Summer is ending and museums in the greater Houston area are ready to debut their fall exhibitions. A slew of solo shows, including some artists’ first museum exhibitions, as well as a few group shows will be opening throughout the season.
Carole Smith: “Sacred Stones”
Later this week the Galveston Arts Center will open two concurrent solo shows, Carole Smith’s Sacred Stones and Troy Dugas’ Fables in Form and Fiber. Smith’s show features new ceramic sculptures inspired by Minoan stones unearthed at the archaeological site of Gournia on Crete. This new body of work grows out of the artist’s experience at the Mudhouse Artist Residency in Greece last summer. Dugas’ exhibition will include fiber works and ceramic platters, featuring imagery reminiscent of traditional textiles and Indigenous art.
Sacred Stones and Fables in Form and Fiber will be on view from August 24 through November 17, 2024.
Also in August, the 2024 Texas Biennial: The Last Sky will open at the Blaffer Art Museum. The exhibition is an independent survey of contemporary art in the state and was curated by Erika Mei Chua Holum, Ashley Dehoyos Sauder, and Coka Treviño. Participating artists include JD Pluecker, Guadalupe Hernandez, Alexis Pye, Phillip Pyle, II, Veronica Ibargüengoitia, Gilberto Rocha, Antonio Lechuga, Ryan Sandison Montgomery, Bria Lauren, and others.
The 2024 Texas Biennial will be on view from August 27, 2024, through March 9, 2025.
Do Ho Suh, “Untitled (Bridge Project),” 2003-ongoing, concept rendering.© Do Ho Suh. Courtesy of the artist; Lehmann Maupin, New York and Seoul; Victoria Miro, London/Venice
In September, the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University will launch its fall season with a presentation of works by Do Ho Suh. Unlike typical exhibitions, Do Ho Suh: In Process will present works in a studio-like space to highlight the artist’s research and collaborative projects.
In a press release, Mr. Suh explained, “I am a hugely process-driven artist. This exhibition is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Much of the work I exhibit I consider to be part of larger processes — whether mental or physical — and for me, it is about that process as much as it is about the outcome. It takes an institution like the Moody to present an exhibition as unusual as this one — it’s a gift as an artist.”
Do Ho Suh: In Process will be on view from September 6 through December 21, 2024.
Gory (Rogelio López Marin), from the series “It’s Only Water in the Teardrop of a Stranger (Es sólo agua en la lágrima de un extraño),” 1986, printed 2023, chromogenic print. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Photography Subcommittee
In late September, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) will present Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography. The show features 100 photographs from the 1960s through the 2010s. The works are part of the museum’s recent acquisition of photographs from Chicago-based collectors Madeleine and Harvey Plonsker.
In a press release, Malcolm Daniel, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the MFAH, commented, “The strengths of the Plonsker Collection are unparalleled, in terms of telling the complex and compelling story of post-Revolution Cuban photography. Combined in this exhibition with works already in the museum’s holdings, the collection allows us to chronicle that story from the ‘epic generation,’ whose work would define the image of the Cuban Revolution, to the succeeding generations of photographers, who questioned the power of photography and its relationship to political authority and who created highly personal work in the context of a greater awareness of international contemporary art.”
Later this fall, the museum will open Gauguin in the World, featuring more than 150 paintings, sculptures, prints, and writings by Paul Gauguin. The exhibition includes work from his beginnings in Paris through the end of his life, including the controversial works he made in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands.
Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography will be on view from September 29, 2024, through August 3, 2025, and Gaugin in the World will be on view from November 3, 2024, through February 16, 2025.
Tacita Dean, “Beauty,” 2006, gouache on black and white fiber-based photograph mounted on paper, 141 x 147 inches. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Purchase through a gift of Raoul Kennedy in memory of Patricia A. Kennedy. © Tacita Dean
In October, the Menil Collection will open the first major museum survey in the U.S. of work by Tacita Dean. Tacita Dean: Blind Folly is organized in collaboration with the artist and highlights her artistic practice of allowing her mediums to shape her work through chance-based processes. The show will include her large-scale blackboard drawings, as well as works on carbon paper and Victorian-era slates, albumen photographs, and 16mm films.
Tacita Dean: Blind Folly will be on view from October 11, 2024, through April 19, 2025.
Vincent Valdez, “So Long, Mary Ann,” 2019, oil on canvas. Image and work courtesy of the Collection of Mike Healy and Tim Walsh, Santa Barbara, CA
In November, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) will debut Vincent Valdez’s first major museum survey and will feature previously unexhibited and new bodies of work. Spanning 20 years of his career, Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… includes drawings, paintings, video, sculpture, lithography, and multimedia installation.
CAMH states, “The artist often works in series, with this exhibition marking the first time these chapters are in dialogue. Valdez celebrates common people, like his own family members, as empowered, formidable, and present, while challenging traditional and historic symbols of power within contemporary society.”
Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… will be on view from November 15, 2024, through March 23, 2025.
