Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight @ The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight

The Menil Collection, Houston 

Through July 13, 2025

Joe Overstreet with his Flight Patterns, 1972

Courtesy of Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston

Photo: Hickey-Robertson, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight 

The Menil Collection, Houston 

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Lauren Marek

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight 

The Menil Collection, Houston 

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Lauren Marek

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

The Menil Collection prsents Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight, an exhibition focused on the vibrant, politically charged abstract paintings created by pioneering artist JOE OVERSTREET (1933–2019). This presentation is organized chronologically and features Overstreet’s landmark Flight Pattern series of radially suspended paintings from the early 1970s, alongside crucial bodies of work that preceded and followed them. Taking Flight is the first major museum exhibition in nearly thirty years devoted to the work of this avant-garde artist.

Renowned for his innovative approach to nonrepresentational painting, Joe Overstreet stood at the forefront of artists who sought to intertwine abstraction and social politics. He made a significant contribution to postwar art, positioning abstraction as an expansive tool for exploring the idea of freedom and the Black experience in the United States.

“The Menil is proud to present Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight,” said Rebecca Rabinow, Director, The Menil Collection. “John and Dominique de Menil’s support of the artist began in the early 1970s when a painting was commissioned by him for an exhibition about the African American experience that the couple sponsored in Houston, Texas. Soon after, they purchased two of Overstreet’s Flight Pattern works and invited him back to Houston for a solo show. Now, some fifty years later, the Menil Collection looks forward to sharing his work with a new generation of visitors, both through this beautiful, thought-provoking exhibition, and the illustrated scholarly catalogue that provides fascinating insight and context for the appreciation of this artist’s work.”

In 1967, the artist began to build intricate, shaped canvas constructions, departing from the more representational style he had pursued in the early 1960s. In these works, Joe Overstreet combined new shapes and often matched the form of the underlying structure with geometric painted compositions. Justice, Faith, Hope, and Peace, 1968, is emblematic of this breakthrough, summoning references to current political events in a resolutely abstract language.

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight 

The Menil Collection, Houston 

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Lauren Marek

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight 

The Menil Collection, Houston 

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Sarah Hobson

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

Joe Overstreet’s best-known paintings, the Flight Patterns from 1970–1972, are central to the exhibition. To create these works, which the artist called “tent-like” and “nomadic,” he boldly applied brightly colored paint to unstretched canvases, which he suspended with taut ropes from the gallery’s floor, wall, and ceiling. The ropes were intended to evoke the brutal history of lynching in the United States, yet he also perceived these dynamic works as hopeful and redemptive. He described them as “birds in flight,” able to “take off, to lift up, rather than be held down.” In works like Free Direction, 1972, Joe Overstreet pushed the limits of the traditional medium of painting so that the piece appeared to leap off the wall, thus inaugurating a dynamic relationship between object, viewer, and architecture. This inventiveness was characteristic of his entire career.

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight 

The Menil Collection, Houston 

January 24 - July 13, 2025

Installation view. Photo by Sarah Hobson

Courtesy of The Menil Collection, Houston

In the 1990s, following an inspiring trip to Senegal and the House of Slaves memorial on Gorée Island, Joe Overstreet created a series of monumental abstractions that address the African diaspora and explore questions of inheritance and memory. He described the Senegal paintings as “personal, emotional examinations of my past, present and future.” Works such as Gorée, 1993, display the artist’s material experimentation, which gave the paintings a weathered, luminous translucency, evoking the country’s “drifting opaque dust” and “searing white sunlight.”

“We have been honored to work closely with the estate of Joe Overstreet to create this significant presentation of his work,” said Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art, The Menil Collection. “Overstreet’s formally adventurous, culturally engaged, and politically responsive abstract work brilliantly expands the canon of 20th century art.”

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight includes key loans from United States museums and private collections, as well as major paintings from the estate that have rarely been on view. Curated by Natalie Dupêcher, Associate Curator of Modern Art, The Menil Collection, the exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with new scholarly texts and installation images from the exhibition, available in late spring.

JOE OVERSTREET (1933–2019)

Born in rural Conehatta, Mississippi, Joe Overstreet began his career in the California Bay Area in the early 1950s, taking classes at several arts colleges, exhibiting in local galleries and jazz clubs, and participating in the Beat scene. In 1958, he moved to New York, where he joined a vibrant community of young artists exploring the possibilities of nonrepresentational abstraction. In the late 1960s, Joe Overstreet began working with shaped canvases. By 1970, with the Flight Pattern works, he had let his painting leap off the wall. After this series, he continued to experiment with new approaches to painting, investigating its spatial and textural possibilities. Committed to the intersection of social activism and artistic practice, Joe Overstreet cofounded Kenkeleba House, an arts organization and gallery, in 1974 with his wife, curator and historian Corrine Jennings, and writer Samuel Floyd. Working until his last years, Joe Overstreet died in New York City in 2019.

THE MENIL COLLECTION

1533 Sul Ross St., Houston, TX 77006

www.menil.org

Joe Overstreet: Taking Flight @ The Menil Collection, Houston , January 24 - July 13, 2025

Sport and Spectator @ The McNay, San Antonio

Sport and Spectator

The McNay, San Antonio

March 1 — July 27, 2025

Hank Willis Thomas

Perseverance, 2017 

Fiberglass, chameleon auto, paint finish

Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 

© Hank Willis Thomas

Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp

Basketball Bloom (USA Outdoor), 2024 

Basketballs and shoestrings 

Courtesy of the artist and Pentimenti, Philadelphia 

© Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp

Brian Jungen 

Horse Mask (Cher), 2016 

Nike Air Jordans 

Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York 

© Brian Jungen

Betsy Odom

Softball Glove, 2008

Tooled leather, and shearling

Courtesy of the artist

© Betsy Odom

Basketballs, footballs, tennis rackets, hockey sticks, jerseys, punching bags and other sports gear and paraphernalia become art in “Sport and Spectator,” on view at the McNay Art Museum. The exhibition celebrates American sports culture and confronts its complex intersection with race, gender and class. “Sport and Spectator” includes approximately 40 sculptures, textiles, screenprints and sports-themed installations by contemporary artists Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp, Jeffrey Gibson, Raul Rene Gonzalez, Sophie Inard, Brian Jungen, Justin Korver, Esmaa Mohamoud, Betsy Odom, Hank Willis Thomas, and Tyrrell Winston. Each work offers a recognizable element of sports while inviting viewers to consider athletics’ role in shaping society.

Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp

Basketball Bloom (Breakaway Outdoor), 2024

Basketballs and shoestrings 

Courtesy of the artist and Pentimenti, Philadelphia. 

© Brandon J. Donahue-Shipp

Brandon Donahue-Shipp, who aspired to a career in professional basketball, uses his artistic practice to explore social and cultural realities in Black and Brown communities. Deflated basketballs and footballs become sculptural floral arrangements that symbolize the unfulfilled dreams of Black and Brown boys who also dreamed of careers in professional sports. “Coach’s Playbook,” is a screenprint that juxtaposes a basketball diagram with the floorplans of a courtroom. Strategic plays marked in red and blue cover the image and comment on the relationship between Black and Brown communities and the American legal system.

Hank Willis Thomas

Changeup, 2019 

Mirrored stainless steel

Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 

© Hank Willis Thomas

Multiple works by Hank Willis Thomas highlight the potential for sports to both uplift Black communities and exploit the bodies of Black athletes. Resembling abstract modern sculpture, the metallic shapes in “Perseverance” depict an athlete’s bent limbs in dynamic motion. Presenting an anonymous player in the form of a public monument, Thomas’ sculpture acknowledges the power of sports to both unite and divide. The artist finishes the sculpture with shiny auto paint to comment on the sport’s reliance on international players, many who are of African descent.

Esmaa Mohamoud transforms jerseys to bodices to address gender in sports in her “One of the Boys” series. By pairing each jersey with a floor-length skirt made of silk and velvet, the artist presents a sports-themed ballgown that challenges the propensity for male athletes to be hyper-masculine while women remain underrepresented in sports. Growing up as the only girl with four brothers, she was a self-described tomboy. When her mom insisted that she wear a dress, she once wore a jersey over it.

Sophie Inard 

First base en rose, 2023 

Vintage hockey helmet with cotton yarn

Courtesy of the artist 

© Sophie Inard

Sophie Inard blankets common sports equipment with intricate patterns, bringing together the fast-paced, harsh sports world and the slower, delicate, calculated practice of crochet. She uses the “granny square” pattern reminiscent of a time that preceded modern-day technology to cover golf clubs, baseball bats, motorcycle helmets, rugby balls, boxing gloves, skateboards and other equipment. Wrapping sports equipment in soft yarn communicates the idea that opposites can coexist.

Jeffrey Gibson adorns Everlast punching bags with glass beads to pay homage to traditional Native American craft traditions while offering social and political commentary. His works also include references to artists and musicians through titles and words that appear on the works such as “The Love You Give Is the Love You Get,” inspired by lyrics from The Beatles’ “The End.” “Sharecropper” honors his grandparents, who persevered through poverty. Each work also celebrates boxing’s power to release tension and stress.

“‘Sport and Spectator’ explores the artistic alchemy of manipulating the materiality and meaning of sports paraphernalia,” said exhibition co-curator René Paul Barilleaux. “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,” added co-curator Lauren Thompson.

“Sport and Spectator” is organized for the McNay Art Museum by René Paul Barilleaux, head of curatorial affairs, and Lauren Thompson, curator of exhibitions. 

McNay Art Museum

Tobin Exhibition Galleries

6000 N New Braunfels Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78209

www.mcnayart.org

Michael Tracy @ The McNay, San Antonio - Survey Exhibition "Michael Tracy: The Elegy of Distance"

Michael Tracy: The Elegy of Distance 

The McNay, San Antonio 

March 1 — July 27, 2025 

Michael Tracy 

Flower Sacrifice, 1988 

Gilded wood, swords, brass milagros, silk, and fresh flowers

Courtesy of Michael Tracy Foundation

Many never-before-seen paintings, sculptures and mixed-media objects anchor an exhibition that does what artist MICHAEL TRACY did for his six-decade career: challenge us to think deeply about those things we hold dear.

More than 50 objects welcome visitors in Michael Tracy: The Elegy of Distance. The works promote critical thinking, empathy, thoughtful exchange and healing as viewers consider faith, ritual, immigration and the environment. An original soundscape by musical composer Omar Zubair will complement the presentation.

“Although the artist withdrew from the museum and gallery ecosystem for years, the issues his work addresses have become increasingly urgent,” said René Paul Barilleaux, the McNay’s head of curatorial affairs. “The McNay’s exhibition will bring attention to this significant American artist’s work, introducing a new generation to him.”

Spanning nearly floor to ceiling, large canvases coated in thick paint, discarded supplies, sand and other materials evoke the desert landscape around Tracy’s studios in San Ygnacio, a small Texas border town along the Rio Grande. Seven paintings from his series “Speaking with the Dead” (2013-2015) ooze with varying shades of charcoal and black acrylic that are thickly layered on the canvas to communicate the relationship between decay and preservation. The heavy texturing suggests the works want to escape the canvases that hold them as they implore the viewer to commune.

Michael Tracy’s works blur the lines between international and metaphysical borders. “Cruz de la Paz Sagrada VII” (1980), a bracketed cross that stands more than 70 inches tall, is composed of heart-shaped Milagros, hair, swords, rosaries, spikes and scissors. The sculpture is a poignant juxtaposition of sacred and secular. Viewers can also see studies for the “Golmuhar” series (2005-2010) and finished acrylic paintings that reflect the yellow, orange and chartreuse blooms on the trees native to India. Michael Tracy routinely made semi-annual trips there to make jewelry.

“Para los olvidados (For the forgotten ones, 1989),” reportedly induced gasps from the audience when the pyramid-shaped work, stuffed with fragrant white flowers and covered with human hair, was first exhibited in Mexico City. The work is believed to pay homage to the unnamed heroes in the Aztec wars.

“In the decades since his last significant solo exhibitions, which garnered national attention, society has evolved its thoughts around issues like climate change, religion and traditional beauty standards. Michael Tracy’s exhibition at the McNay will allow visitors to revisit his work with fresh perspectives framed by societal evolution that reflects an increased awareness of the urgency of the issues addressed in his work,” said René Paul Barilleaux.

