Straight From the Art

From Fort Worth’s Kimbell to Houston’s Menil, Texas’s museums are home to a diverse and exquisite collection of masterpieces. To devise a list of our ten greatest works on view, we asked more than sixty curators, gallery owners, critics, and other insiders for their favorites. So come along on the ultimate art tour of Texas.

by Jordan Breal

October 2011

(Page 4 of 4)

James Magee, 65
Artist, Cornudas
For more than thirty years, the sculptor—known for his scrap-metal reliefs and the folksy oil paintings created by his alter ego, Annabel Livermore—has been constructing his magnum opus on two thousand acres east of El Paso. The Hill, a four-building complex filled with texture-rich installations (think steel, wood, cinnamon, flower petals), was opened to the public (by appointment only and for $250 a head) last year and is being hailed as “one of the most extraordinary artworks of our time.”

Joseph Havel, 57
Director of the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The sculptor was featured in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and named the 2010 Texas Artist of the Year by Art League Houston. Since 1991 he has overseen the Glassell’s Core Program, one of the world’s most prestigious residency fellowships for artists and critics (David Aylsworth, Francesca Fuchs, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Annette Lawrence, and Katrina Moorhead are alums). “It used to be difficult to have an international career based out of Texas,” he says. “Now we get applicants from all over the globe.”

Trenton Doyle Hancock, 37
Artist, Houston
Hancock, who was raised in the East Texas town of Paris, has been racking up the accolades for his shockingly bright and often dense prints, drawings, and collages, which tell the tale of the Mounds, a group of mythical “half-​
human, half-plant mutants” he dreamed up in college. He’s been featured in the Whitney Biennial twice; in 2000 he became one of the youngest artists ever included in the show.

• Hancock created a 45-by-98-foot mural for Cowboys Stadium.

Teresa Hubbard, 46, and Alexander Birchler, 48
Artists, Austin
Working under the name Hubbard/Birchler, the duo are known for the oblique narratives in their hyperrealistic video installations and photographs. In 2008 the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth premiered Grand Paris Texas, a 54-minute film about an abandoned movie theater in East Texas. Then came this year’s ​Méliès, a looping 24-minute piece recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston about a silent film thought to have been shot near the border town of Sierra Blanca. Now the pair are working near Marfa on the final 
installment of their trilogy.

Richard and Nona 
Barrett
Collectors, Dallas
The Barretts own one of the most comprehensive personal collections of Texas art, a sizable chunk of which is being doled out via lottery to more than a dozen museums across the state. Among the masterpieces the couple has gifted are two seminal works by Forrest Bess, housed at the Dallas Museum of Art, and One Rabbit Feeling the Pain of Another, a 1982 oil-on-linen by Melissa Miller recently acquired by the Blanton Museum of Art, in Austin. The first work of art Nona acquired was by Vernon Fisher; the Barretts are now also big supporters of James Magee.

Rainey Knudson, 38
Founder and director of Glasstire.com, Houston
For ten years, Knudson has been covering the state’s visual arts scene with “non-stuffy” writing. Her site’s reviews, virtual studio tours, news stream, and think pieces (whether about dueling art fairs or museums’ financial reports) get more than 100,000 page views a month and fill the void created by a dearth of professional critics and the recent demise of Texas journal Art Lies.

• Knudson is married to Michael Galbreth, one half of the Art Guys, Houston’s zany conceptual art duo.

Dario Robleto, 38
Artist, Houston
The San Antonio native has had more than two dozen solo shows, and several of his labor-intensive pieces—which often include historical artifacts and explore themes of survival, loss, and DJ culture—have been acquired by national museums. This fall he’s a guest lecturer at the Yale School of Art and a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.

• Alternative-rock band Yo La Tengo used three of Robleto’s works as album art for Popular Songs (2009).

•••••

 

You 
Want 
It? We Got It.

TEXAS MAY NOT HAVE AS MANY WORLD-RENOWNED MASTERPIECES AS NEW YORK OR PARIS, BUT THE POTENCY AND DIVERSITY OF ITS HOLDINGS IS INDISPUTABLE. HERE ARE SOME WORTHWHILE MUSEUM STOPS.

 

For Greek and Roman antiquities, go to . . . the San Antonio Museum of Art
Housed in what were once the engine and boiler rooms of the 1884 Lone Star Brewery, this Greek and Roman trove is the largest in the southern U.S. You’ll see black- and red-figure Greek vases (with scenes from the Trojan War), Roman busts (is that Empress Domitia with the Texas-size hair?), and very elaborate sarcophagi. But the showpiece to really ogle is the Lansdowne Marcus Aurelius, a nearly eight-foot-tall marble likeness of the curly-headed emperor that stands sentinel in the Denman Gallery.

 

For Longhorns and bluebonnets, go to . . . the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
The only permanent gallery in the state devoted to Texas art, in Canyon, features a glut of dusty cowboys and certain violet blooms by the likes of H. D. Bugbee, Jerry Bywaters, and Julian Onderdonk. The rustic landscapes may seem trite today, but they offer a lasting impression of the untamed frontier. The Approaching Herd (1902), by Frank “the Rembrandt of the Longhorns” Reaugh, is so emblematic of the state’s spirit that Laura Bush borrowed it for the White House.

 

© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

For photographs of the American West, go to . . . the Amon Carter Museum of American Art
The Fort Worth institution boasts nearly 230,000 photographic works, including daguerreotypes from the U.S.-Mexican War and 124 of Richard Avedon’s iconic portraits of miners, oil field workers, and others. Because of their fragility, most of the images are shown only occasionally, but a permanent gallery is devoted to rotating exhibits of “masterworks,” like Lee Friedlander’s California (2009), a silver gelatin of a tangle of tree limbs, currently on view.

 

For brand-new works by up-and-comers, go to . . . Artpace
Each year, nine artists—three from Texas, three from around the country, and three from abroad—are invited to live at the San Antonio contemporary art center that was the brainchild of late picante-sauce heiress Linda Pace. The two-month residency encourages artists to hatch their most experimental works yet, which are then exhibited for eight weeks. Among the now-famous participants: Tokyo’s Chiho Aoshima, New York’s Teresita Fernández, and Houston’s Katrina Moorhead. Creations from the latest class go on view November 17.

 

For rare pieces of Asian jade, go to . . . the Crow Collection of Asian Art
Dallas real estate mogul Trammell Crow bought his first piece of carved jade in the sixties. By the time of his death, in 2009, he and his wife had acquired over 1,200 jade objects—from delicate hairpins to mountain-shaped sculptures—about a tenth of which are on view. Also showcased are treasures from across the Asian continent, including twelfth-century Cambodian temple sculptures, Tibetan figures made of gilt bronze, and Japanese snuff bottles from the Meiji period. A sculpture garden will open this spring.

Get the complete list of must-see art around the state, check out one curator’s selection of quintessential Texas works; find out about exhibition openings; and read a Q&A with Jordan Breal. 

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