Brooklyn Museum

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Migrations

Having left New York City in the past year, I’ve been especially attuned to people I know and know of going to new cities from NYC. First, before me, was my grad school classmate & pal, Christina Vassallo leaving NYC and Flux Factory for Spaces Cleveland a couple years ago. Now, another Brooklynite is leaving, for Philadelphia. My former coworker (via Art in General) Andria Hickey leaves NYC and the Public Art Fund for Cleveland – this time to the MOCA. Cleveland folks – go see the Mark Mothersbaugh* show when it opens. I caught the Contemporary Austin version last month and really enjoyed it!

welcome-to-texas

New to Waco, but already coming from Texas are some Baylor Museums people – Alison Chew Syltie came to the Martin Museum of Art from Corsicana, where she was previously at Navarro College’s Pearce Museum. The Mayborn Museum welcomed a new director around the same time, Charles Walter from San Antonio’s DoSeum.

Speaking of migrations – is there any news from DMA about who will replace Max Anderson?

*fun fact: I walked down the aisle to a Mark Mothersbaugh composition – from Royal Tenenbaums – at my wedding.

Top photo by Nan Palmero via New York Magazine. Texas photo via The Crazy Tourist.

 

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Greetings Earthlings! Transitions and Impressions

Leaving Brooklyn, oy vei!

After 10 years in Brooklyn, NY, I have returned to my home state of Texas. I left Dallas in 2005 to go to graduate school full-time in Visual Arts Administration at New York University. After completing the program in 2 years, my husband Jonah and I stayed on in our adopted city of Brooklyn for 8 more. We returned in August 2015 and are currently based in Waco.

Two things I miss about NYC so far: street art and fall color

We had a blast in “The City” and we’re making the most of our time in Texas while we’re relatively unscheduled. I’ve visited lots of museums and art organizations in our short time back, it’s fun to be a tourist in a place you already know. Fort Worth has long been a favorite because of the wonderful Kimbell and I had a chance to visit the Fort Worth Modern’s new permanent collection re-installation (more on that in a later post), and to have a tiny peek into their since-opened Kehinde Wiley survey as it was being installed. Rumor has it that the artist thinks it looks better in Fort Worth than at its first stop at the Brooklyn Museum. (Don’t worry BK, you’re still one of my favorites!)

Speaking of the Brooklyn Museum, one of their current shows is an exhibition we saw during its first stop at Austin’s Blanton, Impressionism and the Caribbean: Fransisco Oller and His Transatlantic World (through Jan. 3, 2016). Absolutely worth your time if you are able to see it. There are quite a few lovely Oller paintings, a few pieces by familiar masters (Cézanne, Monet, Church, Homer)*, and several of the contextual pieces by less-known contemporaries were what really took my breath away.

My favorite of the Oller works in the exhibition, very Courbet.

A nice surprise from our August visit to the Blanton was Natalie Frank: The Brothers Grimm (through Nov. 15, 2015). Exploring the earliest, darkest Grimm fairy tales, the artist envisions key scenes from both well-known and unknown Grimm stories in vibrant, sometimes disturbing drawings. The exhibition is a quickie-but-goodie, and the catalogue is high on my Christmas list.

* Big props to the museums that own these artworks for having their info available online! My beloved Brooklyn Museum, and the Wadsworth Athenaeum