The Hermann Park installation is part of a six-stop US tour that includes New York, Los Angeles, Princeton, NJ, Washington D.C., and Pittsburgh.
The 12 monumental bronze heads each weigh 800 pounds and stand roughly 10 feet high.
They’re giant copies of elements from a famous water clock made for the Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace) outside Beijing by Jesuits in the 18th century. The sculptures were looted by European soldiers in 1860.
Seven of the 12 original heads, the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, horse, monkey and boar, have been recovered. The dragon, snake, goat, rooster and dog are still missing.
Ai Weiwei gained global recognition for his Bird’s Nest Stadium designed for the 2008 Olympic Games
In 2011, Weiwei was imprisoned, held incommunicado by the Chinese government for 81 days on charges widely thought to be a pretext for politically-motivated intimidation.
The exhibit is scheduled to coincide with the April 14 – 15 opening of the new Asia Society Texas Center.
The sculptures require three 40-foot trucks to be transported. Thirty man hours (or three 10-hour shifts) are needed to install all 12 sculptures in Hermann Park.
Quotable quotes:
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, about the piece’s NY premier: “As we continue to showcase the best art exhibits and attractions, we maintain our status as the cultural capital of the world.”
HAA’ director Jonathan Glus, about the Houston installation: “Thousands from Houston and beyond will share in this culturally relevant experience, which helps build our city’s visibility as an international arts center.”
Weiwei, about his first public art work: “because Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is composed of animal heads, it’s a work that everyone can understand, including children and people who are not in the art world.”
Echoing, in diluted form, the debate over the appropriateness of Luis Jimenez’ famous pistol-waving Vaquero, copies of which are sited on Houston’s Northside, and at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, a monumental bronze Vaquero de Fort Worth has been given the go-ahead by a vote of city council, after a hiccup over the cowman’s gunbelt.
The gun was added by artists David Newton and Tomas Bustos despite the fact that the Fort Worth Art Commission approved a gun-less design, and the Vaqero Core Committee, representing the project’s major funders, explicitly opposed the gunbelt as historically inaccurate, a hollywood stereotype.
Repeated objections to the gun at various phases of the project were ignored until the piece had already been cast in bronze; the city refused to accept it. The artists refused to make the by-then expensive alteration, saying that removing the gunbelt it would be a mutilation of their piece. Tuesday, Fort Worth City Council gave in, allowing the piece to be installed, hardware and all, at Vaquero Plaza on North Main Street and Central and Ellis avenues in May or June.
If the winters continue to be as warm as this one, scientists say that the vampire bat, scourge of the Mexican cattle industry, could begin to find suitable habitat north of the border. Just sayin’.
An amusing and embarrassing story in today’s NY Times relates how UC Berkeley accidentally sold a carved redwood panel by WPA artist Sargent Johnson for $150 (+tax) from it’s surplus furniture depot. There’s a happy ending, though- through the sharp eyes and acquisitive instincts of a lucky antique dealer, the piece was re-sold for an undisclosed sum between $200,000 and $1 million to the the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, where it will be on public display, a prominent part of the museum’s American art collection.
Vidor sculptor Charlie Staggdied yesterday at UTMB in Galveston from burns suffered when he fell into an open fire pit at his eccentric folk-art style glass bottle and cement home and studio in the woods near Vidor, TX. He was 72.
One of East Texas’ best kept secrets, Stagg began the free-range building project, the A. V. Stagg Art Studio and Wildlife Preserve, his major work, in 1981, on family farmland. Although he lived alone with cats, dogs, goats and king snakes, but no air conditioning, he welcomed frequent visitors to his visionary environment, where he continued to carve and assemble works from pine branches and found objects which have been featured in many shows across the country.
Despite his outsider lifestyle, Stagg was an academically trained artist with a Degree from the Tyler School of Art who chose to isolate and immerse himself in his work, free from the distractions and pressures.
For fans of combined boxing/fine arts news coverage, Bart Barry has a piece on 15 rounds.com that critiques both the art Museum of South Texas’ Art of the Dive: Portraits of the Deep show and the IBF light heavyweight title fight between Tavoris “Thunder” Cloud and Gabriel “Chico Guapo” Campillo at the American Bank Center Arena, across the two venues’ shared parking lot.
Barry’s art criticism (“did the artist paint this or trace it?”) is rudimentary compared with his fight analyses, (“a wondrous 150 seconds of violence, punctuated by a decisive overhand right.”) but juxtaposing the two in print, as they are juxtaposed in reality in bayside Corpus Christi is a treat.
The president’s 2013 “re-election budget” has got my vote: Allen Keckonen of the San Antonio Art Festivals Examiner has waded through the numbers and concludes that last fall’s cuts for the NEA and NEH have been largely offset by 5.5% budget increases this time around! Of course, it’s just a proposal, if it dances across the gator pool of deficit hawks, it must still dodge the firing squad of competing special interests, and wriggle through a crack in the fortress of partisan obstructionism, but who’s worrying?
Scott Sustek’s “Working Cowboy”, an over-life-sized sculpture of a waving man with a rope and saddle, was installed outside San Angelo on highway 87 near the intersection of Bryant Boulevard and Third Street last week. The 1500+ pound bronze piece cowpoke gestures towards downtown, and was sponsored by Art in Uncommon Places, a local nonprofit begun by art teachers Julie Raymond and Sue Rainey, that champions the placement of art in outdoor spaces.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will be supporting the the 2012 “Doodle 4 Google” contest by exhibiting the Texas state finalists’ drawings this summer. The annual competition invites students across the United States to create their own customized versions of the ever-changing logo featured on the mega corporation’s ubiquitous website- the selected best of which will be displayed on www.google.com, and the young artist handed a $30,000 scholarship.
