Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
A work by Salvador Jiménez Flores
1. Rasquachismo: 35 years of a Chicano Sensibility
McNay Art Museum (San Antonio)
December 19, 2024 – March 16, 2025
From the McNay Art Museum:
“The term rasquachismo may be unfamiliar to some, but the flamboyant Chicano concept has rich history. Rasquachismo: 35 years of a Chicano Sensibility will explore how rasquachismo influences Latinx artists around the United States and beyond and celebrate the 35th anniversary of Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility, the pivotal essay by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Ph.D. The critic and scholar of Latinx art and culture coined the term rasquachismo in his 1989 essay as a cultural concept informed by the experiences of Chicanos in the United States. Today, those elements are apparent in poetry, music, and the visual arts.”
Letitia Huckaby, “Latrina”
2. Diaries of Home
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
November 17, 2024 – February 2, 2025
From the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth:
“The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents Diaries of Home, an exhibition of works by twelve women and nonbinary artists who explore the multilayered concepts of family, community, and home. The artists in this exhibition challenge documentary photography by pushing it into conceptual, performative, and theatrical realms. They probe preconceptions about domestic, familial, and communal spaces in the United States, which are often considered feminine spheres. Such environments and their relationship to feminism and feminist art have a history dating back to the 1970s — especially in photography, where women artists have been among the strongest voices. The photographers presented in Diaries of Home show us the dynamics of both biological and constructed families.”
Read a review of the exhibition here.
Glass Baby Bottle, early 20th century. Courtesy of Designing Motherhood. Photo by Erik Gould.
3. Designing Motherhood
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
November 8, 2024 – March 15, 2025
From the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft:
“The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) is pleased to present Designing Motherhood, the first exhibition of its kind to consider the arc of human reproduction through a design lens. The exhibition originated in Philadelphia at the Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Center for Architecture and Design. HCCC’s iteration of Designing Motherhood will be the first mounted in the Southern United States and the first to extend the contents to highlight the craft perspective on the topic. Featuring over 60 craft and design objects and prototypes from the past 50 years and the work of more than 20 contemporary artists, the show traverses themes ranging from the DIY culture of parenthood and health activism to reproductive access and equity, parental leave, and the work-life balance of artist-mothers.”
Al Rendón, “Selena Entre A Mi Mundo [Selena Enter My World],” 1992, printed 2014, archival pigment ink print. Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores Garcia, PA2023.CA.657
Blanton Museum of Art (Austin)
September 28, 2024 – May 25, 2025
“De moda showcases dynamic representations of contemporary fashion and traditional regalia of Chicano, Latino, and Indigenous communities. Featuring works from the Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores Garcia collection, artists explore how clothing and style reflect cultural affirmation, historical reclamation, political protest, and ceremonial practice.
The themes in this exhibition explore the urban cool of the pachuco and their stylish legacies throughout Chicano art. Latino and Chicano portraits honor the Western wear of Northern Mexico, as with musical entertainers such as the late Tejano musician Selena Quintanilla. Mexican and Mexican American musicians blend regional Mexican styles with American pop while challenging and queering fashion. Artists document political protest and social unrest, turning uniforms, like the beret, into revolutionary symbols.”
A work by Coreen Mary Spellman
5. Coreen Mary Spellman: In Her Own Right
The Grace Museum (Abilene)
October 19, 2024 – February 8, 2025
From the Grace Museum:
“This solo exhibition will feature paintings and fine art prints by Coreen Mary Spellman from the collection of the Tyler Museum of Art and the Spellman Forney Historical Museum, as well as private collections. In a 1941 Dallas Morning News article, Louise Gossett listed Coreen Mary Spellman “among the most promising women artists in the state.” Spellman was a champion of women artists as well as being an educated, prize-winning artist in her own right.
Spellman’s printmaking skills in lithography, etching, and mezzotint, for which she received many awards and purchase prizes, are featured in this exhibition, along with several important paintings demonstrating Spellman’s precise compositions characterized by a spare, grid-like geometry and fine attention to detail. Spellman was an important artist and Texas Regionalist who was one of eight founding members of the Printmakers Guild (later the Texas Printmakers), a group of printmakers, originally all women, who worked to give female printmakers an opportunity to show and sell their work through annual circulating print exhibitions.”
