas Morning News by Steve Brown.
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- 07/10/10
- Bill Davenport
“Divine Lords of Tonina Creating the Universe”, a 1300-year old Mayan stela at the National Museum of Anthrppology in Mexico city is finally finished! A broken piece of the ancient masterwork was found and cleaned and will be re-attached. The other 37 fragments of the stela wwere found in 2002 in Tonina, Mexico, as part of the throne of the ruler Jaguar Claw, who ordered its creation in 727 AD.
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- 07/09/10
- Bill Davenport
Three of the The Buffalo Bayou Partnerships' boats were cast adrift Tuesday night by vandals, after an arson fire that destroyed the Osprey, the nonprofit's pontoon tour boat and damaged the Bio-Vac, a clean-up craft. BBP works to maintain and improve the Buffalo Bayou system, and one of its sources of revenue is bayou tours on the Osprey, which will be suspended until it can be replaced. There's a $5000 reward for information on the case.
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- 07/09/10
- Bill Davenport
Wants a new dress for Needed Fabulousness, a piece which will be included in Unveiled, the inaugural show at at UT's new Visual Arts Center in Austin on September 24. Arnold hopes to raise $3000 to purchase a designer garment and shoes to wear to the exhibition opening through web-based donations as part of her current artistic explorations of "narcissism and impression management".
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- 07/08/10
- Bill Davenport
ArtHouston 2010, the annual dog-day art afternoon, with shows at more than 30 galleries opens Saturday, July 10. Venues along Colquitt, in the Museum District, the Heights and everywhere else unfurl their summer wares amid activities, events and merrymaking. Free.
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- 07/08/10
- Bill Davenport
Peter Doroshenko has been named as the new executive director of the Dallas Contemporary, replacing founding director Joan Davidow, who stepped down in 2009. Doroshenko is remembered in Texas for his stint as curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston from 1991-95, and has recently been director of the Pinchuk Art Center in Kiev, Ukraine after a peripatetic career directing the BALTIC in Gateshead England, SMAK in Ghent, and the Institue for Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
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- 07/07/10
- Bill Davenport
San Antonio arts patron Catherine Halff Edson died Friday at 71. Daughter of radio station owner Hugh A.L. Halff, Edson “methodically built one of the finest private collections of Japanese art in America,” said John Johnston, curator of Asian art at the San Antonio Museum of Art. A part of the Catherine and Thomas Edson Collection can be seen at SAMA. Another portion, “Edo Chic/Meiji Technique: The Art of Shibata Zeshin featuring the Edson Collection,” is on exhibit at the Suiboku Museum in Toyama, Japan until Aug. 22.
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- 07/07/10
- Bill Davenport
Corpus Christi City Council unanimously agreed to maintain arts funding, despite cuts in other areas. The city's $668 million budget must be approved by the end of this month and takes effect Aug. 1. The the Harbor Playhouse, the Asian Cultures Museum, the South Texas Botanical Gardens & Nature Center, the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica, the Art Museum of South Texas, the Center for Hispanic Arts, the Corpus Christi Symphony and the Jazz Festival will continue to receive city subsidies.
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- 07/06/10
- Bill Davenport
Midland gallerists Richard and Mary Folger were two of the five victims of a small plane crash in Brewster County Saturday night. Mr. Folger started selling art out of his car on Midland streets back in the 1970s; the trunk-side art show turned into the Folger Gallery at the corner of Wadley and Midkiff Drive in Midland.
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- 07/05/10
- Bill Davenport
In Vanity Fair's latest architectural survey, Renzo Piano's 1987 Menil Collection in Houston is the world's second best building since 1980. The poll of 52 leading architects and critics chose Frank Gehry's Guggenheim bilbao as best building, but that's just 'cause it's shiny.
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- 07/05/10
- Bill Davenport
The Beer Can House's fame is spreading spreading, too. The familiar Houston attraction was featured yesterday in a short travelogue in the Toronto Sun which tells the story of John Milkovisch's unusual hobby and his legacy.
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- 07/04/10
- Bill Davenport
The 25th anniversary edition of Kaboom Town, the major-league fireworks display in Addison, Texas, went off as planned yesterday, despite intermittent rain and everpresent mud. The event cost the town an estimated $240,000; $50,000 for fireworks $55,000 for police overtime, with a historic warbird flyover, and a free movie afterwards. The Dallas ex-burb has been hosting the event for 25 years. The show, recommended by the American Pyrotechnics Association, attracts about 400,000 people each year.
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- 07/04/10
- Bill Davenport
Recent heavy rains in Houston have delayed Staten Island artist Scott LoBaido's giant American flag painting, just finished atop the roof of the Lamons Gasket Company near Hobby airport. Although he began the mammoth flag on Flag Day, June 14, he just sqeaked under the finish line to have the thing ready for by July 4. "I've been pacing around, cursing" said the firecely Republican painter, who has turned to the more neutral flag as his subject from the controversial drawing of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats burning an American flag alongside Osama Bin Laden, which got him headlines in 2004. A man of strong opinions, LoBaido was arrested in 1999 after throwing horse manure at the exterior of the Brooklyn Museum of Art to protest its display of Chris Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary made with elephant dung.