Programming for scholars and community members draws parallels between Tracy’s work and modern-day concerns about the environment, religion, border policy, immigration and societal definitions of beauty. A free poster-size publication includes images of artworks in the exhibition and a reflection on the artist by Christopher Rincón, president of the Michael Tracy Foundation and director of the River Pierce Foundation.

“Given San Antonio’s diversity and its proximity to the U.S./Mexico border, the McNay has the opportunity to present an impactful exhibition to a large audience acutely affected by issues represented within it,” said Matthew McLendon, Ph.D., the McNay’s director and CEO. “An exhibition of Michael Tracy’s work at this precise moment, so close to his passing, is especially poignant as it will serve to honor his lifelong dedication to his artistic practice and reinforce his critical contributions to social justice and the visual arts, squarely placing him as one of the leading American artists known to grapple with these issues and help us, the viewers, understand, process and confront them in an informed and thoughtful way.”

Michael Tracy, an Ohio native, earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and art at St. Edward’s University (Austin, Texas), studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art and earned a master’s degree in studio art from The University of Texas at Austin. In 1978, he established his studio in San Ygnacio and turned more of his attention to the Texas town as his national and international fame waned. Despite his creative success, San Ygnacio’s population of less than 1,000 people did not fully embrace the artist. Many of the residents were descendants of the area’s original settlers and were off-put by some of Tracy’s gestures, including “The River Pierce: Sacrifice II,” a 1990 Good Friday ritual burning of Tracy’s “Cruz: La Pasión” (1982-87), a cross-like object. Approximately 200 people joined Michael Tracy for the processional inspired by the city’s annual Via Dolorosa.

“The McNay has a long tradition of elevating lesser-known, marginalized artists working outside of the mainstream art world,” René Paul Barilleaux said. “In Michael Tracy’s case, the McNay recognized him both at the beginning of his career and, perhaps more importantly, now at the end of his career when the mercurial winds of the art world have shifted away from the once lauded artist.”

Fifty-three years ago, McNay Art Museum mounted Michael Tracy’s first-ever museum exhibition, “Seven Gold Paintings,” at what was then the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute.

Surveying approximately two decades of Tracy’s career, “The Elegy of Distance” debuts many objects from the artist’s personal holdings alongside artworks on loan from other collections. The exhibition is organized by René Paul Barilleaux in collaboration with Christopher Rincón.

McNay Art Museum

6000 N New Braunfels Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78209

www.mcnayart.org

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan @ MFAH, Houston

Meiji Modern 

Fifty Years of New Japan 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

July 7 – September 15, 2024

Japan’s Meiji era (1868–1912) was a period of unprecedented cultural and technological transition. Over these remarkable decades, the country experienced radical social and political shifts, which propelled the historically inward-facing society into a new modern, global era. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents a fresh look at the art of this transformative era with the landmark exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan.

Following over two centuries of near-total isolation, the archipelago of Japan was thrown into chaos with the arrival of the American Commodore Perry in 1853; following a series of international trade agreements, the feudal fiefdoms of Japan were transformed into a modern nation-state, with the Emperor “restored” to the throne. Through more than 150 extraordinary objects borrowed from over 70 public and private collections, the exhibition reveals the profound cross-cultural impact of the country’s developing relationships with the wider world.

Paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and fine examples of enamel, lacquer, embroidery, and textiles all evidence a blending of cultures and techniques and the innovative interchange of old and new. Uniquely, the exhibition features a diverse selection of both export wares and items made for display in Japan, reflecting the diversity of tastes and aesthetic discourse in the Meiji period. The exhibition also features several recently discovered masterpieces of Japanese art, many of which have never been shown publicly.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan is organized into five thematic sections that reveal the varied cross-cultural influences on Japanese history and identity over the course of the Meiji period.

• Crafting a Modern State highlights the emergence of a country opening up to the outside world through prints, and other objects depicting Western scenes and motifs. Depictions of Meiji rulers in Western clothing and portrayals of American dignitaries in Japanese clothing underscore these new international connections. This also illustrates the importance of art and artwork both as industry and as a tool of diplomacy to the fledgling Meiji state.

• Navigating Changing Seas demonstrates the continued cultural importance of the sea in Japanese art, conveying its role in bringing the outside world to Japan, and bringing Japan to the outside world. A massive bronze masterpiece, nearly life size, of the Dragon King of Sea presenting a warrior with a magical tide-controlling jewel, the most significant piece of Meiji Period metalwork in the United States, is one of the highlights of this section.

• Fashioning the Self assesses the emergence of a new Japanese identity as a non-white, modern nation-state, and considers the changing gender roles of the period, the end of samurai status, the creation of a Meiji bureaucracy, and the growing embrace of modern conveniences as seen in clothing items and prints such as Telephone Call: A Merchant’s Wife. This section also highlights the unprecedented new social freedom enjoyed by women, using a series of woodblock printed illustrations from women’s magazines, a new genre that emerged during the period as women in Japan achieved widespread literacy for the first time. Another highlight of this section is a bowler hat by Hayakawa Shōkōsai I, woven entirely out bamboo reeds.

• Making History, Enshrining Myth examines the importance of a national religion, traditions, and myths to the formation of a modern nation-state, and considers how a self-conscious reinterpretation and re-articulation of the past helped inform a contemporary nation and its global future through unique new expressions. Crucially, this section also considers the role of China and the appreciation of Chinese art and culture during the Meiji Period and includes a rare and important two-sided painted screen by Noguchi Shōhin, one of the few female painters of the Meiji Period.

• Cultivating a Modern Aesthetic shows the traditional themes of plants and animals as the motifs and subject matter most eagerly embraced by foreigners, and therefore commonly made for export. Such artistic production translated to diplomatic soft power as well as a lucrative way to fund industry. It also fueled Western expectations for and definitions of “Asian tradition,” setting precedents for cultural and geopolitical relations and tensions that continue to unfold in the global arena today. This section features several important painted screens that have not been shown publicly for over 100 years and an imposing but beautiful ceramic painted made by Itaya Hazan, the father of Japanese studio ceramics. This vessel, the only known work by the artist in North America and one of only a handful outside of Japan, was acquired directly from the artist by Henry Walters in 1915, and is one of many such works in the exhibition that were purchased during the Meiji Period as contemporary art, highlighting Japan’s importance and might on the world stage by the end of these tumultuous five decades of new Japan.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan has been organized by the Japanese Art Society of America. The exhibition is co-curated by Bradley Bailey, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Chelsea Foxwell, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with essays and entries, published by Yale University Press.

