Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York

September 28, 2008 – January 18, 2009

The Park Place Gallery was a prominent cooperative gallery in 1960s New York, shared by five sculptors (Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis, Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar, and Forrest Myers) and five painters (Dean Fleming, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Edwin Ruda, and Leo Valledor). With their unique interest in dynamic, complex space in sculpture and painting and their active engagement with contemporary cultural issues, the group was often at odds with the predominant movements and philosophies of most artists of the day. As a result, Park Place has rarely been treated in histories of the 1960s. By assembling a selection of major works rarely seen or seen together since that era—as well as photographs and documents chronicling the group's activities—this exhibition opens a new window on the 1960s art world. In doing so, it reveals the decade to have been a period of much richer artistic possibility and complexity than standard art historical narratives ever suggest.

Curated by Linda Henderson, David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor, Department of Art and Art History, College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at Austin

Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art with support from the College of Fine Arts, The University of Texas at Austin.

The exhibition is made possible by the generous funding of the Lannan Foundation, the Ginger Murchison Foundation, and The Lupe Murchison Foundation, with additional support from Mary Noël and Bill Lamont.

The New York Graphic Workshop, 1964 – 1970

September 28, 2008 – January 18, 2009

This exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of a crucial, yet little-known, episode in the history of American and Latin American Conceptual art. Showcasing over 100 prints, drawings and mixed media works, the exhibition will explore contributions made to the Conceptualist movement of the 60's and 70's through the printmaking of The New York Graphic Workshop (NYGW). The NYGW was founded in 1965 by three young Latin American artists in New York— Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, and Liliana Porter—whose mission was to redefine the practice of printmaking in conceptual terms, focusing on the mechanical and repetitive nature of printmaking, rather than its traditional techniques. As they stated in their first manifesto, "The printing industry prints on bottles, boxes, electronic circuits, etc. Printmakers, however, continue to make prints with the same elements used by Dürer. The act of printing in editions, the act of publishing, is more important than the work carried out on a printing plate." The exhibition will examine the group's philosophies and processes through examples by NYGW founders Camintzer, Castillo and Porter, along with other artists. Works produced by the group on behalf of some of the leading contemporary artists of the period, including Michael Snow, Max Neuhaus, José Luis Cuevas, and Salvador Dalí will also be exhibited.

New York Graphic Workshop is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art. Funding for the exhibition is provided by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and by the Alcoa Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, director of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and former curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton, and Ursula Davila-Villa, interim curator of Latin American art at the Blanton.

Funding for the exhibition is provided by the Alcoa Foundation.

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture At Midcentury

February 22 – May 17, 2009

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture At Midcentury takes a look at the broad cultural zeitgeist of “cool” that influenced the visual, graphic, and decorative arts, furniture, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The exhibition, organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, includes a jazz lounge; a media bar with film, animation, and television programming; a period art gallery of hard-edge abstract paintings; selections of art, architectural, and documentary photography; and an interactive timeline that highlights examples of California, national, and international culture and history in the 1950s. Birth of the Cool examines the dynamic community of artists who overlapped and interacted in Southern California at midcentury—Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Charles and Ray Eames, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Helen Lundeberg, and others who played a germinal role in the development of this iconic style of high modernism.

Presentation at the Blanton is generously funded, in part, by Melba and Ted Whatley. This exhibition is organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and is curated by Elizabeth Armstrong, deputy director of public programs and chief curator. Major support for Birth of the Cool is provided by Brent R. Harris, The Segerstrom Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Significant support is provided by Bente and Gerald Buck, Twyla and Chuck Martin, Jayne and Mark Murrel, Pam and Jim Muzzy, Barbara and Victor Klein, and Victoria and Gilbert E. LeVasseur Jr. Additional support is provided by Toni and Steven Berlinger and Patricia and Max Ellis.

Additional support is provided by the following organizations:

Francisco Matto: The Modern and the Mythic

June 21 – September 20, 2009

Francisco Matto: The Modern and the Mythic is the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States of this Latin American pioneer of modernist abstraction. The most significant student of El Taller Torres-García (the workshop established by master artist Torres-García), Matto consistently explored the connections between modern abstraction and the Pre-Columbian traditions of the ancient Americas. Over his lifetime, he built an extraordinary collection of Pre-Columbian art, and the abstract geometrical patterns of Nazca ceramics, Maya weavings, and Mapuche silver provided inspiration for Matto's lifelong project to create spiritual and timeless art.

The exhibition will explore five decades of the artist's work including landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, abstractions, and sculptural totems produced from the 1940s to the 1990s.

WorkSpace: Marcelo Pombo

October 4, 2008 – February 22, 2009

Marcelo Pombo is one of the key figures to emerge from the 1990s art scene in Argentina, and was part of the movement know as Arte Light, which was formed by a group of artists associated with the Centro Cultural Rojas. His paintings make use of industrial paint and sparkling polishes to depict fantasy worlds that combine graphic design, comic culture, geometric abstraction, and surrealist influences. For this installation, he presents six new large-scale paintings, all commissioned by the Blanton.

Workspace: Marcelo Pombo is generously supported by members of the Blanton Contemporary Salon.

WorkSpace: Lisi Raskin

March 6 – June 21, 2009

Brooklyn-based artist Lisi Raskin presents Armada, a series of new sculptures based on the forms she found at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), a storage facility for military airplanes and aerospace crafts located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona. Raskin visited the site while traveling to nuclear testing sites across the United States for the project Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station. Working with zones of power like military defense systems, Raskin investigates a culture of anxiety stemming from the Cold War and resonating with our current cultural and political climate. Born in Miami, Florida in 1974, Raskin received her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 2003. She has since exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Glasgow, Milan and Stockholm.

WorkSpace: Lisi Raskin is generously supported by members of the Blanton Contemporary Salon.

Modern and Contemporary Prints and Drawings

Alternate Worlds: The Visionary Artist in Texas
October 18, 2008 – March 8, 2009

August 27, 2008 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Johnny Swearingen (1908–1993), one of Texas most inspired outsider artists. To celebrate, the Blanton will present Alternate Worlds: The Visionary Artist in Texas, an exhibition of paintings, objects and works on paper from the Blanton's collection by Swearingen and fellow Texas artists Eddie Arning, John Banks, Hector Alonzo Benevides, Carl Dixon, Peter Drgac, Mark Cole Greene and Ike Morgan. Together these artists offer unique interpretations of our everyday lives.