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- 07/03/10
- Bill Davenport
The five films in Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" cycle will be shown in Austin’s Dobie Theatre July 9-16 along with the premiere of Barney’s latest film ‘De Lama Lamina.” Not avaliable on DVD, Austin360 blogger Jeanne Clair Van Ryzin described it as a "massive, opulent, episodic, florid, confusing, ambiguous (and circular) creation myth.” And hard to see, to boot!
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- 07/03/10
- Bill Davenport
Born on July 3, 1738, in Boston, early American painter John Singleton Copley left his native land to pursue fame back in England, leaving behind charming and bizarre paintings like "Boy with Squirrel" and "Watson and the Shark", and turning to conventional portraits and overwrought battle scenes after his successful transplantation.
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- 07/02/10
- Bill Davenport
Advocatcy org Americans for the Arts has published its 2010 Public Art in Review, which annually features noteworthy public art projects from across the US and Canada. In this year's list, chosen by Helen Lessick, formerly director of the Houston Arts Alliance, and artist Fred Wilson, Texas projects abound: Bait Box by Buster Graybill and Giant Mushroom Forest by Bill Davenport, both comissioned by the Austin art in Public Places program; In Dallas, Brad & Diana Goldberg's Fair Park Station for DART and Brad Oldham & Brandon Oldenburg's Traveling Man; In Houston, Beads at Bush Intercontinental Airport by Jim Hirschfield & Sonya Ishii, Gesture Politics by Sean Healy; and Open Channel Flow by Matthew Geller made the list. The nearby Jamail Skatepark, although fabulously sculptural, did not.
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- 07/02/10
- Bill Davenport
Two months of time, a big ol'studio, a teeny little apartment, and all the cashola you need to produce your dream exhibition? Texas artists can now apply for ArtPace's 2011 residencies online. Three curators will selected artists' materials and might even do studio visits, each choosing an innovative Texas artist. The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2010 at 5pm.
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- 07/01/10
- Bill Davenport
Dolph Briscoe, philanthropist, Western art collector and former Texas governor died at his ranch outside Uvalde on Sunday. He was 87. Once Texas largest landowner, Briscoe was the founder of the farm-to-market road system. The Dolph and Janey Bricoe Western Art Museum is curently under construction along the San antonio riverwalk in the city's 1930 Carnegie Library building.
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- 07/01/10
- Bill Davenport
Charles Saatchi, impresario behind the "YBA" art renaissance in Britain, has announced that he will donate his London art gallery and 200 artworks worth an estimated $37 million to the British government. Upon his retirement, which for the fit 67-year old, is "not soon," the gallery will be renamed "The Museum of Contemporary Art, London" and the collection, though publicly owned, will be administered by a foundation that will continue to buy and sell works to fund its operations as it has all along.
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- 06/30/10
- Bill Davenport
SMU's Meadows School of the Arts is adding a PhD program in art history, and has hired away UT Austin's Latin American and Latino art expert Dr. Roberto Tejada as the new Distinguished Endowed Chair in Art History, all funded by an anonymous $2 million donation. Dr, Tejada is founder and now co-editor of the bilingual journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas which he will continue to publish at SMU. The new PhD program's will focus on Latin America, Iberia and the Americas and the visual communication technology.
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- 06/30/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston artspace Labotanica is accepting applications for School of Latitudes, a four-week creative residency beginning in August 2010. Participants will get studio visits, do workshops, hear lectures/ discussions by cultural leaders, read, watch movies and go on field trips, all culminating in an exhibition and publication. Proposals are due July 15.
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- 06/29/10
- Bill Davenport
Protesters slinging molasses from canisters marked with the British Petroleum corporate logo made a sticky mess of the Tate Britain Summer party in London. Eight art activists from the group Liberate Tate drizzled the goo at a fundraiser sponsored by the oil giant, whose Deepwater Horizon rig exploded this spring and continues to spew oil into the gulf of Mexico, in case you didn't know. Thr protesters seek to sever ties between the Tate and BP, one of it's largest sponsors.
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- 06/29/10
- Bill Davenport
Kristina Van Dyke and Andrea Grover has each received Curatorial Research Fellowships from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Van Dyke, a curator at the Menil Collection, will undertake research into technology and love in Africa, in conjunction with Bisi Silva, director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, Nigeria. Grover, co-founder and former director of the Aurora Picture Show in Houston, is moving to Pittsburgh to pursue an expanded version of 29 Chains to the Moon, developing it into a traveling exhibition and publication that will present artists’ proposals for rethinking the production of food, shelter, transportation and energy at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.
