Chihuly at the Dallas Arboretum, May 5 through November 5, 2012

Renowned artist, Dale Chihuly, brings his dramatic sculptures and installations to the Dallas Arboretum May 5 – November 5, 2012. The award‐winning, 66‐acre garden will display Chihuly’s transformative contemporary glass sculptures and installations.

Chihuly’s monumental designs appeal to people of all ages and have been seen in more than 200 museums, gardens and other venues around the world. Presented by AT&T, and made possible by Bank of America, the Dallas Arboretum is proud to host Chihuly’s highly‐anticipated exhibition.

Inspired by nature, Chihuly’s spectacular installations will be specifically designed to respond to the vistas architecture and magnificent garden at the Arboretum. “AT&T is proud to support this world‐class exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum,” said Holly Reed, regional vice‐president, AT&T. “Chihuly at the Dallas Arboretum will provide a memorable educational and cultural experience not only for the children and aduls in North Texas, but visitors across the state and beyond.”

“Bank of America is dedicated to strengthening the surrounding communities we serve,” said Richard Holt, Dallas president, Bank of America. “We’re proud to partner with our fellow corporate citizen AT&T for this Chihuly exhibition at the Dallas Arboretum. This unique opportunity will not only bring a global cultural experience to the residents and visitors of Dallas but also provde significant economic impact that contributes to the local economy.”

Chihuly Nights, will be powered by Cirro Energy. The garden will feature illuminated sculptures and various dining options three nights a week. Extended garden hours until 10 p.m. will offer visitors many opportunities to see this exhibit. During the daytime, the Arboretum will offer educational materials, programs and classes for children and adults.

Supported by the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and the Dallas Morning News, the Chihuly exhibit is expected to attract both local and out of town visitors during its six‐month run. American Airlines is the official air carrier of the 2012 Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum.

The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is located on the southeastern shore of White Rock Lake at 8525 Garland Road, Dallas, TX, 75218. The Arboretum is open daily from 9am until 5pm and 6 – 10 pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for Chihuly and concert nights. General daytime admission is $15 for adults, $12 for seniors 65 and older, $9 for children 3‐12, and free for Arboretum members and children two and under. On‐site parking is $10.

Evening admission for non‐members is $20 for adults, $15 for seniors 65 and older and $12 for children 3‐12 with reduced prices for members. There is no charge for parking during our evening events.

For more information and other events, call 214.515.6500 or visit the Arboretum’s website at www.dallasarboretum.org.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is proud to announce the eighth Modern ’til Midnight on Saturday, April 14. An eclectic array of live music will be featured during the Modern’s extended, late-night hours. In addition, guests will have the opportunity to enjoy unique gallery activities, films, and exceptional cuisine from Café Modern.

Date: Saturday, April 14, 2012 from 6 p.m. to midnight
Admission: $15, free for Modern members

Tickets will be sold at the door. Contact the Modern for advanced ticket sales.

Live Music from Local and National Artists

The following lineup of musicians will perform outside against the Modern’s reflecting pond:

School of Seven Bells-Guitarist Benjamin Curtis and Alejandra Deheza bring a distinct and mysterious combination of futuristic beats and harmonious melodies known as psychedelic or indie pop. In concert, Curtis can often be seen manipulating various electronic devices in between guitar segments following Deheza’s angelic voice.

Air Review-The Dallas rock quintet’s dynamic shows have allowed them the opportunity to share stages with the likes of Portugal the Man, Bowling for Soup, Blue October, The Boxer Rebellion,and One Eskimo.

Calhoun-”The phrase ‘pure pop perfection’ is likely an overused crutch in the lexicon of music criticism. Also, it’s likely typically used for fare that usually finds itself residing on the Top 40 end of the dial. With all of that out of the way, allow us to proclaim that Calhoun’s newest album, Heavy Sugar, is indeed pure pop-rock perfection.”
-Kelly Dearmore, Best of Texas

The Angelus-Led by the enigmatic vocal powerhouse Emil Rapstine, whose brooding tones and mesmerizing stage presence bring to mind any number of iconic front men from Morrissey to Nick Cave, and backed by four young men who quietly summon up epic sounds that build like storm systems and burst into bone rattling sonic downpours, The Angelus often leave even the hardest hearted hipsters teary eyed and shaken.

Skeleton Coast-The Fort Worth pop rock quartet Skeleton Coast brings listeners a 1960s rock sound with a healthy dose of modern electronics. Influences include the Beach Boys, Modest Mouse, Pink Floyd, and Roy Orbison.

Happenings in the Galleries

The special exhibitions Glenn Ligon: AMERICA and FOCUS:Katie Paterson will be on view along with select works from the Modern’s permanent collection. Throughout the evening there will be special tours in the galleries. Admission includes access to galleries.