Meiji Modern

Fifty Years of New Japan

by Chelsea Foxwell and Bradley M. Bailey

Published by Yale University Press, 2023

272 Pages, 11.30 x 9.25 in, 275 color illustrations

Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, noted, “Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan provides a fascinating window onto this transformative era, a collision of culture and identity that forged newly modern approaches to esthetics, trade and statehood in Japan. It also shows to great effect the unprecedented achievements of Japanese artisans and artists, culminating centuries of technical perfection. We are pleased to partner with Japanese Art Society of America, on their 50th anniversary, to bring this unprecedented exhibition to the MFAH.”

“Late-19th-century Japan represents an early and compelling chapter in the history of global modern art, as Japan became one of the first non-Western nations seeking to repel colonization by making the case for the integrity of its art and culture,” commented Bradley Bailey. “While seemingly opposed, these two ambitions intertwined to produce a distinct form of expression that helped to define Japan’s classical past as well as its global future.” 

Previous Venues:

Asia Society, New York, October 3, 2023 – January 7, 2024

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, March 21 – June 9, 2024

MFAH - MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS / HOUSTON

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

www.mfah.org

Zoe Leonard @ Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas - "Al río / To the River" Exhibition

Zoe Leonard: Al río / To the River

Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas

October 12, 2024 - June 2025

ZOE LEONARD

Al río / To the River (detail), 2016–2022 

Gelatin silver prints, C-prints and inkjet prints 

© Zoe Leonard. 

Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, and Hauser & Wirth.

The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati presents an exhibition of ZOE LEONARD’s Al río / To the River. The photographic work follows the course of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo where the river is used to define the boundary between the United States and Mexico. Zoe Leonard’s work contemplates the intricate cultural, social, political, ecological, and economic landscapes that comprise the 1,200 mile stretch of river from Ciudad Juárez and El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico and poses the question: what does it mean to ask a body of water to perform a political task? “The shifting nature of a river—which floods periodically, changes course, and carves new channels—is at odds with the political task it is asked to perform,” says Zoe Leonard.

Known for her work across photography, sculpture, and installation, Zoe Leonard has long explored the physical and bodily act of looking, often underscoring tensions between the natural world and human-built environments. Her work You see I am here after all (2008), made on-site at Dia Beacon and exhibited from 2008 to 2011, is composed of thousands of postcards of Niagara Falls from the early 1900s through the 1970s. It considers the role of photography in constructing American historical narratives and myths. In her large-scale installation 100 North Nevill Street, on view at the Chinati Foundation from 2013 to 2015, the artist transformed a former ice plant building into a camera obscura that projected the ever-changing state of the external environment in Marfa. As with all of her camera obscura works, the piece was made on-site in response to the existing architecture, history, and land

In late 2016, Zoe Leonard began to photograph the Rio Grande/Río Bravo—and the ways in which humans live in relation to it—from various perspectives in the United States and Mexico. The artist crossed back and forth from one side of the river to the other (and from one country to another), creating layered and thought-provoking compositions that draw attention to the complexity of the river as a porous channel, a source of life, and a politicized site. The work depicts the water, the land that surrounds it, and the infrastructures built along, across, and through it, offering viewers a variety of frames through which to think about the movement of people, animals, cars, boats, information, and goods.

Al río is comprised of several hundred photographs, structured in groupings, or ‘passages,’ and in this exhibition, a selection will be installed across three buildings on the grounds of Chinati. By arranging the photographs in passages, Zoe Leonard uses seriality to show actions unfolding; quotidian scenes of rest and play contrast with acts of policing and government control. The images are deeply specific and rooted in place, but they also relate to our shared world—one in which daily life is disrupted by fences, checkpoints, and surveillance. The project engages with histories of image-making from abstraction to documentary to digital surveillance, and, in doing so, reconsiders representational tropes, mythologies about the American West and Mexico, and the role of photography in shaping our perceptions of borders and rivers.

The opening of Al río / To the River at the Chinati Foundation—its first institutional presentation in the Americas—follows its debut at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (2022), and subsequent exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2022) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2023). Hauser & Wirth presented a related gallery exhibition of excerpts from Al río in New York in 2022, as did Capitain Petzel in Berlin (2022) and Galleria Raffaella Cortese in Milan (2023/2024). At Chinati, where artworks are permanently installed throughout the former military spaces of Fort D.A. Russell, Zoe Leonard’s photographs will respond to—and sometimes mirror—the surrounding environment. When traveling between exhibition spaces, visitors may notice familiar subjects, like the mountains in the distance or a passing border patrol vehicle.

The exhibition is accompanied by a two-volume publication, also entitled Al río / To the River. Edited by poet Tim Johnson, designed by Joseph Logan, and published by Hatje Cantz, the book features a selection of Zoe Leonard’s photographs and a compilation of writings by artists, poets, historians, musicians, and scholars with an interest in the politics, ecology, and cultures that intersect at the river. Both Johnson and his partner Caitlin Murray, Director of the Chinati Foundation, are longtime friends of the artist, who first came to Marfa in 2006. When Donald Judd established the foundation in 1986, he invited his friends to install work there; Leonard’s exhibition expands upon this history of long-term collaboration and conversation among friends.

ZOE LEONARD (born 1961 in Liberty, New York; lives and works in New York, New York and Marfa, Texas) balances rigorous conceptualism with a distinctly personal vision in her work with photography, sculpture, and installation. Employing seriality and shifting perspectives, and with an attention to the materiality of photography, Zoe Leonard’s practice probes the politics of representation and display. Zoe Leonard explores themes such as gender and sexuality, loss and mourning, migration, displacement, and the urban landscape. Her photography invites us to contemplate the role that the medium plays in constructing histories and shaping our perceptions of the world around us. More than its focus on any particular subject, Zoe Leonard’s work encourages the viewer to consider the act of looking itself, as a complex and conditional process. 

CHINATI FOUNDATION

Marfa, Texas 79843

www.chinati.org

Artist Charis Ammon @ Inman Gallery, Houston - "Meanwhile" Exhibition

Charis Ammon: Meanwhile 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

May 3 - July 6, 2024 

CHARIS AMMON

Fresh Flowers, 2024

Oil on canvas on board 

6 x 8 inches (15.2 x 20.3 cm)

© Charis Ammon, courtesy of Inman Gallery

Inman Gallery presents Meanwhile, a solo exhibition of new work by Charis Ammon. This is the artist third solo show with the gallery.

