Newswire

The Texas Biennial has added a few names and announced the complete list of artists selected for the 2013 Texas Biennial. For information on the Biennial, the curators, venues, and dates, visit the Texas Biennial web site.

Congratulations to:

Adela Andea (Conroe)
Skye Ashbrook (Austin)
David Aylsworth (Houston)
Debra Barrera (Houston)
Michael Bise (Houston)
Michael Blair (Denton)
Matthew Bourbon (Denton)
Margarita Cabrera (El Paso)
Bernardo Cantu (Denton)
Rebecca Carter (Dallas)
Teresa Cervantes (Austin)
Kristen Cochran (Dallas)
Joseph Cohen (Houston)
Shannon Crider (San Antonio)
Rachel Crist and Daedalus Hoffman (Austin)
Matthew Cusick (Dallas)
Gabriel Dawe (Dallas)
Claudio Dicochea (San Antonio)
Kent Dorn (Houston)
Trey Egan (Lewisville)
Cassandra Emswiler (McKinney)
Miriam Ellen Ewers (Denton)
Vincent Falsetta (Denton)
Danielle Georgiou (Dallas)
Jeff Gibbons (Arlington)
Sally Glass (Dallas)
Will Henry (Houston)
Hillerbrand + Magsamen (Houston)
Geoff Hippenstiel (Houston)
HOMECOMING! Committee (Fort Worth)
Letitia Huckaby (Fort Worth)
Tatiana Istomina (Houston)
Hiroko Kubo (Fort Worth)
Ann Johnson (Houston)
Angela Kallus (Fort Worth)

Lakes Were Rivers (Austin)
Julia Barbosa Landois (San Antonio)
Dion Laurent (Houston)
Jonathan Leach (Houston)
Natali Leduc (Houston)
Ysabel LeMay (Austin)
Daniel McFarlane (Spring)
Marcelyn McNeil (Houston)
Robert Melton and Robert Boland (Austin)
Abinadi Meza (Austin)
Madsen Minax (Houston)
Rahul Mitra (Pearland)
Seth Mittag (Houston)
Michael Morris (Irving)
Nancy Newberry (Dallas)
Kelly O’Connor (San Antonio)
Arthur Peña (Dallas)
Katie Rose Pipkin (Austin)
Jessica Pizaña-Roberts (El Paso)
Mark Ponder (Houston)
Anne Regan (Houston)
Liz Rodda (Austin)
Gregory Ruppe (Fort Worth)
Chris Sauter (San Antonio)
Carrie Schneider (Houston)
Kasey Short (Austin)
Gary Sweeney (San Antonio)
The Bridge Club Collaborative (Huntsville)
Prince Thomas (Houston)
Kevin Todora (Richardson)
Melissa Tran (Houston)
Brad Tucker (Austin)
Giovanni Valderas (Dallas)
Sara Vanderbeek (Austin)

 

Painter and photographer Jimmy Jalapeeno died peacefully yesterday afternoon, surrounded by friends and family.

Born Albert James Bonar in 1947, Jalapeeno was a lifetime Texas resident, where he made art for over 50 years. He was known for both his photography and his painting, notably his incandescent oil paintings of Texas Hill Country scenery. He was also a photographer for the Texas Historical Commission for more than 25 years. Jalapeeno attended the University of Houston from 1964-1966 and received a BFA in painting and photography from the University of Texas in 1969. He attended the University of California at Davis (his only two years away from Texas) where he received an MFA in painting and photography in 1973.

Jalapeeno received two National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowships and a public art commission for the Robert Mueller Airport in Austin. His photography and paintings were featured in numerous exhibitions throughout his career, such as Southern Fictions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Fresh Paint at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the 1983 New Orleans Triennial, Jimmy Jalapeeno: New Works at Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin, and group and solo shows at d berman gallery, Austin.

Jalapeeno’s friends and family have been posting many photos from his life and long career on his Facebook page, where he is described as a “brilliant artist, trickster, raconteur, lover of kitties, excellent brother, amazing friend, splendid husband and beautiful soul.”