Glenn Ligon: AMERICA

Glenn Ligon: AMERICA is the first comprehensive, midcareer retrospective of Glenn Ligon (b. 1960), widely regarded as one of the most important and influential American artists to have emerged in the past two decades. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and curator Scott Rothkopf, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition surveys 25 years of Ligon’s work, from his student days until the present. The exhibition features roughly 100 works, including paintings, prints, photographs, drawings, and sculptural installations, as well as the artist’s recent, striking neon reliefs. The retrospective also debuts previously unexhibited early works, which shed light on Ligon’s artistic origins, and for the first time reconstitutes major series within his work, such as the seminal Door paintings that launched his career.

FOCUS: Katie Paterson

Katie Paterson is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually driven work, with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology. Many of her installations are the result of intensive research and collaboration with specialists as diverse as astronomers, nanotechnologists, and fireworks manufacturers. Recent works in her exhibition at the Modern include: All the Dead Stars (2009), a large map documenting the locations of the 27,000 dead stars known to humanity; and Light Bulb to Simulate Moonlight (2009), an incandescent bulb designed to transmit wavelength properties identical to those of moonlight.

Paterson received her BA in 2004 from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland and her MFA in 2007 from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has since participated in exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford, England; the Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; and Haunch of Venison, London, England. Her work has also been featured in the Whitstable Biennial 2010, Whitstable, England; PERFORMA 09, New York, New York; and Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, Tate Britain, London, England. She recently held the John Florent Stone fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art and was the Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London for the 2010-2011 academic year. Paterson lives and works in London and Berlin.

The first of these, Impacting Contemporary Culture Through Curatorial Practice: Three Perspectives, is February 18, 1-3 pm, at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art Noble Theatre, 415 Couch Dr in Oklahoma City. The panel is free and open to the public.

The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) presents this program to encourage writing that is informed, articulate, inspired and engages audiences in contemporary art. The Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship is organized in partnership with the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and The School of Art & Art History at the University of Oklahoma.

“Experiencing art can be profound and it is different for everyone. How we understand it is shaped by the museums, galleries, and publications produced about art,” said Julia Kirt, OVAC executive director. “Through this program, we hope to grow experiences of and expertise in contemporary art in Oklahoma. We will learn from the engagement with and perspectives of national luminaries.”

Mentors for the 2012 Fellowship include many esteemed professionals in the arts. On February 18, audiences will hear from Elizabeth Dunbar, Executive Director of DiverseWorks Art Space, Houston, TX; Dana Turkovic, Curator of Exhibitions at Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, and co-Founder and co-Director of Isolation Room/Gallery Kit, St. Louis, MO; and Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator for the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and faculty of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.  The panel is moderated by independent curator and writer Shannon Fitzgerald.

During the yearlong Fellowship, each of the twelve Fellows will produce critical writing about contemporary art and exhibitions with the guidance of visiting Mentors. The Fellows were chosen through a competitive application process (see attached list for biographies).

Future public panels will be held at the Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art in Norman on April 14 and at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art on September 15.

The Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Oklahoma Arts Council and Allied Arts. The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition was founded in 1988, providing career resources for artists who live and work in Oklahoma. For more about the program and public panels, please visit write-curate-art.blogspot.com or call 405-879-2400.

Additional Information

Public Programs: Free and open to the public.

February 18, 1-3 p.m.

Impacting Contemporary Culture Through Curatorial Practice: Three Perspectives
Elizabeth Dunbar, Dana Turkovic, and Hamza Walker
Moderated by Shannon Fitzgerald
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Noble Theatre
415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73102

April 14, 1-3 p.m.

Professors Unfolding Contemporary Art in Academia: Research & Writing
Sherri Irvin, Nancy Marie Mithlo, and Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
Moderated by Shannon Fitzgerald
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
555 Elm Avenue, Norman OK, 73019

September 15, 1-3 p.m.

Visibility & Vitality: Contemporary Art Criticism Now
Sylvie Fortin, David Pagel, and Gregory Volk
Moderated by Shannon Fitzgerald
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Noble Theatre
415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK 73102

Mentor Biographies

• Elizabeth Dunbar, Executive Director, DiverseWorks Art Space, Houston, TX.
• Shannon Fitzgerald, (Program Lead Mentor), Independent Curator and Writer, Oklahoma City.
• Sylvie Fortin, Editor-in-Chief at Art Papers in Atlanta, GA and an independent curator, art historian, critic and editor who has worked internationally since 1991.
• Sherri Irvin (PhD, Princeton), Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK and Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Editor of the journal Philosophy Compass.
• Nancy Marie Mithlo (PhD, Stanford), Associate Professor, Department of Art History and American Indian Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI.
• Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, (PhD, Northwestern), Associate Professor of Art History, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA.
• David Pagel, Art Critic, Los Angeles Times, Chair, Art Department at Claremont Graduate University, Los Angeles, CA.
• Dana Turkovic, Curator of Exhibitions, Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis and co-Founder and co-Director of Isolation Room/Gallery Kit, St. Louis, MO.
• Gregory Volk, Art Critic, Curator, Writer, and Associate Professor in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
• Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator for The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago and faculty at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Fellow Biographies