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- 06/28/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston artist Marco Villegas is about to begin installing his solo show at the Art League in Houston. He will be at the gallery all day, every day and all through the night from July 1-8 covering the walls from floor to ceiling with cross-hatched waves, and he's looking for some helping hands. No drawing experience necessary. Lone Star, sodas and snacks will be provided.
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- 06/28/10
- Bill Davenport
Artist and activist Ashley Hunt will narrate "Notes on the Emptying of a City" at 7pm on July 1 at The Eldorado Ballroom in Houston. Hunt's deconstructed documentary, part slideshow, part film segments with live narration, investigates the "new economies of risk" surrounding the evacuation of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina in 2006. Hunt is producer of the short documentary "I Won't Drown on That Levee and You Ain't Gonna' Break My Back" about the Orleans Parish Prison during and after the storm. FREE!
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- 06/27/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston city council has temporarily given the wussy historic preservation ordinance some baby teeth, diabling the automatic waiver provision that allows Houstonians to build whatever they want after a 90-day waiting period. The "no means no amendment" may be a foretaste of a proposed permanent overhaul: the Mayor’s Historic Task Force is working on changes every Monday.
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- 06/27/10
- Bill Davenport
According to another non-binding, self-selected online poll, this time sponsored Reliant Park in Houston, people want to see the Astrodome preserved, at least as a shell, rather than flattened into "green space." Results from the survey will help shape the Sports & Convention Corporation’s recommendation to Harris County Commissioners Court, which will decide the Dome’s fate. Last month, a survey by the Houston Business Journal gave similar results. Options not included in the latest survey were the cheapskate "do nothing-let it rot" and "clyclorama! cyclorama! cyclorama!!!"
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- 06/26/10
- Bill Davenport
Artpace has given $5000 in travel grants to San Antonio-based artists Ruth Buentello, Naomi Wanjiku, and Mark Hogensen. Buentello will head to Italy and France to study the work of Niki de Saint Phalle as inspiration for her own community murals. Wanjiku will travel back to her native Kenya to immerse herself in Jua Kali, an informal recycling program that re-purposes recyclables as art. Hogensen will roadtrip to East Texas where he will photograph and sketch urban and natural landscapes.
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- 06/26/10
- Bill Davenport
Artpace has given $5000 in travel grants to San Antonio-based artists Ruth Buentello, Naomi Wanjiku, and Mark Hogensen. Buentello will head to Italy and France to study the work of Niki de Saint Phalle as inspiration for her own community murals. Wanjiku will travel back to her native Kenya to immerse herself in Jua Kali, an informal recycling program that re-purposes recyclables as art. Hogensen will roadtrip to East Texas where he will photograph and sketch urban and natural landscapes.
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- 06/26/10
- Bill Davenport
Archdruids and English Heritage are both disappointed as funding for new Stonehenge visitors' center is cut by a strapped British government. Last year Gordon Brown promised £10m towards a glass and timber centre and to shut the nearby A344 highway, which, though larger than the ancient megalith, is not so unique. The project was due to be completed in 2012 to coincide with the staging of the Olympics in the UK, but just beore thesummer solstice, the government announced the funding cut. Rollo Maughfling, archdruid of Stonehenge and Britain, greeted the rising of the sun with a blast on his trumpet as 20,000 people turned up to mark the solstice last week at the site.
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- 06/25/10
- Bill Davenport
Cancel your plane reservations! The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston has announced a loan of 50 ultra-choice French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. while the galleries that normally house them are closed for renovation. Including paintings by Bazille, Cézanne, Degas, Manet (The Railway but alas not Dead Toreador), Monet (Woman with a Parasol, but not Rouen Catherdral), Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh, the show opens in February. Oh, and sign up for a MFAH membership while you're at it-with a hefty $20 special-admission price tag for non-members, it might be cheaper!
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- 06/25/10
- Bill Davenport
In an effort to curb illegal graffiti, San Antonio has initiated its Action for Art class, teaching graffiti artists legal and profitable ways to do what was once free and criminal. Jane Madrigal, an art professor for Our Lady of the Lake University will be warden of the the part open-enrollment, part court ordered community service sentence class which will re-paint a tagged west-side dam with a socially acceptable mural.
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- 06/24/10
- Bill Davenport
The International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen adds another wonder to its sculpture park, already home to the largest (replica) Olmec head outside of Mexico: a 124-foot, 7-ton wind turbine blade will descend (presumably from the sky, by helicopter, but the press release doesn't specify) to its permanent spot outside the museum at 1pm on Friday, June 25. IMAS is asking rubberneckers to be on time, as it won't take long.
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- 06/24/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston painter and educator Ann Marie Hopkins lost as many as a hundred paintings when her attic caught fire Tuesday. Hopkins, former art teacher at Woodlands High School, and currently a professor at North Harris Community College called 911 at 2:41 pm tuesday when she saw smoke outside her home in Conroe. firefighters squashed the fire in 45 minutes, and no one was injured.
