October 2007
Museum With a View
Courtesy of Sprint Nextel Art Collection
Corpus Christi “The Sparkling City by the Sea might just deserve a big colored thumbtack on the state’s cultural map after all.” That was our assessment last October as the Art Museum of South Texas unveiled its new 28,000-square-foot wing. In the year since, the expanded digs have ushered in an increased number of visitors and played host to several top-notch exhibits. Though the bright-pink entrance and thirteen shimmer-ing, pyramid-shaped skylights of the Ricardo Legorreta–designed addition have garnered the most attention, the museum is also to be lauded for its curatorial range. Knowing that it will never be as encyclopedic as larger, more-well-endowed institutions, the AMST’s humble repository has done well to focus on art that reflects the region’s cultural makeup (the city is nearly 60 percent Latino). Since the opening, it has featured shows by the late Houston Modernist Dorothy Hood and the Brownsville-born Surrealist painter and sculptor Ray Smith, as well as a presentation of prints by artists from Oaxaca, Mexico. (There have also been several exhibits with an international scope, such as a showcase of Australian artist Kate Breakey’s painted photographs of dead birds—which are not as morbid as they sound—and an overview of prints by masters Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn.) Opening this month is “Cardinal Points/Puntos Cardinales: A Survey of Contemporary Latino and Latin American Art From the Sprint Nextel Art Collection,” a grouping of 56 photographs, prints, paintings, and mixed-media works created over the past twenty years in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the United States. Though organized into four sections—“Figure as Symbol,” “Nature, Seen and Transformed,” “Mapping the Real Imaginary,” and “Narratives”—the offerings here are extremely diverse, both in execution and subject matter. Cuban-born José Bedia’s interest in the history of Afro-Cuban religions—he’s an initiate of Palo Monte, which believes in powers found in nature—clearly guides his work. Constellations are a recurring theme of his, as in the moody blue De aqui pa’ alla’ (From Here to There), which features an elongated outlined figure whose stance reaches from one edge of the roughly seven-foot-long canvas to the other. You can identify Freddy Rodriguez’s creations, on the other hand, by the vibrant colors and signature flourishes (butterflies, flowers, leafy branches) he uses in his newspaper collages, like Together At Last?. You’ll also see Salomón Huerta’s coolly precise series of what he describes as generic houses that you might find in a wealthy neighborhood (just try finding the brush strokes on his glossy canvases); soulful photographic portraits of indigenous Mexican cultures by Graciela Iturbide and Mariana Yampolsky; and Patssi Valdez’s bold paintings of metaphorical—and inhabitant-less—domestic interiors. The works on display in “Cardinal Points” might draw you in with their eye-catching qualities, but they deserve a much closer look, as does the museum itself. Oct 27–Jan 7. 1902 N. Shoreline Blvd, 361-825-3500, artmuseumofsouthtexas.org
Go West, Young Hipster
Marfa Let’s get one thing straight: The Chinati Open House is not new (it dates back to 1986). But we’d be remiss not to remind you that the festivities are striking up once again. This year’s week-end of all things minimalist features two exhibitions by Canadian David Rabinowitch: For one, he’s re-creating about a dozen pieces of his Field Phalanx (four-by-eight-foot sheets of galvanized steel that he bends and bolts together to form various shapes), and for the other, he’s bringing out sketches and models of a never-realized project to build a doorless structure on Pinto Canyon Road, a few miles south of town. There will also, of course, be plenty of opportunities to probe the oeuvre—and, if you dare, the psyche—of the late Donald Judd (he was, after all, the force behind the Chinati Foundation), including a spotlight on works he crafted in Brooklyn in 1989 called the Lascaux Series. And architect David Adjaye, curator Trevor Smith, and installation artist Andrea Zittel will present a discussion about Judd’s influence and give their personal interpretations of his legacy. On Saturday, after the free dinner on Highland Avenue, the überchic will rendezvous at the Thunderbird Hotel and rock out to the ever-experimental sounds of Sonic Youth. And then on Sunday it’ll be breakfast at the Chinati Foundation and lunch at Casa Perez, Judd’s ranch home (all gratis), before the cognoscenti begin to go back from whence they came and tell all their friends about this hip little happening in West Texas. Oct 6 & 7. The Chinati Foundation, 1 Cavalry Row; 432-729-4362; chinati.org
Talk to Me
Austin, Galveston Celebrity interviews are often nothing more than canned photo ops, but two of this generation’s most prolific actors will be sitting down for some legit face time with Texas audiences this month. Shirley MacLaine, who has made more than fifty films, will be stopping by the Paramount Theatre in Austin to discuss her spiritual journey, among other topics, and take questions from the audience. The equally inimitable James Earl Jones will be addressing his fans later in the month. That instantly recognizable baritone of his (“I am your father”) will no doubt hypnotize those who come to hear him read some of his favorite poems at the Grand 1894 Opera House, in Galveston. He’ll also entertain questions from those assembled, but do try and keep your Darth Vader impressions to a minimum; he’s heard them all before. MacLaine: Oct 7. 713 Congress Ave, 512-472-5470, austintheatre.org. Jones: Oct 20. 2020 Postoffice, 800-821-1894, thegrand.com