• Jennifer Barron (Oklahoma City, OK) is an artist, art writer, and arts education program coordinator. She believes in the power of art to impact lives.
• Theresa Bembnister (Kansas City, MO) has been an art writer for nearly a decade. Her work appears in the Kansas City Star and on The Drawing Center’s blog, The Bottom Line.
• Netha Cloeter (Norman, OK) is a second year graduate student at the University of Oklahoma pursuing her MA in art history, with an emphasis on contemporary Native American art.
• Erinn Gavaghan (Oklahoma City, OK) is the Executive Director of the Norman Arts Council. In 2010 she graduated from Webster University, St. Louis with a MA in Art History.
• Cory Imig (Kansas City, MO) is an interdisciplinary artist and received her BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. She is currently co-director/co-curator at PLUG projects, in Kansas City, MO.
• Emily Newman (McKinney, TX) is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
• Kirsten Olds (Tulsa, OK) is Assistant Professor of European and American Modern and Contemporary art history at the University of Tulsa.
• Blair Schulman (Kansas City, MO) writes about the visual arts in Kansas City as Editor of Cupcakes in Regalia and Associate Editor of Art Tattler.
• Amber Sharples (Oklahoma City, OK) is the Visual Arts Director/Collections Manager at the Oklahoma Arts Council where she manages both the State Art Collection and Capitol Art Collection.
• Samantha Still (Norman, OK) received her BA and MA in Art History from the University of Oklahoma.
• Sherwin Tibayan (Norman, OK) is a graduate student in photograph at the University of Oklahoma. His images and projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally.
• Shiyuan Yuan (Stillwater, OK) is Director of Gardiner Art Gallery at Oklahoma State University. Previously, he was Curator and Collection Manager at the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.

Revisit the insightful lectures from the Tuesday Evenings series with the Modern Podcasts. Visit www.themodern.org or subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes or by using the RSS feed in your preferred program.

Tuesday Evenings Cocktails and Light Bites

Guests can enjoy refreshments from 5 to 7 p.m. in Café Modern before Tuesday Evenings lectures. Choose from Café Modern’s unique cocktail menu or distinctive wine list. Coffee, tea, and light snacks are also available.

Schedule

February 7

For this Tuesday Evenings presentation, artist Glenn Ligon is in conversation with curator Scott Rothkopf on the subject of Ligon’s midcareer retrospective Glenn Ligon: AMERICA. Ligon is one of the most important American artists working today, with work spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and film, and exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including the 1991 and 1993 Whitney Biennials; Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art and The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000, both at the Whitney; solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Kunstverein München, Germany; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; ICA in Philadelphia; and SFMOMA; as well as the 1997 Venice Biennale and Documenta II. Rothkopf is curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and curator of Glenn Ligon: AMERICA. Prior to his position at the Whitney, Rothkopf was senior editor at Artforum. Through both positions, Rothkopf has come to know Ligon and his art well, having worked closely with the artist on this retrospective and as editor of Ligon’s book Yourself in the World: Selected Writings and Interviews. Given Ligon and Rothkopf’s relationship, as well as their obvious insight into the exhibition, this is a very special presentation that also serves as a preview for Glenn Ligon: AMERICA,which opens to the public on Sunday, February 12.

February 14

Andrew Campbell is an art historian and senior lecturer at Texas State University, where he teaches courses on contemporary art, feminism and visual representation, bad taste, film, and graphic novels. For Tuesday Evenings, Campbell presents one facet of his current project, Bound Together, an academic study of gay and lesbian leather communities in the 1970s. In this Valentine’s Day presentation entitled The Practice of Sex, the Work of History/ the Work of Sex, the Practice of History, Campbell–in an effort to engage in the ongoing project of writing contemporary art histories by making sense of a multitude of artists and their practice(s) as well as the expansion of historical LGBTQ visual cultures and communities that might otherwise be deemed too esoteric or stigmatized for study–presents four contemporary artists/collectives (Christian Holstad, Monica Majoli, Dean Sameshima, and A. K. Burns/A. L. Steiner) who refashion source documents from 1970s leather communities in order to comment on the politicized practices of LGBTQ love and sex in the twenty-first century.

*Audience members should note that to fully explore and present his subject, Campbell’s presentation includes mature language, themes, and subject matter.

February 21

Tim Rollins is an artist, activist, and teacher based in South Bronx, New York, who is known for what might be understood as “art activism,” and specifically his collaborative work with a group of at-risk students who call themselves Kids of Survival (K.O.S.). Beginning his career in 1980 as cofounder of Group Material–a collective of young New York artists pooling resources to launch exhibitions that address social themes–Rollins laid the ground work for what has become an art-world phenomenon known as Tim Rollins and K.O.S. Moving from traditional student/teacher interactions to a respected fine art collaborative practice, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. is represented by Lehman Maupin gallery in New York and shows internationally, with an exhibition history that includes two Whitney Biennials, the 1988 Venice Biennale, Carnegie International, as well as Documenta 8. After showing at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland, more than 20 years ago, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. present new works in a major survey exhibition in Basel entitled On Transfiguration, on view January 21 through April 15, 2012.”With Rollins’s guidance, these students are producing artwork of a remarkable sophistication, which refuses to conform to known categories but alternates between the literary and the visual, the modern and the naïve. Rollins’s teaching approach is at once classic and iconoclastic, for he uses significant works of literature as the basis for a visual statement. The result is a multilevel collaboration: among the students, between teacher and student, between the group and the authors whose books they choose.” Roberta Smith, New York Times.