The Whitney Museum of American Art unveiled its new brand identity redesign on Tuesday, and it is already provoking online design chatter, including the interesting Hyperallergic article yesterday. The Amsterdam-based design firm Experimental Jetset explains their use of what they call the “responsive W”:

But even more than the letter W, we think the line also represents a pulse, a beat – the heartbeat of New York, of the USA. It shows the Whitney as an institute that is breathing (in and out), an institute that is open and closed at the same time. An institute that goes back and forth between the past and the future, moving from one opposite to the other (history and present, the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New World’, between the industrial and the sublime, etc.), while still moving forward.

The firm displays the many possible permutations of the logo on their site. But the basic design looks suspiciously familiar to southerners. For more than six decades, folks from Arizona to Florida have been eating at the beloved Texas-based burger chain Whataburger, often in buildings architecturally designed to mimic the logo itself. The restaurant was introduced to outsiders through occasional references on the animated sitcom series King of the Hill.

The Whitney’s new logo, even its sleek minimalist version of the responsive W, is enough to induce immediate cravings in many southerners.

The folks at the 2013 Texas Biennial have announced most of their selection of this year’s participating artists. The official press release is supposed to come out today, but they began releasing the selection yesterday via Twitter— one artist at a time. Beginning mid-afternoon, they posted a name every few minutes. After releasing the names of over 60 artists, the final message was posted close to midnight: “Thank you, Twitterverse! Hoping to confirm a few more artists, but for now — GOOD NIGHT!”

So, there should be a few more names added soon, but congratulations to all listed below:

 

Adela Andea (Conroe)

Skye Ashbrook (Austin)

David Aylsworth (Houston)

Debra Barrera (Houston)

Michael Bise (Houston)

Michael Blair (Denton)

The Bridge Club Collaborative (Huntsville)

Matthew Bourbon (Denton)

Bernardo Cantu (Denton)

Rebecca Carter (Dallas)

Kristen Cochran (Dallas)

Joseph Cohen (Houston)

Shannon Crider (San Antonio)

Rachel Crist and Daedalus Hoffman (Austin)

Matthew Cusick (Dallas)

Gabriel Dawe (Dallas)

Claudio Dicochea (San Antonio)

Kent Dorn (Houston)

Trey Egan (Lewisville)

Cassandra Emswiler (Denison)

Miriam Ellen Ewers (Denton)

Danielle Georgiou (Dallas)

Jeff Gibbons (Arlington)

Sally Glass (Dallas)

Will Henry (Houston)

Hillerbrand + Magsamen (Houston)

Geoff Hippenstiel (Houston)

HOMECOMING! Committee (Fort Worth)

Letitia Huckaby (Fort Worth)

Tatiana Istomina (Houston)

Angela Kallus (Fort Worth)

Hiroko Kubo (Fort Worth)

Lakes Were Rivers (Austin)

Julia Barbosa Landois (San Antonio)

Dion Laurent (Houston)

Jonathan Leach (Houston)

Ysabel LeMay (Austin)

Daniel McFarlane (Spring)

Marcelyn McNeil (Houston)

Robert Melton and Robert Boland (Austin)

Abinadi Meza (Austin)

Madsen Minax (Houston)

Rahul Mitra (Pearland)

Seth Mittag (Houston)

Michael Morris (Irving)

Nancy Newberry (Dallas)

Kelly O’Connor (San Antonio)

Arthur Pena (Dallas)

Katie Rose Pipkin (Austin)

Jessica Pizaña-Roberts (El Paso)

Mark Ponder (Houston)

Anne Regan (Houston)

Liz Rodda (Austin)

Gregory Ruppe (Fort Worth)

Chris Sauter (San Antonio)

Carrie Schneider (Houston)

Prince Thomas (Houston)

Kevin Todora (Richardson)

Brad Tucker (Austin)

Giovanni Valderas (Dallas)

Sara Vanderbeek (Austin)

Houston art student Uriel Landeros, who faced up to ten years for felony graffiti and criminal mischief charges, was sentenced to two years on the graffiti charges. Landeros was accused of spray-painting Picasso’s Woman in a Red Armchair at the Menil Collection on June 13 of last year. The incident was captured on a bystander’s cell phone and posted on YouTube, which made its way into national news stories. Landeros, a US citizen, then fled to Mexico, but eventually turned himself into authorities near the US/Mexico border in early January.