Charis Ammon paints quotidian images to document her encounters with urban landscapes and everyday environments. She captures the city both as a site of flux: construction zones, urban development, and concrete, and as a setting of connection. The resulting compositions ask us to consider places and moments we often overlook or disregard, to (re)orient our attention towards the present moment.

Meanwhile presents a new suite of paintings exploring quiet intimacies: buckets of flowers in bodega entryways, dewy raindrops on plastic sheaths for bouquets, HEB greeting cards waiting to be purchased, and closeups of socks, implying a private moment at home. The exhibition marks a transition from the artist’s previous grittier cityscapes and construction sites towards softer subject matter. The imagery is still "in the city” – grocery stores, bodegas, flower shop storefronts – but the gaze has shifted to capturing public places that speak to private expressions.

However, the circumstances that prompt these private expressions remain outside the scope of the paintings, fortifying the works’ emotional depth. Charis Ammon’s subject matter – cards and flowers waiting to be purchased – piques our curiosity as to what is happening, or did happen, or could happen to necessitate these gifts. Is this gesture joyous or mournful? With the absence of people to indicate the celebratory or commemoratory nature of an event, we as the viewer are left wondering. Read in this light, the works take on a melancholic tone, reflecting both the unease of an unknown outcome and the warmth of the thoughtful gesture itself.

CHARIS AMMON

Meanwhile, 2024

Oil on canvas, eight panels 

Each 70 x 26 inches (15.2 x 20.3 cm)

© Charis Ammon, courtesy of Inman Gallery

The titular work, a monumental, multi-panel painting depicting a flower shop refrigerator, responds to this very notion of thick stillness amid anticipation. Painted to-scale, the surface reveals frosted glass and foggy windows partitioning receding space. While life-shaking events divide our sense of time into ‘befores’ and ‘afters,’ Ammon calls attention to how we navigate the ‘meanwhile.’ Other titles, like“Sharing a Bag of Chips” (sock painting) or “You, Me, and Everybody Else” (valentine card display kiosk), point to the material markers of quality time in these moments. The card paintings have a more humorous tone, siphoning through several templates that don’t “fit” until something rings true. The sock paintings capture a more tender moment at home, just talking or snacking with a friend or a love, reminding us that being present is a gift too.

By painting gifts and rituals that form around the in-between moments of life events Ammon expresses the physical ways we communicate care. In their depiction of gesture, the works capture the joys, humor, and tenderness of sharing a life with others. Charis Ammon’s canvases occupy the same space as the bouquets and cards they depict—when words are unavailable or feel inadequate, a painting gestures towards the feelings we carry.

CHARIS AMMON (born 1992, Dallas, TX) holds a BFA in Painting from Texas State University and an MFA in Painting from The University of Houston. Charis Ammon's solo exhibitions include Where Do You Go When You Are On Your Way?, Alexander DiJulio Gallery, New York, NY (2023), Palm Trees and City Debris, Texas State University Gallery, San Marcos, TX (2022), Inheritance at The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX (2020), and Maintenance at Art League Houston (2019), as well as two solo exhibitions at Inman Gallery (2021, 2018). Her work was recently included in Night Work, Alexander DiJulio Gallery, New York, NY (2024), In Being Double: The Pace Staff Show, Pace Gallery, New York, NY (2023), Book Arts of Houston, The Printing Museum, Houston TX (2023), Urban Impressions: Experiencing the Global Contemporary Metropolis, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX (2022) and The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston (2022). She lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com

Einar and Jamex de la Torre @ McNay Art Museum, San Antonio — "de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility" Exhibition

Einar and Jamex de la Torre

de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio

March 1 — September 15, 2024

Einar de la Torre and Jamex de la Torre 

Photograph by Josue Castro

Einar and Jamex de la Torre  

“Colonial Atmosphere,” 2002 

Mixed media installation, 130” x 460” x 450”. 

Installation view of “Collidoscope: de la Torre Brother Retro-Perspective” 

at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of Riverside Art Museum 

(June 18, 2022 - Jan. 22, 2023) 

Photo by Philipp Rittermann

Courtesy of the artists & Koplin Del Rio Gallery

Collaborating brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre make their San Antonio solo exhibition debut with “de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility,” on view at the McNay Art Museum. The mixed media works on display will feature the brothers’ signature style that combines blown glass sculpture, lenticular prints, video, installation and other materials and techniques in unexpected ways.

“Concepts of identity are really important in our work,” said Einar de la Torre. “We are questioning what it means to be American and what it means to be Mexican and hopefully opening doors to the complexities of the immigrant experience and contradicting bicultural identities.”

The de la Torre brothers live and work on both sides of the border in the Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, Mexico and San Diego, California. A shared interest in blown glass sparked their partnership and the two have been creating together since the 1990s. Their baroque sensibility incorporates vivid color, layered textures and intricate details. The duo takes an additive approach to their art across genres, often exploring ideas about life and the afterlife and merging cultural symbols in amusing ways to envision potential futures for humankind. The exhibition will include existing and new works representing a multifaceted view of life with a sense of playful irony.

“Much like the de la Torre brothers’ lenticular works, which change depending on one’s viewpoint, we hope this exhibition resonates with the unique perspectives of the San Antonio community,” said Matthew McLendon, director and CEO of the McNay. “The McNay is committed to reflecting local identity and increasing the visibility of diverse artists through our exhibition programming.”

The presentation at the McNay will be organized into four thematic sections. The introductory gallery acquaints visitors with artworks in mediums the brothers are most known for — handblown glass sculptures and lenticular photographs — including several sculptures created especially for the exhibition.

Incorporating furniture, wallpaper, dishware and other functional objects, the next space will surround guests in an immersive domestic setting. The centerpiece of the room will be a fantastical banquet table spanning over 20 feet and featuring vibrant multimedia installations both on and underneath the structure.

Large-scale lenticular photographs dominate the third gallery. The works are seemingly in conflict on opposing walls while a giant floor projection reveals an animated view of Mexico City in real time.

The final gallery experience will be anchored by an installation featuring a lunar lander in the shape of a massive stone Olmec head, merging symbols of the ancient past with ideas of future humanity.