This Tuesday Evenings presentation, Art and the Beloved Community, offers a special opportunity to hear from Rollins on the history, experiences, and initiatives of this extraordinary group.

February 28

Katie Paterson is a young British artist receiving a great deal of attention as a cross-medium, multidisciplinary, and conceptually driven artist who focuses on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology in her work, using her skill and knowledge as an artist together with her limitless curiosity and tireless research to probe matters often left to science. Her devotion and hard work have been rewarded. Paterson recently held the 2010-2011 John Florent Stone Fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art and the 2010-2011 Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London, as well as recently being named one of four “Best New Artists in Britain” by The Observer of London. In addition, in 2008 she was the recipient of the first annual Creative 30 Award. With work that literally explores the universe and presents its various phenomena, Paterson has been acknowledged and championed by fellow British artist Cornelia Parker in a 2010 article for The Guardian as, “original, engaging, and expansive. She makes us realize how inconsequential we are in relation to the universe.”Described in the same article as, “a romantic . . . with the patience, curiosity, and technical persistence of a scientist,” Paterson first came to public attention with a solo show at Modern Art Oxford in 2008, a year after graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has since shown in group and solo exhibitions from London to Seoul, Korea to Venice, where in 2011 she presented the unique and fascinating project 100 Billion Suns during the Venice Biennale.

For Tuesday Evenings, Paterson shares her experiences and ideas as an artist, offering special insight into her work featured in the Modern’s FOCUS: Katie Paterson, as well as what to look forward to from her growing career.

March 6

Jill Magid, a New York-based artist and writer, seeks platforms for working inside and outside of institutions, responding to their imposition, negotiation, and at times, capitulation of power. For Magid, this power is not a remote condition to contest, but rather something to manipulate by drawing it closer, exploiting its loopholes, engaging it in dialogue, seducing its agents, revealing its sources, infiltrating its structure, and repeating its logic. As an artist and writer, Magid is fascinated by the topics of hidden information; being public as a condition for existence; and intimacy in relation to power. With solo exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York; the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona; and at the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands, Magid has been recognized with awards such as the Basis Stipendium from Fonds Voor Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands and the Netherland-America Foundation Fulbright Fellowship. She is also the author of four books, including Becoming Tarden, which opens with, “The secret itself is much more beautiful than its revelation.” In accordance with Magid’s proclivity for intrigue, this book is as mysterious as the project it is associated with, which included the book being edited, censored, and its contents confiscated by the Dutch Secret Service, and a one-time-only exhibition of the novel at Tate Modern last fall.

For Tuesday Evenings, Magid presents Jill Magid: Embedded, a survey of the artist’s career with insights into her strange and thrilling experiences and endeavors as an artist, including her next project, Failed States,at Arthouse and AMOAin Austin, which is also the subject of Magid’s fourth and upcoming book by the same title.

For more information about Jill Magid, visit www.jillmagid.net.

March 13

Brooklyn-based artist Byron Kim is known for his monochrome paintings, born out of representation, that seemingly challenge their relationship to abstraction. Faye Hirsch describes his work in an interview with the artist for Art in America, “You see subtle variations of color within the fields. Recalling paintings by midcentury modernists like Rothko and Reinhardt, they feel like pure abstraction, but as always with Kim, have profound ties to the world.” Recognized in the early 1990s for Synecdoche, a grouping of hundreds of small monochrome paintings based on skin tones that was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial, Kim collaborated that same year with friend and fellow artist Glenn Ligon on the painting Black and White, which exploits the notion of “flesh tone” as a color. Kim has since moved to meditations on the sky with his ongoing Sunday Paintings (a series begun in 2001). These small and stunning presentations of the daytime sky are immediately personal, with notations from mundane to profound, that mark the moment they represent written across their surfaces while at the same time thoughtfully reference the historical Today Series by On Kawara. Kim’s devotion to his paintings and their subjects has brought him critical acclaim; he has received numerous awards, including the Alpert Award in the Arts, UCROSS, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including Korea, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada.

For Tuesday Evenings, Kim presents the ideas and experiences that have formed his work.

March 27

Andrea Fraser is an artist currently based in Los Angeles, California, where she is a professor at UCLA in the department of art. She also serves as visiting faculty for the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Fraser has used performance, video, and a range of other media to explore the motivations that drive artists, collectors, art dealers, corporate sponsors, museum trustees, and museum visitors from the pursuit of prestige to that of financial investment, to sexual fantasy and self-realization. Working since the mid-1980s, Fraser has built on the site-specific and research-based approaches that emerged with conceptualism, combining them with feminist investigations of subjectivity and desire. Her methods are rooted in the psychoanalytic principle that one can only engage structures and relationships through the immediacy of performance. In addition, Fraser also writes about her observations and experiences in art and life. Moved by a personal and immediate engagement with Fred Sandback’s work at Dia: Beacon in 2004, she wrote the essay, “Why does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry.”

