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“Texas Design Now” at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, through November 29
Despite featuring the work of 35 Texas designers, nothing feels jumbled about “Texas Design Now.” Impressively curated, these works satisfy on a thoroughly contemporary plane, elevating the pop appeal...
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Slouching Toward Halloween: “This Side of Paradise: New Photography from...
I mean, sure. I’ll go to a photography exhibit with my friend, who happens to also have been my wedding photographer. In a time when everyone’s a smartphone-photographer and Instagram is everyone’s...
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The “Intersections” of Poetry and Visual Art
I built you a room of a thousand daisies… That’s not a quote from artist Anila Quayyam Agha, although it appropriately describes “Intersections,” her installation that was featured at Rice Gallery this...
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“I should have brought a philosopher”: 3 from DiverseWorks’ “What Shall We Do...
1: “Refresh (zine)” by Kristin Lucas, 7 stacks of 8.5×11” sheets of paper, stapler. In 2007, Kristin Lucas began her ongoing “Refresh” series, in which she decides to legally change her name. But, it’s...
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Gonzo247 and the Nation’s First Graffiti Museum
In February, I attended what I thought was the opening of Graffiti and Street Art Museum (GASAM) among the warehouses of Houston’s East Downtown. Much-hyped in local media since the fall, the museum...
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The School for the Movement of the Technicolor People
“Amateurs rehearse until they get it right; professionals rehearse until they can’t get it wrong.” That quote is often attributed to Julie Andrews. I heard it recently on a professional development...
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Judge for a day: The “Big Show” and its “Refusés”
To be an artist is to be a perpetual reject. That is why we are constantly trying to find ways to “hack” submissions, to catch juries red-handed rejecting something good for bad reasons. Stories abound...
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Black & White, the KKK, and the Enduring Banality of Evil: “The Beginning is...
“[‘The City’] can be any city in America. These individuals can be any American. There is a false sense that these threats ever were (or still are) contained at the peripheries of society, in small...
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Reclaiming Material Responsibility: Blake Rayne and Analia Saban at Blaffer...
Legally, “material responsibility” refers to an employee’s responsibility regarding a company’s material assets. Yet, the theme of responsibility in the Blaffer’s current exhibitions—and both artists’...
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How We Play, or Don’t Play: Julian Lorber and Nicole Pietrantoni at Nicole...
Adults are often admonished for losing our appreciation for “play”; we find it childish, something we leave behind, and scientists often tell us that our brains are worse off for it. The two artists on...
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Trans rights, melting glaciers, evil-thwarting shields: just another Houston...
In a month when most of us are struggling to find a concise slogan for our protest signs, Houston’s inner loop as usual is a nest of artistic treasures. This month, I couldn’t bring myself to pay to...
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Growing Pains and Revolution at the MFAH: Ron Mueck and “Adiós Utopia”
A slightly different angle of “Self portrait” by Ron Mueck. I can barely get through a day in Houston—and even international art websites—without seeing Ron Mueck’s sideways head. An alumnus of Jim...
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Rebranding Communism, Deconstructing Dreams, Shooting to Thrill: The...
Listening to a college radio station on my way to Blaffer Art Museum, I heard the song “The American Dream” from the musical “Miss Saigon.” You know—the one with the helicopter, wherein a Vietnamese...
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You might not like your reflection in “Windows on Death Row”
“Any Questions?!!” by Arnold Prieto A dialogue: that’s what the gallery attendant at the University of Houston-Downtown O’Kane Gallery told us is the goal of “Windows on Death Row,” an exhibition of...
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Character Studies in Post-Cultural Revolution China: “Chinese Dreams” at MassArt
Still from “To Raise the Level of a Fish Pond” — Zhang Huan (1997) The final moments of the recording of Zhang Huan’s performance piece, “To Raise the Level of a Fish Pond,” make the piece as...
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Eddie Martinez and Contemporary South African Prints at Wellesley’s Davis Museum
“Mandala #7 (Frankenthaler Wash)” (2016) by Eddie Martinez This fall, two special exhibitions among the vast collections at Wellesley College’s Davis Museumare especially worth the 20-mile drive from...
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Math is Hard, and Beautiful (In Context): The Concinnitas Portfolio at Krakow...
Etchings from the Concinnitas portfolio. Photo credit: Krakow Witkin Gallery Mathematicians generally agree that beauty does exist in the structural beauty of theorems and proofs, even if most of the...
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The Half Hour Hold: Subjective Stare-Downs with Paintings at the Museum of...
How long do you regard a singular work in a museum or gallery? Here are two different approaches: Supposing we made a pact with a painting and agreed to sit down and look at it, on our own, with no...
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Our Internets, Our Selves: Looking Beyond Branding in Boston’s “Art + Tech”
If I’m being cyncial, Boston’s inferiority complex as a“top U.S. innovation city” is why we have a city-wide partnership between 14 museums and galleries called “Art + Tech. ” Why not, when the theme...
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