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- 06/23/10
- Bill Davenport
Arts patron Jane Blaffer Owen died Monday in Houston. She was 95. Daughter of Exxon founder Robert Lee Blaffer and granddaughter of Texaco founder William T. Campbell, Owen gave major support to the University of Houston's Blaffer Gallery and Moore's School of Music, but the bulk of her philanthropy went to the preservation of historic New Harmony, Indiana, a utopian community founded in 1825 by robert Dale Owen, her husband's great-grandfather.
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- 06/23/10
- Bill Davenport
A super-streamilined custom Mercedes 300 Limo by Florida art cartist Antti Rahko is for sale on eBay motors. Winner of the the first place award in the 2007 and 2009 Houston parades, the chrome creation was also twice "peoples choice" in Florida. Made from two mercedes station wagons welded together, with additional parts from 80 odd other vehicles, it's 29 feet long, seats 10 passengers, has all-wheel steering, 86 lights, 36 mirrors, 3 batteries and a cassette deck. Buy it now for $950,000. While you've got your wallet out, the Abilene drag strip is also for sale.
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- 06/22/10
- Bill Davenport
Artfest International, a Dallas-based company dedicated to "revolutionizing the sale of art" announced yesterday that it had "received over $1.5 million in equity financing since 2009." Claiming assets of 5.8 million, and revenue of 852,432 since March 31, 2008, the company's murky operations seem to include direct marketing of sports memorobilia and collectibles, through a network on independent online dealers. On June 10, it announced it had signed an agreement to purchase and re-sell Picasso's 1949 sculpture "Rendering of Francoise Gilot," which they claim is "independently valued between $50-$70 Million," for $2.5 million in cash and 50 million is $1 "warrants." Artfest's many news releases always include the blanket disclaimer "Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain." Their share price is currently $.0007, or seven one-thousandths of a dollar.
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- 06/22/10
- Bill Davenport
Charles Birnbaum, founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, sees the current economic downturn as a chance to pause and reconsider the many aggressive museum exapansions happening or proposed. Criticizing Daniel Liebeskind's new Denver Art Museum (who hasn't?) he then points out how Renzo Piano's recently unveiled Kimbell expansion in Fort Worth is eroding Loius Kahn's lawn-loving original intent.
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- 06/21/10
- Bill Davenport
Coulson Tough brought the first sculpture to The Woodlands in 1974, "The Family" by Charles Pebworth along Woodlands Parkway. Coulson launched a sculpture acquisition program, using money from The Woodlands' construction budget and land sales. Now the giant planned community north of Houston, has 52 outdoor sculptures. Ranging from hackneyed realisim to bland geometric abstraction, it's what you'd expect, but it's the subject of a book and daily tour service! Tickets are $10 or $15 depending on the length of the tour and the air-conditioning of the bus. Tony Motto is the founder of Sculp-Tours, a guided tour service of the various sculptures dotted throughout The Woodlands. "It's a good alternative for people who are tired of just going to the movies," said Motto.
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- 06/21/10
- Bill Davenport
Mayor Joe Adame and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi officials have been discussing the possibility of moving the college’s master’s of fine arts program downtown to relive crowding on its island campus. Adame is looking for downtown business and property owners who might be interested in funding such a move. Art department Chairman Jack Gron said a move could help the graduate program grow.
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- 06/20/10
- Bill Davenport
1300 boxes of photos from the storied Magnum photo agency are now avaliable for public perusal and research at the University of Texas' Harry Ransom center in Austin. The 210,00 prints are on loan to the university for five years from computer magnate Michael Dell's MSD capital, which bought them last year from Magnum. The collection is accessible in the Ransom Center's reading room on weekdays from 9-5, with an online inventory. In addition to cataloging and preserving the Magnum archive, The Ransom center will also award fellowships for research.
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- 06/20/10
- Bill Davenport
A 10-foot bronze vaquero is taking shape, ready for placement on a plinth at North Main Street and Central Avenue in Fort Worth. "Co-sculpted" by Detroit artist David Newton and Dallas sculptor Tomás Bustos the $240,000 "icon of Mexican-American heritage" has been in the works for 15 years and is a public-private partnership between Fort Worth Public Art and the Vaquero Group, which raised $125,000 for the project.
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- 06/19/10
- Bill Davenport
The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University has teamed up with the Prado Museum in Madridin a three-year deal that will bring renowned pieces of the Prado's collection to Dallas, beginning with El Greco's Pentecost on display from September 12, 2010 – February 1, 2011, with Velázquez’s full length portrait of Philip IV in 2012. In the 1950's Meadows founder Algur H. Meadows had a vision of a "Prado on the Prairie" and built one of the largest collections of Spanish art outside Spain, the core of the museum. The deal includes all the academic trimmings: an exchange of interns, symposia, lectures, publications andeducational programming! Why travel?