After negotiating with prosecutors, Landeros agreed to plead guilty to the graffiti charge in exchange for a minimal prison sentence. The other charge was dropped because he believed “what he did to the painting was not criminal mischief, it was an artistic statement, an expression, much like graffiti art is,” said Landeros’ attorney, Emily Detoto in a Huffington Post article.

Taking into account the five months served, Detoto believes there is a good chance for parole very soon, if not immediately. Landeros plans to return to the University of Houston for his final semester and receive his bachelor’s degree.

To catch up on the Landeros saga, read the articles posted this past year by Bill Davenport, beginning with this one from June.

According to the Texas Biennial’s Facebook page, they will begin previewing selected artists throughout the day, via Facebook and Twitter. They plan to release the full list on Wednesday, so stay tuned!

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the open call for art remains the central feature of the Texas Biennial. The curated exhibition will take place September 5–November 9, 2013 at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in San Antonio, with selected performance works to be presented in Dallas, a commissioned artist project in Marfa, and (opening in late August in Houston) an exhibition of current work by selected past Biennial artists.

To all entrants: good work and good luck!

 

This weekend, the Austin Museum of Digital Art will hold the PROTOS Digital Art and Prototyping Festival—four days of daytime events (free!) and nighttime events (not free!) at the Long Center Rollins Theatre. There will be a whole bunch of super-smart, cross-disciplinary, hip techno-geeks getting together to present workshops and seminars during the afternoons, and then partying down with concerts, A/V performances, and interactive dancing into the night.

If the PROTOS Festival turns out to be a futuristic overload, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will present a trip into the (not-so-distant, really) technological past on the following weekend when it opens Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop. The exhibition boasts its own prototyping examples: “Nearly every type of manipulation now associated with photography was also part of the pre-digital repertoire.”

Those who have been following the work of Texas-based artist Lauren Kelley know that she sometimes uses Barbie dolls in her still photography, video works, and collages as a means to address issues of racial and feminine identity, youth and material desire.  She uses these toy dolls playfully and humorously, and with a very pointed wit.

 

 

Now, the private aviation company VistaJet has hired contemporary artist Tom Sachs to create its in-flight safety video, and Sachs has teamed up with his former studio assistant, filmmaker Van Neistat, to create a stop-motion Barbie doll animation. If you happen to be a private jet-renter, keep an eye out—the video should be playing on board sometime next month. Kelley, Sachs, and Neistat all credit the influence of Todd Haynes’ now-infamous 43-minute cult treasure Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), the weird and sad dollumentary about the 1970s drummer/singer.

Trying to catch up in the offbeat humor department, Mattel itself placed a tongue-in-cheek listing for Barbie’s Malibu Dream House on the real estate search engine Trulia.com a few months ago (for a mere $25 million). From the listing: “Designed as the ultimate bachelorette compound, it’s perfect for A-Listers, internet entrepreneurs, entertainment moguls and dolls of all ages who love to entertain yet want to relax and take in the never-ending ocean view.”

Barbie doesn’t really need that old place anymore because she’ll be moving into the “Barbie™ Dreamhouse Experience™, a 10,000 square-foot interactive installation bringing the iconic Barbie® Dreamhouse® toy to real life for fans of all ages” (description from barbiedreamhouse.com).  One opened in Sunrise, Florida a couple of weeks ago and another opened in Berlin’s main shopping district just last Thursday.

Some Berliners were not so enchanted and organized an Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse movement, gaining press attention and Facebook fans. “Our protest is not directed towards little girls and their dreams,” Occupy member Michael Koschitzki told NBC. “But, for us, this so-called Dreamhouse symbolizes the beauty craze and the discrimination of women in modern day life. It presents a cliché of the female role in society.”

Apple is set to release the latest app by Texas artists Robert Ziebell and Anthony Thompson Shumate, Las Pozas: Steps & Falls, next week.

Lens-based artist Ziebell, one of the first artists-in-residence at the MFAH Glassell School of Art’s Core program, joined with multimedia artist and designer Shumate to create a company which has already released the apps The Sum of Its Parts and X-Corpse (based on the Surrealist parlor game) and iVotive (virtual good luck candles).

