The Austin non-profit Big Medium announced today that the Texas Biennial will return in the fall of 2020. Founded to showcase art being made in Texas, the Texas Biennial has run on and off since 2005. Over the years, it has taken on different iterations: the first, second (2007), and third (2009) versions of the event were held in Austin spaces, and in 2011, the Biennial expanded to include San Antonio and Houston venues, along with a number of participating organizations across the state. In 2013, Glasstire’s current Editor-in-Chief, Christina Rees, served as one of the event’s handful of region-based curators that year, and the show also expanded to include programming in Dallas and Marfa.
After a break, the Texas Biennial returned in 2017, with Leslie Moody Castro as its new artistic director and curator. This version of the show was hosted in a warehouse in Austin and featured 33 artists working in and around Texas.
As for the coming 2020 edition of the Biennial, Big Medium says that its programming “will continue to provide high-impact exhibition opportunities for artists, collaboratively illustrate the current story of Texas’ artistic landscape across its regions, and reveal the shared cultures between Texas and its bordering states.” The organization also says that the Biennial’s coming seventh edition will make it “the longest running state biennial in the country.”
The 2020 Texas Biennial will be supported by a $25,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information on past Texas Biennials, please go here.