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- 06/19/10
- Bill Davenport
In its continuing drive for cross-disciplinariness, the university of Houston has announced a new "creative work" minor that combines fine arts with cultural studies such as history or philosophy. John Harvey, the Director of UH’s Center for Creative Work will teach a course titled Poetics and Performance, Professors from the Music, Political Science, and Philosophy departments have helped to shape the new program which the university hopes will explore creativity across the disciplines of art, film, literature, theatre, and music.
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- 06/18/10
- Bill Davenport
Vince Hannemann's Cathedral of Junk in South Austin is closing, a victim of newly-enforced city codes. According to Hannemann, the effort to refashion the popular 60-ton trash heap into a safe building is not worth it. Says Hanneman: "I just did it because I liked it. And when I stop liking it I'll take it down." The Catherdral began in 1988, and continued to grow until complaints from neighbors caused the city to re-examine the structure last year. The Austin Chronicle's Richard Whittaker related the closing to a disturbingly un-Austin trend: similar permit problems recently closed other DIY Austin arts venues like the United States Art Authority and the Enchanted Forest, even as corporate-friendly arts redevelopment projects flourish!
Update 6/18: After a meeting thursday, city officials will allow Vince Hannemann to keep the major portion of the Cathedral of Junk intact, with limits on the number of visitors, and with no climbing the precarious junk tower allowed.
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- 06/18/10
- Bill Davenport
AirStation, a multi-part temporary installation in the old gas station across from the Station Museum in Houston, dramatizes environmental degradation by creating a vision of a self-contained, one room biospere; a performance of EarthMan 2 by Texas artist Dion Laurent, dressed in a homemade enviro-suit. The piece will also include "AirPlane1", awarded first place in the Houston Art Car Parade. Saturday, June 19, at 7pm.
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- 06/17/10
- Bill Davenport
The Center for Law and Intellectual Property at Texas Wesleyan is hosting its second annual art law colloquium from 10am-3:30pm on June 19 at the law school in downtown Fort Worth. Titled “Legal issues Faced by Galleries, Museums and Artists,” will include panel discussions with leading Texas museum directors, gallery owners and artists, as well as a lunch presentation by Megan Carpenter, law professor of the ethics of copyright. Registration is $25, with lunch and an appearance by disgruntled artist Chapman Kelley, who recently tried to buy his work back from the Dallas Museum of Art, included free!
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- 06/17/10
- Bill Davenport
"Tommy," a bronze boy seated on a bronze bench, reading, was stolen last Thursday night from it's popular location outside the Allen Public Library. The statue, which cost friends of the library $2500, and was a hit with the kids whose literacy it was intended to promote, is feared to have been scrapped for it's 2500 lbs of valuable metal. The library is offereing a $100 reward for it's return.
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- 06/16/10
- Bill Davenport
Go ahead, kick the man when he's down: Thomas Kinkade, "the painter of light" whose empire of schlock has been kicking us in the eye for years, was arrested for allegedly driving drunk last friday night outside Carmel CA. Recently one of his companies recently lost a multi-million dollar judgment for fraud, and filed for bankruptcy protection.
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- 06/16/10
- Bill Davenport
It worked: in the Frisco, TX City Council run-off race, John Keating beat incumbent Jim Joyner. Keating supported a Tea Party petition to reconsider funding for the Collin County Arts Hall, approved in 2002, successfully using Joyner's support for the arts as a political Achilles' heel in the otherwise tight race. Although the Frisco city council rejected the widely-publicized petition on June 4, When asked if the tea party would prepare another petition, Tes Party leader Lorie Medina, said, “We feel like we made our statement.”
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- 06/15/10
- Bill Davenport
The Guggenheim museum is sponsoring a fishing expedition on YouTube- broadcasting an open call for complete video works ten minutes or less from everyone everywhere. Starting yesterday, YouTube Play, the first in what the Gugg hopes will be a biennial event, it will select the top 200 for the YouTube Play channel, and about twenty of that group will be chosen for display to a much smaller audience at the Gugg's international network of museums in October. (This is a prize?) Submissions close on July 31.
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- 06/15/10
- Bill Davenport
Conny Martin, pioneer artist of Lubbock died on June 6 at age 84. Born in Lubbock in 1925, Martin began painting on shirt cardboards after In 1951 she was a charter member of the Lubbock Art Association, where she served several terms as president, eventually writing "Art Lives in West Texas," a near 500-page catalog of West Texas art and artists, in 2003. Her diorama of Crosby County 100 years ago is an attraction at the Pioneer Memorial Museum in Crosbyton, and a cycle of 14 paintings titled "The World of Ghengis and Kubilai Khan" are part of a permanent exhibit by Texas Tech's International Cultural Center. Friends attending her memorial service were invited to honor Conny's memory by wearing clothing of vivid colors.
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- 06/14/10
- Bill Davenport
Steven Evans, formerly managing director of Dia: Beacon in upstate New York is the new executive director of the Linda Pace Foundation in San Antonio. Evans, in charge if Dia's fab contemporary art collection, artist, and sometime DJ, will move forward with the Pace Foundation's plans for a museum to house its over 500 work collection.