Las Pozas, though, is not a game, but more of an interactive documentary with 360° panoramic views. Ziebell and Shumate originally created Las Pozas: Steps & Falls as a DVD-ROM, which was included in the 2006 Texas Gallery group exhibition “Photographs of ‘Las Pozas.’”

Starting May 24, iPad and iPhone users will be able to navigate the lush and crazy theme park/sculpture garden built deep in the Mexican rainforest by Edward James, British poet, aristocrat, and major patron of Surrealist artists.

There seems to be a recent interest in Turkish film, as proven by the recent inaugural Turkish Film Festival at the MFAH, and now Austin’s Experimental Response Cinema (ERC) is bringing the experimental version to town tonight. And, as fewer and fewer experimental works are being made in the now-classic format of 35mm film, ERC will treat Austinites to some big screen weirdness in a couple weeks.

 

 

TONIGHT: TURKEY

ERC has teamed up with AMOA-Arthouse to present Küçük Sinemalar! Experimental Cinema from Turkey. The free program starts at 7pm tonight at AMOA-Arthouse at the Jones Center.

ERC is a collective of avante-garde film and video artists devoted to bringing experimental cinema to Austin. Küçük Sinemalar is an informal group from Istanbul fromed “to share and encourage moving image works that do not fit within strict boundary conceptions of either video art or traditional cinema.” The program was curated by ERC’s Ekrem Serdar, who will be present at the screening.

OK, NOT LITERALLY TOMORROW, BUT JUNE 1st: 35MM FILMS

ERC will partner with the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz to present a rare screening of classic and contemporary experimental works by Christina Battle, Louise Bourque, Stan Brakhage, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Lawrence Jordan, Chris Kennedy, Peter Kubelka, Kerry Laitala, Pat O’Neill, and Peter Tscherkassky. The program will take place on Saturday, June 1, at 1 pm at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. Admission is $10 or an ERC pass.

Tickets are now on sale for the next ”Conversations with the Director” at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The series launched on April 23 with a conversation between MFAH director Gary Tinterow and artist Jeff Koons (see Bill Davenport’s post on that conversation), which sold out in a super-flash, moments after being announced.

The second in this series will present Tinterow in conversation with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, internationally known authority on human sociology and sexuality, and author of the book The Art of Arousal: A Celebration of Erotic Art throughout History. Tickets will be available Tuesday, May 21, at 11 a.m. and may be ordered online at www.mfah.org or by phone at 713.639.7771. The conversation will take place on Tuesday, June 4, at 6:30 p.m., with a reception to follow.

While Tinterow may be a fantastic conversationalist, imagining Koons and Dr. Ruth in their own conversation only sparks curiosity as to the next (and, as yet, unannounced) speaker of the series, which is meant to bring “an eclectic mix of cultural figures to the Museum’s Brown Auditorium three times a year.”

The University of Houston’s new Center for Arts Leadership is up and running. Fleurette Fernando, Director of the Center’s Master of Arts in Arts Leadership Program, has been on place for a few weeks now and  Sixto Wagan starts his new position as Director of the Center on Monday. Wagan will be in charge of creating innovative, collaborative programming outside the classroom; Fernando will run the M.A. program. In the fall, they will begin their programs and academic curriculum.

“The Center for Arts Leadership will explore how leadership, especially in the arts, can be responsive and reflective of the changing demographics in Houston and nationally,” Wagan said. “Through annual symposia and strategic partnerships between university and community entities, the center will investigate, create and test leadership practices.”

Basically, Wagan will bring the outside in and Fernando will prepare the in to go out, and they both hope to create a continuous back-and-forth dialogue between the university and the larger world.

The two year M.A. program, which “takes an entrepreneurial approach to preparing creative professionals to administer, launch, develop, and maintain arts organizations of all sizes,” is still accepting applications through June 28. There are some intriguing looking classes, such as PUBL 6310: Administrative Theory (which might be an oxymoron) and ARLD 6395: Leading the Turnaround (which promises that “students will acquire knowledge of basic rules and broad ideas for ‘turning around’ distressed arts organizations”).