For Tuesday Evenings, Fraser presents and discusses this moving essay that explores the psychological and emotional aspects of our relationship with art and museums.

April 3

Writer and artist Gregg Bordowitz presents Testing Some Beliefs, an ongoing series of lectures/performances that consider the strength and longevity, as well as the present relevancy, of some personal and collective beliefs. Currently the Chair of the film, video, new media, and animation department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and faculty at the Whitney Independent Study Program, Bordowitz is known for his work as an AIDS activist in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as his socially conscious, thoughtful, and poetic performance-based work. Throughout his career, he has been recognized with awards and grants, including the 2006 Frank Jewitt Mather Award for The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings 1986-2003, a Rockefeller Intercultural Arts Fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Of Testing Some Beliefs, Bordowitz writes, “I believe that art can change the world. I believe that art and freedom are necessarily related. There are no facts to support these claims. Still, I carry these beliefs formed decades ago. How do some beliefs remain and what do I gain by believing? At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I will try to explain.”

For more information on Gregg Bordowitz, visit www.greggbordowitz.com.

April 10

Gary Rough is a Scottish conceptual artist based in New York who represented his homeland in the 2003 Venice Biennale. As described in the press release for a recent solo show at numberthirtyfive gallery, New York, Rough “has cast himself as the antihero in his own dystopian novel.” Rough scrupulously labors to report upon the fragility, pathos, and beauty of the human condition, evoking the romantic, mundane, bleak, and intimate in paintings, sculpture, text, T-shirts, site-specific installations, and more with work that appears to be cobbled together in a deceptively hurried and craftless manner. It is no surprise that Rough was attracted to Kurt Vonnegut’s character Rabo Karabekian, the fictional and failed Abstract Expressionist painter whose paintings faded and disappeared from their canvases in Bluebeard due to a combination of stupidity and bad luck. After working with the author, in 2007, the year of Vonnegut’s death, Rough recreated and showed Karabekian’s “Sateen-Dura Luxe” paintings, at Fergus McCaffrey Fine Art, New York, based on Vonnegut’s descriptions of them in the book. This exercise, and the remarkable resulting paintings, brought Rough critical acclaim and an intriguing relationship with Vonnegut and his widow. Rough continues to explore the ordinary and often pathetic experiences and conditions of life on earth with tenderness and extraordinary astuteness. For Tuesday Evenings, he shares the insights and revelations of his career thus far.

April 17

Lucy Lippard is a distinguished writer, curator, editor, lecturer, and activist who has long been appreciated for her expansive scholarship and insight, having been one of the first to recognize the dematerialization of the work in art’s movement toward conceptualism as well as an early champion of feminist art. The author of 21 books, curator of 50 exhibitions, cofounder of Printed Matter Inc., the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution, Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists’ organizations, Lippard has received eight honorary doctorates in fine arts as well as numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Criticism, two National Endowment for the Arts grants in criticism, the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Bard College Award for Curatorial Excellence. Of Lippard’s book, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, Thomas Hine wrote for the New York Times Book Review, “Lippard overwhelms us with the breadth of her reading and the comprehensiveness with which she considers the things that define place. . . . In its final section, The Lure of the Local is revealed as a sort of art book after all. Its intent is to explore the many things that those who make art or who make judgments about art should think about when they consider art that seeks to be ‘contextual,’ ‘site-specific,’ or ‘place making’.” Lippard’s most recent book is Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin 1250-1782, for which she received the Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library.

For Tuesday Evenings, Lippard presents Undermining, touching on photography, the new West, development, water, and land art, as she discusses pits and erections (gravel pits and skyscrapers), and more.

Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune opens February 1 and runs through May 20, 2012. Admission fees are as follows:

• McNay Members – Free
• Children under 12 – Free
• Adults – $15
• Students (with I.D.) – $12
• Seniors (65+) – $12
• Active Military – $12

Museum admission includes access to the main collection galleries and to Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune.

Admission to the museum is free on H-E-B Thursday Nights (4-9 p.m.) and on AT&T First Sundays of the Month. During these special times admission to Andy Warhol is $7.

Noted art patron and longtime TWO x TWO supporter, Amy Phelan, has accepted the position of Event Chair for the Saturday, October 20th gala and auction. Included in Artnews as one of the top two hundred art collectors, Amy currently serves on the boards of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Meadows School of Art – SMU and Creative Time. Amy is also committed to serving on various councils of art institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Aspen Art Museum, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the American Patrons of the Tate. Amy’s involvement in all aspects of the art world, from maintaining close relationships with artists to exhibiting their work worldwide, demonstrates her enduring enthusiasm for and dedication to contemporary art.