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- 06/14/10
- Bill Davenport
Staten Island artist Scott LoBaido will begin painting the world's largest American flag on the 3.5 acre roof of the Lamons Gasket company's manufacturing facility at 7300 Airport Blvd., Houston today. It's Flag Day. The finished piece will be "revealed" on July 4th. LoBaido, who is famous for painting flags, says, "I have seen the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's David. The American flag is more beautiful." Lamons president, Kurt Allen, offered LoBaido $55,000 for supplies and labor, and a team of 15 helpers. In related Texas big stuff news, The recent relocation of Bob "Daddy-O" Wade's refurbished giant iguana at the Ft. Worth Zoo was blogged yesterday by the NY time's Michael Brick. Daddy-O said, regarding the move “I think things have changed in New York such that you might not be able to get away with it now.”
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- 06/13/10
- Bill Davenport
Saturday, June 26 at 4pm is the deadline for the Art League Houston's open call for exhibtion proposals for its 2011-2012 season. Artists and curators and curator-artists of all stripes and locations are encouraged to submit proposals for exhibitions consistent with Art League Houston's broad mission, to "cultivate awareness, appreciation and accessibility of contemporary visual art." 4-6 shows or projects will get an honoraium of $1500, so get proposing!
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- 06/13/10
- Bill Davenport
The Texas Art Asylum, at 1230 Houston Ave., Houston is now open. Self-descibed as a "part craft store, part thrift store, part salvage yard, part antique store" the new shop collects recyclabe craft materials and redistributes them. Allied with the new Center For Recycled Art, an educational org that gives at-risk kids "opportunities to create age-appropriate rectcled art," the two orgs may make a microscopic dent in the solid-waste stream, but could be a handy place to pick up a bale of used file folders!
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- 06/12/10
- Bill Davenport
Conceptual painter Sigmar Polke died Thursday in Cologne, Germany, of complications from cancer. He was 69. According to the NY Times Roberta Smith, Polke's "main achievement was to be an early and astute adopter of American Pop Art, belying its crisp, consumerist optimism with tawdry materials that added social bite, and with random splashes of paint that implied disorder and the unconscious."
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- 06/12/10
- Bill Davenport
Houston Center for Photography has added three new staff members: Ms. Juliana Forero is HCP's new Assistant Director for Education, Mr. Zach Gresham is Workshop Coordinator, and Ms. Alex Moore is now Exhibitions Assistant. Ms. Forero was born in Bogota, Colombia and has just relocated to Houston from New York City where she was completing research on the artistic community of the South Bronx for her doctoral dissertation. Mr. Zach Gresham, originally from Beaumont, holds a BA in History with a minor in Art History from Lamar University and has worked at Lawndale Art Center, Houston; The Menil Collection, Houston; McFaddin-Ward House Museum, Beaumont; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; and is also the Family Programs Assistant at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Ms. Alex Moore recently moved back to her hometown, Houston, after graduating from Georgetown University with a Masters in Art and Museum Studies.
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- 06/11/10
- Bill Davenport
"Celia Alvarez Munoz" by Roberto Tejada, published by the UCLA/Univ. of Minnesota Press, has won second place at the 12th International Latino Book Awards in the Non-Fiction Arts Catagory. Ms.Munoz will be at the Mighty Fine Arts in Dallas tonight, Thursday, June 10, from 7:30-8:30pm, for a special book signing during the Summer Cocktail Art Crawl.
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- 06/11/10
- Bill Davenport
Be on the lookout for a 1500-pound iron samurai warrior sculpture, reportedly stolen from Heirloom Gardens in College Station in March. College Station investigators believe the sculpture may have been moved to Houston and urge anyone with information to call crimestoppers; there's a $5000 reward for tips leading to arrests.
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- 06/11/10
- Bill Davenport
Dallas Artist Chapman Kelley, who asked the Dallas Museum of Art to sell his work back to him because he didn't like the way it was displayed, sued the Chicago Parks District in 2006 over similar concerns about the alteration of an outdoor sculpture of his. Kelley is associated with activist John Viramontes and the Council for Artists Rights, the organization that slammed the DMA a few weeks ago over the secret sale of a Rothko painting promised to the museum, and a few months ago lit into DMA curator Charles Wylie for his role in helping the Dallas Cowboy stadium art program get off the ground. What's all the fuss? Ask him yourself: Kelley will speak at the upcoming art law colloquium at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth on June 19!
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- 06/10/10
- Bill Davenport
According to the NY times, a 14-page legal notice leaked from the public prosecutor’s office in Rome names The San Antonio Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art are among 20 other institutions that Italy accuses of receiving looted antiquities through a former New York dealer, Edoardo Almagià. The museum world is disturbed; in the wake of the recent celebrated criminal prosecution of Getty curator Marion True and the concessions, compromises and repatriations that ensued, there apparently was an understanding that Italy would call off the dogs!