“‘de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility’ will be transhistorical, as is much of the de la Torre brothers’ work,” said René Paul Barilleaux, exhibition co-curator and McNay’s head of curatorial affairs. “Einar and Jamex will also incorporate objects from the McNay’s collection into the exhibition, expanding appreciation for the creative intersections of traditional decorative art with Mexican vernacular art and pre-Columbian and ancient American imagery.”

“de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility” is organized by the McNay Art Museum and co-curated by René Paul Barilleaux, head of curatorial affairs, and Lauren Thompson, curator of exhibitions, with assistance from Mia Lopez, curator of Latinx art.

The brothers recently completed a separate site-specific installation at the McNay, “de la Torre Brothers: Latin Exoskeleton.” The work transformed the AT&T Lobby through a combination of tromps l’oeil wallpaper and lenticular images.

McNAY ART MUSEUM

6000 North New Braunfels Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78209

www.mcnayart.org

Ken Price @ McClain Gallery, Houston - A Focus Exhibition

Ken Price: A Focus Exhibition

McClain Gallery, Houston

November 1 – December 30, 2023

Ken Price (1935 – 2012) is best known for his innovative ceramic sculpture and is recognized as one of the most important sculptors to have emerged in Los Angeles in the 20th century. Throughout his 50+ year career, Price also made extraordinary drawings with watercolor of varied subjects from sculpture studies and still lifes to landscapes and erotic drawings. Ken Price rose to prominence in the early 1960s and was a key player in the explosion of the Los Angeles Contemporary art scene in the 60s.

Born in Los Angeles in 1935, Ken Price grew up near the beach and spent his youth surfing nearly every day. Price began studying art at Santa Monica Collage at the age of 18. He went on to earn a BFA in 1956 from the University of Southern California and took ceramics classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art and Design, where he studied under Peter Voulkos. Ken Price earned an MFA in 1959 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and had his gallery debut at the legendary Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles just a year later, at the age of 25. He quickly established himself with several successful solo exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1969.

Ken Price exhibited extensively until his death in 2012, at his home in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, just outside of Taos. That same year a major retrospective of his work, on which he collaborated with friend and architect Frank Gehry, was staged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Works by Price are held in numerous museum collections, among them The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

McCLAIN GALLERY

2242 Richmond Avenue, Houston, TX 77098

www.mcclaingallery.com

Erika Blumenfeld: Tracing Luminaries @ Inman Gallery, Houston

Erika Blumenfeld: Tracing Luminaries

Inman Gallery, Houston

March 9 – April 29, 2023

Erika Blumenfeld

Plate no. I6914 (Small Magellanic Cloud), 2022

From the portfolio Tracing Luminaries

A portfolio of six intaglio prints with cyanotype, chine collé, and

24k gold leaf on Hahnemuhle Copperplate

Portfolio size: 17 ¼ x 15 in

Erika Blumenfeld inspects one of the engraved acrylic plates

Photograph by Jake Eshelman

Inman Gallery presenst Erika Blumenfeld: Tracing Luminaries, a solo presentation of her Tracing Luminaries potrfolio of six cyanotypes, accompanied by a singe print from a stand-alone edition. 

Tracing Luminaries is a new print edition by Houston-based artist Erika Blumenfeld created in close collaboration with Island Press in St. Louis, MO. The project centers on the Women Computers who, beginning in the late 1800s, worked at the Harvard College Observatory with the institution's growing Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection. These women brought their keen attention and passion for discovery to the task of examining and cataloguing hundreds of thousands of stars and deep space objects, revolutionizing astronomy and astrophysics in the process. In their careful examination of the glass plates, the women hand-inked their research directly onto the glassy surface of countless photographic plates, literally drawing connections across the night sky in lyrical gestures .

In an effort to digitize this collection of 500,000 glass plates to benefit time-duration astronomy research efforts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics initiated what is known as the DASCH project, which, in the process of creating clean scans of the collection, permanently removed the women's marks from the plates. While a group of the Women Computer's marked plates were set aside for posterity, and those markings were documented photographically before being wiped off, the majority of the women's original marks no longer exist. Upon learning of this history, Blumenfeld was moved to artistically intervene. Combing photography, printmaking, and experimental conservation, Blumenfeld worked with Island Press to return the women's marks to the stars through the language of materials. Using theelement of pure gold-which is forged by the stars-and direct sun-exposed cyanotype "lightrecordings," the Tracing Luminaries prints reveal the women's drawn notations as a poetic starfieldamidst a deep blue expanse.

Erika Blumenfeld writes:

“The rich historic data of the stars captured on the photographic emulsion and the collection’s continued import in contemporary astronomical research are inseparable from the historical inked ephemera illustrating human exploration and knowledge seeking, our longing to learn the stars, and the people who carried that vision to us.”

She continues:

“The entanglement of these star-made materials alongside interwoven ideas of latency and presence, of human and cosmic timescales, and of elemental reciprocity has coalesced as a kind of alchemy throughout the making of this work. In this way, their marks—these interstellar drawings—once again become embodied fluid topographies, embedded by the gravity force of the press as it orbited the intaglio plate and paper, finally revealing the women’s marks as elevated. Then, the elemental form of pure gold coalesces with the embossed ink layer forming a material bond that renders the text as star matter—and raised, as it would be, above the print’s own horizon line; their marks become, once again, star-bound.”

ERIKA BLUMENFELD holds a BFA in Photography from Parsons School for Design and an MSc in Conservation Studies from University College London. Both a Guggenheim and Smithsonian Fellow, Blumenfeld’s studios include laboratories, observatories, and extreme environments, and she has collaborated with scientists and research institutions, including NASA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, McDonald Observatory, and the South African National Antarctic Program. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Lannan Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts; The Polaroid Collection; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; University College London and the University of Texas. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, Art in America, Nature, ARTnews, New Scientist, and The New York Times, among others. In 2022, the artist was elected as Full Member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society for her artistic practice’s contributions to science.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com

Jackie Gendel @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Sidelong Glances

Jackie Gendel: Sidelong Glances 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

March 9 – April 29, 2023

JACKIE GENDEL  

Study for tbt, 2019 

Ink, gouache, flashe, watercolor, faux gold leaf on paper

9 3/4 x 8 1/8 in (24.8 x 20.6 cm)

JACKIE GENDEL 

tbt, 2023

Watercolor and gouache on handmade paper

10 3/8 x 11 3/8 in (26.4 x 28.9 cm)

14 3/8 x 15 3/8 x 1 1/4 in (36.5 x 39.1 x 3.2 cm) framed

Inman Gallery presents Sidelong Glances, a solo exhibition of works on paper made by JACKIE GENDEL across the span of the last decade, from 2014 to 2023.