“Each year, TWO x TWO has raised the bar in fund raising for two very important charities,” said Amy (Mrs. John) Phelan. “I look forward to collaborating with Cindy and Howard Rachofsky to make 2012 another record-breaking year.”

Dallas collectors Lindsey and Patrick Collins have been selected as Art Chairs for the 2012 event.

It was also announced that Richard Phillips will be the recipient of amfAR’s 2012 Award of Excellence for Artistic Contributions to the Fight Against AIDS at the 14th annual event in October 2012. He has supported TWO x TWO over the years, most recently with a remarkable large scale painting of actress Lindsay Lohan at the 2010 Dallas event.

Born in Massachusetts in 1962, Richard Phillips lives and works in New York. He has exhibited his work in many individual and group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, including an important survey exhibition and catalogue at Le Consortium, Dijon in 2004, and is represented in important public and private collections such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Denver Museum, CO; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; UBS Paine Webber Art Collection, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Drawing prominent artists, art collectors and philanthropists from around the world, the annual black-tie gala is part of a week-long series of events.  It is the largest U.S. fundraiser for both amfAR and the Dallas Museum of Art. An eagerly anticipated event that quickly sells out, the gala benefit features a seated dinner for 450 guests with both a live and silent auction of major works of contemporary art and unique luxury items.

Over the years, previous VIP celebrity guests at TWO x TWO events have included Sharon Stone, Sigourney Weaver, Shirley MacLaine, Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow, Natasha Richardson, John Benjamin Hickey, Taylor Dayne, Dita Von Teese, Stanley Tucci, Harry Belafonte, Gavin Rossdale, Alan Cumming, Cheyenne Jackson and Patti LaBelle.

Renowned artists Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, April Gornik, Joel Shapiro, Cecily Brown, Tom Friedman, Elizabeth Peyton, Jim Hodges, Peter Doig, Christopher Wool and Mark Grotjahn have been honored.  During the live auction at the 2011 event, artist Mark Grotjahn’s piece went for a record-breaking $1 million.

For more information, please visit www.2x2online.org.

ABOUT TWO x TWO FOR AIDS AND ART

Since its inception, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art has raised more than $34 million in support of essential AIDS research at amfAR and for the Contemporary Art Acquisitions Fund at the Dallas Museum of Art. TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art is the largest U.S. fundraiser for amfAR and the Dallas Museum of Art and is recognized as one of the top events in Dallas.

BENEFICIARIES

amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, is one of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations dedicated to the support of AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and the advocacy of sound AIDS-related public policy. Since 1985, amfAR has invested more than $340 million in its programs and has awarded grants to more than 2,000 research teams worldwide. Visit www.amfar.org.

The Dallas Museum of Art, established in 1903, has an encyclopedic collection of more than 23,000 works spanning 5,000 years of history and representing all media with renowned strengths in the arts of the ancient Americas, Africa, Indonesia, and South Asia; European and American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; and American and international contemporary art. Over 100 significant artworks have been acquired by the Museum with proceeds from TWO x TWO.

The Dallas Museum of Art is the anchor of the growing Dallas Arts District and, in all its vitality, serves as a cultural magnet for the city with diverse programming ranging from exhibitions and lectures to concerts, literary readings, and dramatic and dance presentations. The Museum serves more than one-half million visitors a year and offers more than 3,500 education and public programs annually designed to engage people of all ages with the power and excitement of art. Visit www.dallasmuseumofart.org .

The performance takes place Saturday, February 4 at 2 p.m. throughout the museum’s galleries, and begins with music on toy piano from the Austin Critics Table 2009 Best instrumentalist, Michelle Schumann. The event is open to the public and included with museum admission.

Continuing his research into cross-disciplinary collaboration and new contexts for live performances, musician Steven Parker, a doctoral student in the Butler School of Music and Donald D. Harrington Fellow at UT, was invited by The Blanton to draw on the museum’s resources in this, his third installation of the SoundSpace series. Program highlights include simultaneous musical performances by the New Music Co-op, Bel Cuore Sax Quartet, the East Side Arkestra (Sun Ra tribute combo) and the premier of works from composers Andy Sigler and Pierce Gradone, with an amplified cactus and electric trombone. The music will be paired with dancers from Ballet Austin, with choreography from Michelle Thompson.

Following the performance, visitors will have an opportunity to participate in a community jam session, bringing together the Musicircus performers and museum guests for a unique noise making experience.

The Blanton is excited to extend this opportunity for collaboration to one of the university’s most talented graduate students. This project exemplifies the museum’s commitment to nurturing meaningful collaborations that provide innovative experiences with art, inspire creativity, and support the educational mission of the university.

SoundSpace: Musicircus is organized by Steven Parker for The Blanton as part of his year long exploration of the museum and its resources.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

NasherSALON featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda
Nasher Sculpture Center
Monday, March 5, 2012, at 8 p.m.

