San Antonio Visits

On a Thursday in November, I got picked up at home very early in the morning by my colleague in an unusually low-key car for her. We were on our way to a Texas Public Art Administrators meeting in San Antonio. It was so good to meet people in a specific realm of the arts, and they came from a variety of places and agencies: San Antonio Public Art of course, but also Love Field (an airport), Houston Airports, San Antonio River Authority, etc. Most are city-funded, others included a library with a public art program and no dedicated staff. It was two days after the election and we were all able to tell each other about our local places and not worry about national affairs for the day.

After lunch we met up at a newly re-done park called Yanaguana Garden, which was spectacular. The play structures were huge and wonderful, like nothing I’d ever seen, and there was art all over. We learned that in addition to the large, stunning mosaic sculptures by Oscar Alvarado, were 6 more artworks from the public art exhibition “Play” at Hemisfair, brought together by lead artist Stuart Allen, who led a tour of the park to talk about working with the city and the artists to make ideas reality.

After *that* Continue reading

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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 BlantonImpressionism 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