Jackie Gendel paints colorful, narrative compositions that blur the distinction between figuration and abstraction in their rendering of people and cinematic spaces. Figures – women in particular – take center stage in Jackie Gendel’s work, unfolding within dynamic scenes with moving bodies in changing spaces. Embracing a fluid approach to her work, Jackie Gendel has commented how she develops “scenes, characters and situations through deliberate figuration, intuitive mark making, color and chance procedures,” often painting over works, or creating the same image in different colors and sizes to subvert the singular image. This procedural evolution mirrors the evolving identities of the characters she paints, allowing a narrative to continue without a predetermined or fixed destination. In doing so, Jackie Gendel’s practice quite literally creates a moving image, which skillfully parallels the theatrical, even cinematic, nature of the paintings themselves.

Included in the show are a series of works on paper across nearly a decade of making, from 2014-2023. Within this selection we see Jackie Gendel working in a range of styles and scales, with color and shape varying widely. Yet this also gives us a unique opportunity to see the cyclical nature of her work, the ways she moves in and out of motifs, circling back to compositional strategies with renewed vigor and sustained curiosity. Such display pushes back on reductive understandings of stylistic evolution as linear progress, instead showing a nuanced, playful, expansive understanding of experimentation and generative creation with an eye for sequence and seriality.

Jackie Gendel’s compositions, like her painterly process, are highly attuned to the slippery relationship between space, time, and motion. Embracing experimentation and loss of control, her works show the ways marks can subtly and dramatically shift unfolding narratives and morph into expressive characters. “In this way,” Jackie Gendel writes, “painting and drawing introduce me to my subject.”

Not only do we have a sense of Jackie Gendel introducing herself – and by extension, the viewer – to her subjects, but so too do we feel the figures introducing themselves to one another. Rarely alone, these figures exist alongside others, their relationships captured in varying gestures and glimpses, alluding to dynamics we are not wholly privy to. Sidelong glances between the women are scattered throughout the exhibition, both within paintings and across tableaux. The women rarely look back at us, choosing instead to concern themselves with their own narratives, their own worlds, and each other. In this way, the paintings have a life of their own; the sidelong glance quietly subverts the gaze and honors the figures’ own agency.

JACKIE GENDEL (b. 1973, Houston, TX) received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO) and an MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). She has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Modern Painter, and Art Papers. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Jackie Gendel an Academy Award in 2007. She is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Jackie Gendel lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com

Richard Brown Lethem @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Roots, Stones and Baggage

Richard Brown Lethem 

Roots, Stones and Baggage 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

January 14 – February 25, 2023

RICHARD BROWN LETHEM 

Russets, One Stone, 2022

Acrylic and charcoal on canvas

24 x 24 x 1 3/8 in (61 x 61 x 3.5 cm)

© Richard Brown Lethem, courtesy of Inman Gallery

RICHARD BROWN LETHEM (b. 1932) has been living and thinking in paint on canvas since the 1950’s, with results that have been categorized, more or less aptly, as abstraction, expressionism, figuration, social realism, surrealism, and allegory. Now in his ‘90’s, Richard Brown Lethem’s imagery has become unified and direct, often consisting of a central form derived from nature, yet distilled, by the visionary pressure of his attention, into symbols seemingly directly drawn from his psychic landscape, and beamed into that of the viewer. If this is an example of “late style,” it is one defiantly uninterested in a modest contemplation of mortality; instead, the painter’s wisdom exalts an embrace of color and sensuality, and traces the joyous mystery of our consistent presence as neighboring bodies in a shared field of space.

All but one painting in this exhibition were created in Richard Brown Lethem’s new studio in Claremont, CA. where he moved at the beginning of the pandemic to be closer to family. It was in Claremont where Lethem met artist Emily Joyce (b. 1976), who's solo exhibition Under the Garden is on view concurrently in the main gallery. Upon seeing Richard Brown Lethem’s first show in Claremont, Emily Joyce knew she had found a kindred spirit. They quickly became “art family,” with a mutual affinity for getting deep into seemingly simple things, everyday objects, basic shapes, flat color–painting at its most elemental.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com

Emily Joyce @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Under The Garden

Emily Joyce: Under The Garden 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

January 14 – February 25, 2023 

EMILY JOYCE

Blue Nile, 2022

Flashe vinyl paint, acrylic, and metal leaf on canvas over panel

16 x 16 in (40.6 x 40.6 cm)

© Emily Joyce, courtesy of Inman Gallery

Former Core Artist in Residence EMILY JOYCE (b. 1976) returns to Houston for her seventh solo exhibition with the Inman Gallery. 

In Emily Joyce’s recent symmetrical paintings, she explores hidden systems of nature, the built world, and the cosmos. The paintings are composed of modular and interlocking hexagons, triangles, and concentric circles with special surprise guest appearances by the occasional lily or a bit of gilded text. 

While in her twenties and fresh out of art school, Emily Joyce worked as a decorative painter, embellishing the walls of mansions and vacation homes. Now, a few decades later, that early training has seeped into her new paintings. 

In this recent body of work, there are combinations of faux-bois, gold leafing, spatter painting, stenciling, rag-rolling, marbelizing etc.–sometimes all in one composition. By assigning each technique to its own specific shape on the canvas, Emily Joyce creates an unfolding pattern and off-beat rhythm. The decorative finishes function as sophisticated painting solutions, rather than tromp-l’oeil trickery. 

Emily Joyce’s presentation includes a site-specific painting onto which other works are hung, a self-referential work that cleverly–and playfully–exemplifies these conceptual underpinnings.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com

Matthew McLendon: Director of the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Matthew McLendon: 

Director of the McNay Art Museum, 

San Antonio, Texas

Matthew McLendon

Photo Credit: Daniel Perales

McLendon to Lead the First Modern Art Museum in Texas Beginning February 13, 2023

The McNay Art Museum’s Board of Trustees has confirmed the appointment of Matthew McLendon, PhD, to serve as the museum’s fourth director in its 68-year history. McLendon comes to the McNay from The Fralin Museum of Art at The University of Virginia (UVA), where he served as the J. Sanford Miller Family Director and Chief Curator since 2017.