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- 06/10/10
- Bill Davenport
Core Fellow Leslie Hewitt is one of four finalists for the $50,000 Grange Prize. Co-administered by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Musuem of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, The prize is $50,000 Canadian dollars, or $47,186 US at current rates, with $5,000 CAD going to each of the runners up, and the winner is decided by public online voting beginning September 22. This year's jury was AGO curator Sophie Hackett; Toronto art collector Dr. Kenneth Montague; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago curator Dominic Molon; and MoCP curator Karen Irvine and the finalists are: Wisconsin photographer Josh Brand, Canadian photographer Moyra Davey, who both live in New York, American photographer Leslie Hewitt who lives in Houston, and Toronto-based photographer Kristan Horton, who lives in Toronto. Launched in 2007, the prize recognizes the work of two Canadian and two international photographers.
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- 06/09/10
- Bill Davenport
Blue Star Contemporary Art Center has opened a new annex in the heart of downtown San Antonio. Blue Star LAB at 114 Broadway opened its premier exhibit, titled Fire in the Belly featuring 50 artists from UTSA, Our Lady of the Lake, Trinity, Incarnate Word, Palo Alto College, San Antonio College, Northwest Vista College, and Northeast Lakeview College, all in and around an Antonio. Joining Schroeder Art Gallery and Zubiate Projects in a nascent arts cluster, The Blue Star LAB will be open from noon-6pm on Thursdays and Fridays.
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- 06/09/10
- Bill Davenport
Did you know that the explosive growth of the sugar industry in the 17th and 18th centuries inspired chefs to whip up ever more fanciful confections? By 19th century, desserts had become theatrical productions. Cultural critic Dr. Tacey Rosolowski follows the evolution of spectacular confections through the last 500 years in a lecture on Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 6:30pm at the MFAH's Brown Auditorium Theater. FREE. In news unrelated to the above unrelated news, the Spanish Government has decided to re-open the Altamira cave art site to visitors.
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- 06/08/10
- Bill Davenport
The Dallas Museum of Art has announced its 2010 awards to 16 artists. Seven Clare Hart DeGolyer Memorial Fund awards, for artists between 15 and 25 years of age went to Courtney Brown, Tamara Joy Hunt, Rachel Brownlee, Nicole Loehr, Chelsey Mulnix, Melisa Oporto, and John Osburn. The seven Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award recipients are Sonya Berg, Rachel Cox, Jasmyne Graybill, Clayton Hurt, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Trey Wright and Billy Zinser. The two 2010 Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant recipients were Austin performance artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji, who will travel to Nigeria and cartoonist Jeremy Smith, who will go to New York to collaborate with Al Columbia.
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- 06/08/10
- Bill Davenport
The Judd Foundation has announced the that it is beginning a $30 million capital campaign to restore sculptor Donald Judd's home at 101 Spring St. in New York. The building will be closed during the three-year project. Upon completion, the foundation plans to use the building’s ground floor for public programs. Judd purchased the 1870 cast-iron facade building in 1968. As an exemplar of a re-purposed SoHo loft, and home to Judd's experiments with permanent installations, it is among the founding sites of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
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- 06/07/10
- Bill Davenport
Austin's Cultural Arts Division is cranking its fourth series of "Next Level" arts/business development workshops with "The Artspace Story" tonight, Monday, June 7th. 7:30-9pm at the Austin Playhouse (Penn Field, 3601 S. Congress, Bldg C, Austin). Artspace, the nonprofit real estate developer is coming to town to study the feasibility of a live/work development in conjunction with Austin Playhouse, who wants to create a new theater space. Speakers will include Stacey Mickleson, Artspace's Vice President for Government Relations, and Wendy Holmes, Senior Vice President, Consulting and Strategic Partnerships.
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- 06/07/10
- Bill Davenport
Pacific Metro, one of kitschmeister Thomas Kinkade's corporations, filed for bankruptcy last week to avoid paying part of a $3 million dollar judgment to two former Kinkade Gallery owners who successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that they had been gulled into investing in a retail Kinkade Gallery by a "certain religious environment" then undersold by the parent corporation. Norman Yatooma, lawyer for the pair, is quoted as saying " Kinkade's word is as worthless as his artwork."
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- 06/06/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
According to an article in Science Daily, a new study finds that caffeine doesn't really work. Read what could be the awful truth here.
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- 06/06/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
What will become of your digital self after you die - your web site, blog posts, Flicker account, YouTube channel? That was the topic of a recent "Digital Death Day" event at the Museum of the History of the Computer in Mountain View, California and a recent article in Obit Magazine. Apparently a host of new businesses are hoping to answer those questions as well. Will we pass down family hard drives instead of family albums? It's a daunting question for those of us who can't even remember to backup our computers.