There are tons of online shopping sites for contemporary art, from ExhibitionA to Paddle8, not to mention the big auction houses and individual artists’ homemade pages. Now, Houston’s Fresh Arts is giving it a shot.

The organization, which basically aims to provide opportunities and visibility for area artists and arts groups, is hoping that their new Facebook gallery store, Fresh Market, will put some cash in the pockets of local artists. For its inaugural collection (up through May 31), the 10 artists have donated part or all of their proceeds back to Fresh Arts. For collectors who limit their social interaction to the FedEx guy: you have to go down to the Fresh Arts office to pick up your purchases.

On Saturday, May 18 is the American Association of Museum Directors Art Museum Day. Many AAMD member organizations are offering free (or reduced) admission.

For money-saving convenience, here is a list of Texas museums offering free admission, in highest-to-lowest order of their regular (non-member adult) general admission fees:

$15:
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio

$13:
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

$10:
Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio

$5:
AMOA-Arthouse, Austin

Free:
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
The Menil Collection, Houston
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Forth Worth
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (Free since this January. Yea!)
El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso

UPDATE: We are happy to make the following correction. Despite what were we told on the phone, the McNay is indeed participating in Art Museum Day. Yea!

Special confusion category:
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. AAMD lists the MacNay as a participant, but the museum says they will not be free; they will be charging their regular $15 (which beats out the MFAH as the highest admission fee slot on the list).

Rules:
1.   Many of these museums, even some of the always-free ones, have “special exhibitions,” to which the free admission does not apply. The MFAH’s Picasso Black and White is still $20 extra. Call ahead to each museum to get details.

2.   Don’t forget to show the always-free museums your love! If you don’t have time Saturday, stop by on Sunday.

The Nicole Longnecker Gallery is the newest art space to join the string of galleries on Colquitt near Kirby in Houston’s Gallery Row. “Our gallery offers a wide range of contemporary artistic ideas in various media by artists on both a national and international level,” say Longnecker and gallery partner Brad Barber. “We are committed to presenting the finest work possible from established and emerging artists.”

Hmm, that could mean absolutely anything. But Houston could use another exciting gallery space to watch. Their inaugural exhibition, Devon Christopher Moore: The Gravity of Time, opens June 1 from 5-7 p.m.

Most International Space Station missions last about six months, which means any sane astronaut needs a good thick novel, an effective mantra on which to meditate, or the love of a time-consuming hobby.

Karen Nyberg, the 50th woman in space, has outed herself as an avid quilter. “I enjoy sewing and quilting,” she explained during a televised interview from Moscow. When she goes back into space on May 28, she’s taking her hobby with her. “I am bringing some fabric with me, and thread. I’m hoping to create something. I don’t know what yet it will be—that’s part of creativity.”

In a recent Houston interview, it was suggested that she could incorporate old astronaut clothing into her quilt work (they wear their suits for a week and then throw them out, eventually to be jettisoned and burned up in Earth’s atmosphere). Nyberg excitedly replied: “Discarded clothing—fantastic idea!” And, although paints and dyes are forbidden on the space station, Nyberg pointed out that available ketchup, mustard and chili sauce may suffice.

Unmanned cargo capsules carrying supplies up to the space station have room for returning cargo to Earth. But unless the ISS falls into a time-bending black hole, quilt fans will have to wait until 2014: the first capsule, scheduled for early November, won’t quite make it back in time for the country’s largest quilt fair, Houston’s International Quilt Festival, which opens October 31.

San Antonio Express-News staff writer Elda Silva reports on Mark Schlesinger’s new mile-long earth-toned concrete “public painting” along Jones Maltsberger St. in San Antonio. Commissioned by Public Art San Antonio, the piece articulates a 1.2 mile stretch of sidewalk, retaining walls and roadway with stripes and grids of colored concrete. Titled Along Here and There, the low-key intervention isn’t going to shake anyone up, but is intended as a visual anesthetic for bikers and joggers. According to PASA manager James LeFlore, “You can create a focus for at least stretches of time that help you tune out the fact that you’re basically not taking a lap around the park, but you’re having a very one-of-a-kind experience on an arterial roadway.”