“Matthew’s dynamic experience as an art historian, museum director and curator will strengthen the McNay Art Museum’s position as a global destination for modern and contemporary art,” said Don Frost, President of the Board of Trustees. “We are confident that his expertise and strong commitment to civic engagement will advance the Museum’s vision of becoming a place of belonging for our diverse community.”

An energetic and influential leader, McLendon is widely recognized for his emphasis on community engagement and education, advocacy of cross-disciplinary programming and amplifying underrepresented and marginalized voices in the museum setting. At The Fralin, McLendon focused on invigorating the museum within the University and its wider constituencies. Museum attendance and major support increased and diversified dramatically during his tenure, along with the launch of new public programs, including Greenbrier Global Artists, an after-school program serving the children of asylum seekers.

“Under Matthew’s leadership, the Fralin Museum of Art has made tremendous strides in facilitating important conversations through the Museum’s collection and exhibitions,” said UVA Vice Provost for the Arts, Jody Kielbasa. “As director and chief curator, Matthew was devoted to sharing inclusive stories in the galleries, expanding the collection, bolstering audience engagement and garnering national media attention for the institution. His work and collaborative spirit left an indelible mark on the Fralin Museum of Art, the University of Virginia and our community of Charlottesville, and will benefit the Museum’s visitors and the UVA community for many years to come.”

Nationally-recognized exhibitions during McLendon’s tenure include a multi-sensory installation by Vanessa German, sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies.; Unexpected O’Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings, an exhibition focusing on the critical yet little-known period that Georgia O’Keeffe spent as a student at UVA; and Skyscraper Gothic, investigating the European foundations of the fundamentally American skyscraper and its place in early 20th century material culture.

The Fralin also expanded its Native American collections under McLendon’s leadership, acquiring works by contemporary Native American artists including Wendy Red Star, Cara Romero, Rick Bartow and others. Earlier this year, the Museum was awarded a $250,000 American Art Program Responsive Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support new research and interpretation of the Native American collection through engagement with Native scholars, artists and knowledge holders.

As an advocate for emerging and mid-career artists in the museum setting, McLendon has worked with a host of significant voices in contemporary art in both thematic and solo exhibitions, among them: Vanessa German, R. Luke DuBois, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Beth Lipman, Sofía Maldonado-Suárez, Nick Cave, Sanford Biggers, Toni Dove, Mickalene Thomas, Zimoun, Anne Patterson, Emily Noelle Lambert, Aurora Robson, Jill Sigman, Mac Premo, Daniel Rozin, Alyce Santoro, Gajin Fujita, and more.

“The McNay Art Museum’s commitment to integrity, innovation, excellence and equity aligns with the work that has anchored my career,” said McLendon. “It is an honor to follow Richard Aste, and I eagerly anticipate furthering the institution’s mission to provide transformational experiences to the San Antonio community through a growing collection and thought-provoking exhibitions.”

McLendon will assume leadership duties at the McNay on February 13, 2023. Last summer, current director Richard Aste announced his plan to move to California in early 2023. Aste will remain in his role through February 10, 2023, ensuring a seamless transition in leadership for the Museum.

A Search Committee appointed by the McNay Board of Trustees–and led by Committee Co-Chairs Amy Stieren and Darryl Byrd–identified McLendon as the ideal candidate to serve as the next McNay Director.

“Matthew stood out from numerous, highly-qualified candidates as someone with a unique combination of business acumen, arts expertise, infectious positive energy and a true love for the integral role art museums play in the communities they serve,” said Darryl Byrd, McNay Board Member and Co-Chair of the Search Committee.

“We are thrilled to welcome Matthew and his innovative ‘leader as facilitator’ approach to the McNay and its talented staff as we collectively build upon the Museum’s legacy of excellence together,” said Amy Stieren, McNay Vice President and Co-Chair of the Search Committee.

ABOUT MATTHEW McLENDON, PhD

Before going to The Fralin, McLendon was recruited in 2010 by The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida, as curator of modern and contemporary art and charged with reviving its dormant Modern and Contemporary program. In a museum then best known for its European paintings, McLendon undertook a series of high-profile exhibitions featuring rarely-seen works from The Ringling permanent collection. In 2011, Joseph’s Coat, a Skyspace by artist James Turrell, was opened under McLendon’s leadership and his original exhibitions began building larger regional and national audiences.

McLendon inaugurated and co-directed the Art of Our Time initiative, focused on living visual and performing artists. This cross-disciplinary programming series helped lead the way in The Ringling setting new records in attendance, membership, and support. Other high profile major exhibitions included the first museum survey of artist, composer, and performer R. Luke DuBois and an examination of living artists working with found objects (in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp) in Re:Purposed. McLendon concluded his time at The Ringling with the first museum survey of interactive cinema and live-mix performance pioneer Toni Dove. Major gifts to the permanent collection in support of the Modern and Contemporary program included substantial additions to The Ringling’s holdings; a new collecting emphasis on studio glass with major collection gifts; and two permanent additions to exhibition space, the Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion and the Keith D. and Linda L. Monda Gallery of Contemporary Art.

His books and publications include: Toni Dove: Embodied Machines (Scala); EMIT: What the Bringback Brought (Ringling/Murphy); Re:Purposed (Scala); R. Luke DuBois—Now (Scala); Dana Hargrove: Inhabit (Bridgette Mayer Gallery, contributing writer); Back to the Futurists: The Avant Garde and Its Legacy (Manchester University Press, contributing writer); Jill Sigman: Ten Huts (Wesleyan University Press, contributing writer), among others.

McLendon previously served in curatorial and educational positions at the Rollins Museum of Art and Tate Britain, London. He has served as teaching faculty for graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Virginia, Florida State University, New College of Florida, and Rollins College, in addition to frequent guest lectures, interviews and media appearances. He earned his MA and PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London. He earned dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Music and Art History at Florida State University, with magna cum laude honors. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Association of Art Museum Directors, American Alliance of Museums, and College Art Association among other professional organizations.

McNay Art Museum

6000 N New Braunfels Ave., San Antonio, TX 78209

www.mcnayart.org