The Nasher Sculpture Center in collaboration with the AT&T Performing Arts Center is pleased to announce Tony Award-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda as a featured guest of the popular NasherSALON, bringing cultural conversations to the community.  Co-creator of the smash Broadway hit, In the Heights, Puerto Rican-American composer, rapper, lyrist and actor, Miranda became an instant sensation for writing and starring in the four-time Tony Award-winning musical.  In the Heights will be performed as part of the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Lexus Broadway Series from March 13 through 25, 2012.

The NasherSALON will take place on Monday, March 5 at 8 pm in the intimate, 200-seat Nasher Hall auditorium. Tickets are $65 ($50 for Members) and are available beginning Monday, February 6 at NasherSculptureCenter.org/Salon or 888.695.0888.

Lin-Manuel Miranda grew up in the diverse Manhattan community of Washington Heights and that, coupled with his background in a close-knit Puerto Rican family, inspired his work as a writer, composer and performer. In 2008, Miranda received a Tony Award for Best Score and a nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Musical in Broadway’s In the Heights, which won four Tony Awards that year including Best Orchestrations, Best Choreography and Best Musical. In addition to many other awards and nominations, the musical also took home a 2009 Grammy Award for its Original Broadway Cast Album.

As an actor, Lin-Manuel received a 2007 Theater World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance, and the 2007 Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Male Performance courtesy of Actor’s Equity Foundation. He has also performed for President Obama and the First Family at the White House for its first-ever Poetry Jam. Additionally, his TV and film credits include The Electric Company, Sesame Street, The Sopranos, House, Modern Family, The Sex and the City Movie, and the upcoming The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

The NasherSALON Speaker Series features cultural icons for intimate and enlightening conversations. Past speakers have included Tony and Emmy award winner Kristin Chenoweth; actor Kevin Bacon; author John Updike; choreographer Twyla Tharp; singer and songwriter Art Garfunkel; composer Philip Glass; architect Thom Mayne; actor, producer and humanitarian Danny Glover; screenplay authors Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana; actor and activist Spike Lee; actress and model Lauren Bacall; actor Robert Duvall; singer Gladys Knight; artist Jeff Koons;  and chef Wolfgang Puck.

The NasherSALON Speaker Series is sponsored by American Airlines, Rosewood Crescent Court, Carey Limousine and Modern Luxury.

About the Nasher Sculpture Center

Open since 2003 and located in the heart of the Dallas Arts District, the Nasher Sculpture Center is home to one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculptures in the world, the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, featuring more than 300 masterpieces by Calder, Giacometti, Matisse, Picasso, Rodin, and more. The longtime dream of the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher, the museum was designed by world-renowned architect Renzo Piano in collaboration with landscape architect Peter Walker.

Hailed by the “USA Today” as one of the great sculpture gardens where art enhances nature, the roofless museum seamlessly integrates the indoor galleries with the outdoor spaces creating a museum experience unlike any other in the world. On view in the light-filled galleries and amid the landscaped grounds are rotating works from the Collection, as well as blockbuster exhibitions and one-of-a-kind installations by the most celebrated artists of our times. In addition to the indoor and outdoor gallery spaces, the Center contains an auditorium, education and research facilities, a cafe, and a store.

The Nasher brings the best of contemporary culture to Dallas through special programs designed to engage visitors, including artist talks, lecture programs, contemporary music concerts, educational classes and exclusive member events.

The Nasher Sculpture Center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm and until 11 pm for special events, and from 10 am to 5 pm on the first Saturday of each month.  Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students, and free for members and children 12 and under, and includes access to special exhibitions.  For more information, visit www.NasherSculptureCenter.org.

About In The Heights

The national touring company of In the Heights will make its Dallas debut as part of the Lexus Broadway Series at the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Winspear Opera House, March 13 – 25, 2012.  In the Heights takes place in Manhattan, in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, where a group of hard-working immigrants live, laugh and love as they seek a better life in their new country. For more information, visit www.attpac.org/heights.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Sole Sisters

Sole Sisters: Shoe Confessional
Dallas Museum of Art
Jan. 20 and Feb. 11-12, 2012

This Friday, January 20, 2012, the Shoe Confessional will debut at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). Filmmaker Cynthia Salzman Mondell, Media Projects Inc., will be collecting women’s stories about their shoes for her film Sole Sisters. The Shoe Confessional will be part of the DMA’s Late Nights. Additional Shoe Confessional dates at the DMA will be February 11 and 12, 2012.

Mrs. Salzman Mondell took a few minutes to answer our questions about the Shoe Confessional.

What should someone expect when they get to the DMA? Is there actually a Shoe Confessional?

We built a full size confessional equipped with two cameras and a monitor so people could see their shoes. We have some questions for women (and men, but mostly women) but they can tell any shoe story they want to divulge in the privacy of the confessional.

We are really, really excited about the confessional. It was designed by Jen Malden. The building was led by Arnuflo Chavez. We had a lot of community help from artists and designers, who donated their time and materials. The confessional is a real community project.

You mentioned two cameras with one focused on the person’s shoes. Are you encouraging people to wear the shoes they will be confessing?