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- 06/05/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Dallas lost an important critical voice on Thursday. David Dillon, architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News for 25 years and a nationally recognized writer on the subject, died of a heart attack at his Amherst, Massachusetts home. Dillon began writing for the Dallas Morning News during the building boom of the early 1980s. He took a buyout from the paper in 2006 but continued to contribute, writing about Cowboys Stadium and the lamentable Sammons Park. His obituary in the DMN includes a wonderful 2006 video interview in which Dillon talks about the role of newspapers, criticism and his career.
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- 06/04/10
- Bill Davenport
This year's Frieze Magazine writer's prize, a hefty £2000, will be awarded to scantily published (at least in print) new arts writers over 18. The deadline to submit a previously unpublished 700 word review of a recent contemporary art exhibition is June 25. This year's judges will be philosopher and critic Boris Groys; writer and novelist A.M. Homes and co-editor of frieze magazine Jörg Heiser.
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- 06/04/10
- Bill Davenport
Renowned East Texas Photographer and Lamar University prof Keith Carter examines his hometown, Beaumont, in a 10-page essay in the June issue of Texas Monthly Magazine. Carter explains, "We have a gumbo culture that has shaped me as an artist." The special issue, titled "Where I'm From" also includes bits from Stephen Harrigan, writing about Austin; Elizabeth Crook, San Marcos; John Phillip Santos, San Antonio; David Dorado Romo, El Paso; and Skip Hollandsworth, Wichita Falls; and Laura Bush, Midland.
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- 06/03/10
- Bill Davenport
The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft fuses fashion and craft on Friday, June 4, 5:30-8pm at the opening of "The Paper Runway," a worldwide survey of paper clothing organized by the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum at the Georgia Institute of Technology, fresh from its installation at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Craft Center artists in residence have created wearable art which will be modeled at the opening. A crocheted body sculpture and headdress by Elaine Bradford, a life-size brooch by Gabriel Craig and Amy Weiks, and a ceramic neckpiece by Jeff Forster are among the wearables to be worn. Co-curator of the show, Cindy Bowden will give a talk at 11am the morning after, Saturday, June 5. "Paper Runway," the show, runs from June 5-September 4 at the HCCC gallery.
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- 06/03/10
- Bill Davenport
Artist Natasha Bowdoin will lead an animal-snowflake-paper-cutting workshop in conjunction with Andrea Deszö's "Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly" at Houston's Rice University Art Gallery on Saturday, June 5 from 9am-12 noon. $50 ($45 for rice gallery members), but it includes parking, not a negligible factor at Rice, even during the summer!
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- 06/02/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
According to yet another email from the prolific John
Viramontes and the Council for Artists' Rights, Dallas “wildflower artist”
Chapman Kelley has asked Dallas Museum of Art Director Bonnie Pittman to remove
his 1960 painting Sand Dune from the museum’s collection and return it to
him. The artist will refund the purchase price. Apparently, Kelley objects to
the painting’s inclusion the DMA’s Coastlines:
Images of Land and Sea, an exhibition incorporating an “evocative sound
installation relating and responding directly to the works on display” created
by faculty and graduate students in the Arts and Technology (ATEC) program at
the University of Texas at Dallas. In Kelley’s excerpted letter to Pittman, the
artist writes: “If I had intended for it to include such added-on effects,
I would have made it an installation piece or a 'happening' with audio and visual
effects of my own choosing. Or perhaps have it submitted to the Ringling Bros.
and Barnum & Bailey Circus.” Glasstire encourages its readers to visit the
DMA show or Mr. Kelley’s website and weigh in on the possible negative impact
of sound on the artist’s work.
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- 06/02/10
- Bill Davenport
Footage of recently deceased gonzo actor Dennis Hopper's 1983 Dynamite Death Chair performance at
the big H speedway in Houston is now on Youtube! After a lecture/performance at
the Rice Media Center, busloads of spectators went to the speedway where Hopper
performed a stunt in which he sat inside a ring of explosives and blew himself
up. Those who were there remember it as a strange night.
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- 06/01/10
- Kelly Klaasmeyer
Louise Bourgeois died of a heart attack yesterday in
Manhattan. She was 98. The creator of influential and psychologically evocative
sculptures, Bourgeois, like so many 20th century female artists (see
Alice Neel at the MFAH), only gained recognition for her work late in life.
Thankfully, she had a long one. Check out our blogger Margaret Meehan’s loving
tribute to her.
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- 06/01/10
- Bill Davenport
Cash-strapped Brandeis University, which caused a ruckus last year in the museum world by proposing to close its Rose Art Museum and sell its colllection of moderist gems to pay the bills, is proposing to cause a ruckus by renting it out. Using the auction house Sotheby's as broker, the school plans to loan selections from its collection to the highest bidder, hoping to stave off their politically untenable outright sale. Quoted in the Boston.com article about the Rose, Houston Museum of Fine Arts Director Peter Marzio defends the novel deal, saying that the museum community "will be against anything except the status quo, but Brandeis has to set its priorities and decide how the museum fits into the long-term purpose of the university. They would be fools not to explore this."
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