A couple of months ago, authorities in New Jersey seized over two thousand works of art appraised at nearly $16 million from an 18-wheeler coming from Houston, Texas. Mostly photographs by masters such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the works were intended to be shipped to Spain, where Texas businessman Philip Rivkin, CEO of Houston-based Green Diesel, is now thought to be.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office alleges the artwork was purchased with money collected in a scheme that sold fake credits for renewable energy. The complaint seeks to force the owner to forfeit the works in an attempt to recoup some of the $78 million that authorities allege Green Diesel got from defrauding companies like Exxon, Shell, and Mobil, although Rivkin has not yet formally been charged with a crime.

This story is only one of the examples given in yesterday’s New York Times article about how easy it is to use art to launder illegal money.  Another example from a few years ago is used in the dramatic opening paragraph of the article:

According to the air bill slapped on the crate that arrived at Kennedy International Airport from London, an unnamed painting worth $100 was inside. Only later did federal investigators discover that it was by the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and worth $8 million.

It’s enticingly cinematic to envision some low-level, but art-savvy Customs drone pulling out his crowbar, cracking open a crate, glimpsing the unmistakable brushstroke of the 1980s neo-expressionist graffiti genius and alerting his superiors to what would turn out to be part of a massive money-laundering scheme perpetrated by former Brazilian banker Edemar Cid Ferreira, accused of a billion-dollar fraud—but, apparently, it’s just not that easy.

Customs officials do crack open a small percentage of shipped artworks and some of those officials might be art-savvy, but the scenario is incredibly unlikely. “It was probably Brazil who asked the US to keep an eye out for shipments from Ferrieira,” says Dale Wilson, a Houston contemporary art collector/enthusiast and former US Customs official. According to Wilson, if there weren’t the false Customs declaration (the $100 declaration versus the $8 million value), there wouldn’t be a lot the feds could do in support of Brazil’s claim because, technically, a US law would not have been broken. “Once you get caught up in Customs, though, “ he states, “all bets are off. “ When in customs, it gives time for anyone to come in and dig around: the Treasury, the FBI, Homeland Security, and foreign governments.

“It’s funny,” says Wilson. “If he would’ve just claimed the $8 million, Customs probably wouldn’t have touched it for fear of damaging it.” And Brazilian officials wouldn’t have much of an international legal leg to stand on.

Sideline: Dale Wilson worked for US Customs many years, as supervisor of the art and antiques team and, later, as supervisor of the commercial fraud team. Having taken an art history class in college, he early on volunteered his services to area museums (on-site Customs inspections, under the safe supervision of museum registrars and saving time at Customs inspection sites). He wasn’t taken up on his offer until, one day, a local customs official didn’t understand the “soft” before “soft sculpture” and vigorously dug past the packing material and into the felt, looking for the figurine beneath it, which was destined for a local major museum. After that incident, Wilson got invited to some museums to officially open crates, where he viewed many rarely-seen storage room gems and met the associated curators and scholars. Thus, an art lover was born!

 

 

 

Joe Bravo, director of the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen since 2010, has resigned, leaving behind a 17 page open letter detailing the institution’s achievements, and outlining in detail his plans for the museum’s immediate future. He also undescores the diplomacy an incoming Director will need to deal with a fractious board of directors, saying that the new director “will have to effectively project a vision to the museum’s Board of Trustees that the Board will be willing to enthusiastically support with their commitment of sufficient financial resources and social capital.”

The University of Texas at Arlington is busy installing its first outdoor public sculpture, designed by assistant professor of art Darryl Lauster. The 20-foot sculpture, Reach, is based on Helical Aerial Screw, Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century sketch for a gyroscopic flying machine. Lauster, who says he was hired specifically because of the university’s commitment to interdisciplinary education, referenced the ultimate interdisciplinary artist/educator in order to celebrate the students and their pursuit of knowledge. “As a young art student, Leonardo da Vinci is a total inspiration,” says Lauster. “Then you kind of forget about him for 25 years.”
Lauster worked closely with the outgoing university president, who hopes to leave an artistic legacy at UTA by kick-starting a vigorous public arts program. There will be a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 28.