Yes, they can. We will have questions about a person’s favorite shoes but we want to go a little deeper.

Every woman has shoes in her closet that she does not wear, but she will never get rid of them because those shoes hold something very intimate and special for that woman. Shoes are like memories. We want to find out what stories those shoes hold.

Where at the DMA will the Shoe Confessional be located?

The confessional will be near the contemporary exhibits, which is the south end of the building. You will not be able to miss the confessional. There will be a huge sign with a really big stiletto heel with Sole Sisters on it. There will be a team of volunteers at the DMA to direct people.

Are you expecting a lot of people?

Oh, I hope so.

What will be the end result of the shoe confessions?

We hope some of it will be in the film. We are working with David Friedman from Wave Maker Audio to make sure the sound is going to be good. So we can possibly use the audio in the film. If not, we might be able to use the stories in some other way.

What kind of stories are you expecting?

We have gotten a lot of different stories about all kinds of shoes.

One story that really touched me was about a woman at the Senior Source. The woman talked to me about a special pair of peach colored shoes. I asked her why she keeps those shoes by her bedside. She said she wore those shoes every Thursday night when her husband would take her dancing. She said he passed away a year ago, but she keeps the shoes to remind her of him, and of the time she was the happiest.

Shoes evoke a lot of emotion and a lot of memories. It’s an accessory that has a very strong identity for women.

Every shoe has a story. Every woman has both.

Related Posts & Links

Watch for the debut of the Shoe Confessional at the Dallas Museum of Art – December 20, 2011

Medial Projects, Inc.

Sole Sister

The Sentimental Journey by Liz London, 2012

Liz London: Seeking Infinity
Mercantile Coffee House
January 26 through February 25, 2012

Opening reception with the artist is Thursday, January 26, 2012, from 6-7:30 p.m.

As part of the McKinney Avenue Contemporary’s community outreach program, the MAC has teamed up with Mercantile Coffee House to extend its contemporary artistic vision and educational support to downtown Dallas. This partnership will promote and support emerging talent with monthly exhibitions throughout the year. Donations from Mercantile Coffee House will benefit artistic programming at the MAC.

The upcoming exhibition at Mercantile Coffee House features Liz London’s Seeking Infinity. With the use of mixed media, Liz London presents an allegorical representation of personal adventures. Process becomes an important factor in London’s art making. Curiosities discovered from travel coalesced with painting, drawing, rubbing and collaging formulates the works on display. While working on various pieces collectively, the act of producing takes on a philosophical ceremony for London where mistakes are created, boundaries are pushed, questions are asked and icons are made.

Dallas based artist Liz London’s creative aspirations began as a child and flourished as the daughter of interior designers. London possesses a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Relations from the University of Central Oklahoma and has studied under artists such as Dorothy Moses, B.J. White, Carolyn Barnes and Mark Briscoe. In 2006, London established the work shop Connecting through Collage, where she applies visual and meditative exercises to foster creativity. Her work has been commissioned by the new Omni Hotel and most recently exhibited in the Art Hash Group Show at Kettle Art.

The opening reception for Liz London: Seeking Infinity will be Thursday, January 26, 2012 from 6:00 -7:30pm. The exhibition will be on view through February 25, 2012.

Mercantile Coffee House will host monthly exhibitions of a variety of emerging artists and media, enhancing the setting and experience for visitors. Through the MAC’s innovative efforts and artistic advisement, visitors to The Mercantile Coffee House will have the opportunity to view and interact with contemporary art in a non-traditional setting. This initiative is congruent with the MAC mission of supporting experimentation and promoting a visual dialogue between the artist and the viewer.

When and Where

Monthly at The Mercantile Coffee House
1800 Main Street Dallas, TX 75201

About the MAC

Established in 1994, The McKinney Avenue Contemporary (The MAC) is a nonprofit
organization that stands as a Dallas advocate for creative freedom offering the opportunity for experimentation and presentation of art in all disciplines. It supports the emerging and established artist role in society providing a forum for critical dialogue with their audiences. This relationship is cultivated through education and innovative programming. The MAC is a member of Dallas Art Dealers Association and The Uptown Association.

Call 214-953-1212 for information or visit www.the-mac.org. The MAC is open Wednesday – Saturday 11 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.

About Mercantile Coffee House

Mercantile Coffee House is a business hip place to have a great cup of premium coffee, espresso or tea. Mercantile Coffee House features the best coffee beans of 2010, Intelligentsia. It serves world famous Yogen Fruz frozen Yogurt and Smoothies made to your liking. The Mercantile Coffee House is a comfortable environment to enjoy the first cup of coffee for the day, a convenient place to meet with your colleagues or hook up with friends. It is also technology friendly with ample laptop plug ins, free high speed Wi-Fi and a Free Conference Room use for your more serious meetings. For a limited time only Mercantile Coffee House is offering the finest bean to bar chocolate in the US, Amano Chocolate. Visit Mercantile Coffee House online at www.mchdallas.com.

The Sentimental Journey by Liz London, 2012