VAUDEVILLE! at the Harry Ransom Center
Some 200 vintage photographs, artifacts, and recordings from the Center’s expansive theater history collections bring into focus the amorphous, sprawling mega-genre of American entertainment called vaudeville.
“Why The Hell Not?” CASETA Enlivens Early Texas Art
“Texas painters and sculptors saw themselves as avant-garde artists in the pursuit of identifying a truly American art."
Fsbx Fstvl: Ragnar Kjartansson’s S.S. Hangover
As hour after hour of 'S. S. Hangover,' Ragnar Kjartansson’s Fusebox Festival performance, sailed across the placid lagoon at The Contemporary Austin at Laguna Gloria, I couldn’t help musing about the somewhat random yet enduring history of endurance performance art.
Bison Bones, Adobe Dogs: Loss and Return in Old San Antone
San Antonio is where it makes the most sense for some contemporary art content to explore the past and its powerful hold on the present.
“Before the Alamo” — San Antonio’s First Hundred Years
Comprised of works — many previously unseen in the United States — from nearly two dozen institutions and private collections throughout Mexico, this exhibition in San Antonio is a stunning assemblage.
“Clearing Stones, Sowing Seeds” at Austin History Center
The 16 images in the exhibition offer a compelling view of life for the black residents of Central Texas from the early 1940s to the early 1960s.
Gallery Up a Creek: Waller and San Pedro
Historic waterways in San Antonio and Austin are the settings of ongoing improvement and restoration projects that include components of contemporary art.
Ben Livingston’s ‘Spirit Houses’ at San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
"They remind us that our minds are full of ghosts all the time.”
Terry Allen’s Road Angel: “Every Freedom I Most Value”
Every journey has a soundtrack, and 'Road Angel' lays down a linear blast of a hum and a thrum that fills up the corners of our big ol’ melancholy highway with that amber ache that makes you feel alive.
Laura Wilson’s “That Day: Pictures in the American West”
It’s remarkable how many obscure and hidden niche-cultures of the west Wilson was allowed to photograph.
Off to See the Wizard in the Hills of San Antone: Wolverton’s New Album
Wolverton songs — grand adventures in tiny, shiny packages — tend toward the cerebral and the mystical.
Did Texas Bill Invent the Selfie?
"After you’ve seen enough of my selfies, I become redundant and blurry, like telephone poles by the highway."
The Endless Indian Summer of Edward Sheriff Curtis
Curtis may have achieved the impossible, but the project broke him physically, mentally, and romantically.
Robert Johnson In Texas
This current show in Austin gathers wisps and glimmers of the songster’s fugitive saga and summarizes recent discoveries, and loving gestures of homage.
Overwhelmed by Wonder: Carolyn Boyd and Lower Pecos Rock Art
"Far from being the idle doodling of ancient peoples, the rock art of the Lower Pecos was part of a living landscape that provided food, shelter, and a connection with the spirit world.”
Bearing Witness: ‘Border Cantos’ at the Amon Carter
The Amon Carter's exhibition of the ongoing collaboration between Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo is designed to represent a journey.
Territory of the Imagination at UTEP
The show is actually a sprawling four-parter, and it expands our own outer-space references with its DIY explorations of stepping away from terra firma and venturing into the atmosphere and beyond.
As Above So Below: Art of the American Fraternal Society, 1850-1930
What makes these fellows odd? And why are they proclaiming it so publicly? Why are they organizing like this? Exactly how odd are they?
The Art of Frank Reaugh at the Harry Ransom Center
At some point in his long, productive life the artist Frank Reaugh (1860-1945) appraised his youthful self as “the most awkward fellow you ever saw.”...Read More
Sound Speed Marker: An Archeology of Cinema
When I left the Blaffer, I felt I could have watched each piece another 17 times, especially the last two, and still felt enlivened and refreshed.
