Art venues in Austin and San Antonio have announced exhibitions opening this Spring. Learn more about shows presented by The Contemporary Austin, the Blanton Museum of Art, the McNay Art Museum, and other Central Texas art spaces.
“Songs for Fran & Donny” at Artpace
Next week, Artpace, an artist residency and exhibition space in San Antonio, will debut a group exhibition honoring the legacy of Dr. Frances Colpitt, a scholar, curator, and educator who died in 2022, and her husband, Donny Walton. Songs for Fran & Donny is curated in collaboration with Artpace alumni artists Constance Lowe and Hills Snyder, writer Jennifer Hope Davy, University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Gallery Director Scott Sherer, and TCU Gallery Director Sara-Jayne Parsons.
The show will present new works by Artpace-affiliated artists and will run concurrently with the traveling exhibition Do you really believe that?, which will be on view at the UTSA Main Art Gallery from January 22 through February 28. Songs for Fran & Donny will be on view from January 16 to June 26.
Bre’Ann White, “Deity II,” 2015, inkjet print, 48 x 36 inches. Courtesy of the artist © Bre’Ann White
On January 24, the Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS) at the University of Texas will debut Transcendence: A Century of Black Queer Ecstasy, 1924–2024 at multiple venues, including the Christian-Green Gallery and Idea Lab and the Visual Arts Center. The show features artworks that depict visual representations of Black queer ecstasy from the past 100 years, and is organized in response to the absence of this type of representation from the historical record. Exploring various states of ecstasy between exaltation and despair, the exhibition is presented in seven themes: Portraiture, Beyond Figuration, Dance and Movement, Spirituality, Sex and Sensuality, Black Queer Futures, and Altered States.
Transcendence will be on view at the Christian-Green Gallery and Idea Lab from January 24 through May 9 and at the Visual Arts Center from January 24 through March 8.
Image by Pablo Tut, 2024. Courtesy of the artist
Also on January 24, the Visual Arts Center (VAC) will present Pablo Tut: Land Invention and The Modern Cowboy. In Land Invention, artist Pablo Tut traces the journey of Mayans who the Mexican government forced from the Yucatán Peninsula to fight alongside Mexican soldiers in Texas between 1835 and 1836. The show centers an 8th century Mayan dagger and through a variety of art mediums, Mr. Tut recontextualizes the object and builds connections between the past and present.
The Modern Cowboy presents works by 11 artists who draw on the symbol and mythology of the cowboy to reimagine the icon for the 21st century. The show features various artistic practices, including painting, photography, embroidery, and found objects.
Land Intervention and The Modern Cowboy will be on view from January 24 through March 8.
Jiab Prachakul, “Purpose,” 2022, acrylic on linen canvas. 48 x 63 inches. Collection of Debbie and Jonathan Rosen. Image courtesy the artist
At the end of January, The Contemporary Austin will present solo exhibitions of the artists Jiab Prachakul, Raven Halfmoon, and Hendrickje Schimmel (who uses the moniker Tenant of Culture). Sweet Solitude is Ms. Prachakul’s first solo museum exhibition, and includes paintings from the past five years. The self-taught artist, originally trained in film, makes paintings that reference memories, dreams, photographs, and cinema.
Flags of our Mothers will be displayed at the Contemporary’s Jones Center and an outdoor sculpture by the artist will also be on view at the Laguna Gloria location. The show includes new and recent works by Raven Halfmoon, who is known for torso-scaled and massive stoneware sculptures that are rooted in Caddo pottery techniques.
Host: Tenant of Culture includes newly commissioned works and recent pieces by Ms. Schimmel. The installation juxtaposes curated public-facing displays with the hidden spaces that support the fashion industry, such as production factories.
All three exhibitions will be on view at the Contemporary from January 31 through August 3.
Sizhu Li, “Moonment,” aluminum sheets, wood, Arduino, motor, fans, 28 x 21 x 11 feet. Site-specific at HoCo Arts Council
In February, the Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio will debut an installation by Shizu Li. The site-specific iteration of Moonment, a body of work that activates thin aluminum sheets in a wave-like motion, is inspired by an ancient poem by Tang poet Zhang Jiu Lin. The piece will be on view from February 7 through May 4.
In March, the Contemporary will present Mosh Now, Cry Later: San Antonio’s love of sad rock and its impacts on visual culture. The exhibition highlights the shared sensibilities and emotional undertones of the local visual art and music scenes from the late 1980s to today. Mosh Now, Cry Later will be on view from March 7 through June 8.
Nora Naranjo Morse, “Moon Orchids,” 2016, clay, full installation (dimensions variable) 4 feet x 27 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Also in February, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin will open In Creative Harmony: Three Artistic Partnerships, featuring works by the following pairs of artists: Arshile Gorky and Isamu Noguchi, José Guadalupe Posada and Artemio Rodríguez, Nora Naranjo Morse and Eliza Naranjo Morse. The exhibition highlights various ways that artists engage with each other by featuring inter-generational Mexican printmakers, friends, and innovators in abstract painting and sculpture, and a mother and daughter duo making work together for the first time.
In a press release, Simone Wicha, Director of the Blanton, said, “Artists have inspired one another for centuries. In Creative Harmony demonstrates how these exchanges push the boundaries of creativity by beautifully weaving together three transformative partnerships and more than a hundred artworks.”
In Creative Harmony will be on display from February 16 through July 20.
Hank Willis Thomas, “Perseverance,” 2017, fiberglass, chameleon auto paint finish. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. © Hank Willis Thomas
In March, the McNay Art Museum will present Sport and Spectator, an exhibition surveying U.S. sports culture, including its intersections with race, gender, and class, through the lens of contemporary artists. The show will include 40 sculptures, fabric works, screenprints, and installations by Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp, Jeffrey Gibson, Raul Rene Gonzalez, Sophie Inard, Brian Jungen, Justin Korver, Esmaa Mohamoud, Betsy Odom, Hank Willis Thomas, José Villalobos, and Tyrrell Winston.
René Paul Barilleaux, the McNay’s Head of Curatorial Affairs who co-curated the exhibition, noted, “Sport and Spectator explores the artistic alchemy of manipulating the materiality and meaning of sports paraphernalia.” Lauren Thompson, Curator of Exhibitions and co-curator of Sport and Spectator, added, “The contemporary artists featured are committed to incorporating sports equipment into their artistic practice, and this exhibition is unique in that numerous exhibitions have been organized around the theme of sports culture, but seemingly not specific to sports equipment and gear.”
Sport and Spectator will be on view from March 1 through July 27.
Manjari Sharma, “Maa Laxmi, From the Darshan Series,” 2011, archival inkjet print in brass-embossed frame. Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art; Museum purchase, 2020.48.2a-b, Photography credit: Manjari Sharma, © Manjari Sharma
Also in March, the San Antonio Museum of Art will debut Envisioning the Hindu Divine: Expanding Darshan and Manjari Sharma. The exhibition brings together 40 historical objects from India and Southeast Asia with nine photographs by Manjari Sharma to highlight some of the most significant Hindu deities and their contemporary relevance.
Envisioning the Hindu Divine will be on view from March 7 through July 6.