Bandele Tyehimba, owner of Pan African Connection, an African art gallery and meeting place for progressive organizations in South Dallas, has died. The 58-year old gallerist and activist went to rest on Wednesday evening; his wife, unable to rouse him, called paramedics. The cause of his death is as yet unknown.
A wake will be held in the upstairs meeting room from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. The funeral will be Wednesday at St. Luke’s Community United Methodist Church in Dallas at 11 a.m. According to his family, the gallery will remain open in South Dallas, despite Tyehimba’s death and recent struggles with the poor economy and disputes with their landlords.
UT Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art has appointed Molly Hasie Sherman as Director of Development effective April 1. A University of Texas alum, Sherman has twenty years of fundraising experience, mostly working as Director of Development at Austin’s St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, where she raised over $60 million. Prior to that, she worked at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center as a Development Associate.
A 30-minute PBS documentary on the newly completed Asia Society Texas Center building is in the works. Houston PBS is producing the video, the third in their “Houston Arts” series, which is expected to air this fall on Houston’s Channel 8. The 40,000-square-foot Center, designed by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, opens to the public April 14 with much fanfare.
Employees Only by Makena Buchanan and Bryce Seifert, 2011 People's Choice Winner
The Houston Public Library is taking submissions for its 4th annual Teen Film Festival. With cash prizes for the best short documentary, music video, animation and seven other categories (including the exciting “Teen Health”), this is a chance for 6th through 12th grade filmmakers to cash in on their YouTube-honed expertise. March 17, 2012 is the deadline for DVD submissions, and the festival itself is scheduled for March 31. Films must have been made since January 2011, and may be on “any topic”, although “all films will be previewed for content,” which presumably means that potentially controversial videos will be censored from the screenings (let’s hope not the prize competition). There’s been no announcement of who jurying the awards.
Entry forms for the 25th Houston Orange Show Art Car Parade are online now! If you don’t have a car, at least vounteer. The parade is set for Saturday, May 12. You have 80 days to get ready.
The LA Times Christopher Knight reports that the Getty museum has named former Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth) director Timothy Potts to head the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Potts replaces Michael Brand, who took a new job in Sydney, Australia after yet another round of what the Knight sees as inevitable frictions between the Getty Museum’s director and his boss, the President of the Getty Trust, who oversees the museum and the three other directors of the Getty’s research, conservation and grant programs. Potts headed the Kimbell from 1998-2007, where administered an acquisitions budget similar to that of the Getty. He begins work on Sept. 1.
The news of Potts’ appointment was announced a little earlier than the Getty had planned, owing to a leak by Lee Rosenbaum’s blog CultureGrrl, which has posted the Getty’s hastily-composed press release.
Today’s Daily Texan profiles Austin Tattoo Artist Rachel Kolar, a ten-year veteran at True Blue Tattoo. Jessica Lee praises Kolar for the personable consideration she gives her clients, along with the pain.
In conjunction with her year-long retrospective at the El Paso Museum of Art (Aug. 28, 2011-Aug 4, 2013), El Paso Inc. has a feature on sculptor Margarita Cabrera’s ongoing international activities, based out of her studio on what was part of El Paso pioneer Zach White’s original Upper Valley property along Frontera road. Cabrera’s company, Florezca, in which undocumented workers are shareholders so that they might be protected by the legal status of a corporate entity. Last fall, Cotton Circles, involved students, faculty, staff and community volunteers at California State Univ. in Fresno in a collaborative, outdoor weaving project using traditional Oaxacan looms.
Vincent Dillio’s ongoing blog in The NY Times “Real Artists of Marfa” profiles bootmaker Colt Miller and Logan Caldbeck, the co-owners of Cobra Rock Boot Company, a boutique bootery on Marfa’s main drag. The pair moved to the art ‘n boot capital of West Texas in 2010.
As part of the city’s ambitious plans to renovate a prime lakeside district downtown, Austin City Council is considering ways to fence off the Seaholm electric substation, and approved a proposal for the project from Boston architect Nader Tehrani’s NADAAA last thursday for 1000-foot massive “art wall” around the unsightly hardware that will set the city back $800,000, Austin’s largest public art project ever. In October, City Council member Chris Riley moved that the project be awarded to NADAAA instead of acclaimed artist Jim Isermann, who was recommended by the remarkably successful Austin art in Public Places Staff.
The big wall, varys in height from 12-25 feet and is illuminated at night with spooky colored lights. “The only thing missing is a Pink Floyd soundtrack,” joked Council Member Bill Spelman. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2013. You can see Tehrani’s presentation online, courtesy of Wells Dunbar of KUT News.
The owners of the Mary’s building, once ground zero for the Montrose leather scene, have again covered over over legendary Mary’s mural as part of the ongoing refurbishing of the Westheimer/Montrose intersection. The peeling monument to downtown pride and diversity was recreated in 2011 for the Houston Pride Parade by artist Cody Ledvina’s Montrose Improvement Bureau with the approval of Building owner Bobby Heugel, who said last year he wanted the wall to become “an evolving urban art centerpiece.” Huegel is also renovating Chances into conjoined-twin restaurants Hay Merchant and Underbelly next door. Ledvina vows to replicate the mural in “multiple locations” as recompense for the whitewash.
UPDATE: Building owner Huegel has told real estate blog Swamplot that the paint-over was prompted by a city demand for Graffiti removal- sparking a derisive string of disbelieving comments.
