Eight Women: The Performers in “Suzanne Bocanegra: Valley”
July 9, 2021 by Kendra Thornburgh-Mueller
Suzanne Bocanegra: Valley opened at the Blanton on June 27, 2021 and will be on view until September 19, 2021. This immersive video installation presents eight women artists reenacting Judy Garland’s wardrobe test from her doomed casting in the 1967 cult film Valley of the Dolls. Bocanegra selected these women because their creative practices encompass…
Seeing the Obvious: Vito Acconci’s “Wav(er)ing Flag”
March 3, 2021 by Genevra Higginson
Sometimes art can appear, at first glance, rather obvious. Such is the case with Vito Acconci’s Wav(er)ing Flag (1990), a twelve-foot long series of six lithographic prints. Together, the sheets depict the flag of the United States of America, elongated and billowing, with the Pledge of Allegiance inserted as if the flag’s stripes were the ruled…
Conserving Oliver Lee Jackson’s “Untitled (Sharpeville Series)”
December 8, 2020 by Christian Wurst
As you enter the first gallery of Expanding Abstraction: Pushing the Boundaries of Painting in the Americas, 1958–1983 titled “Emphatic Gestures,” the first painting you encounter across the room is the largest work in the show and one of the most striking. One of the newest additions to the museum’s collection and making its debut…
Women’s Suffrage at 100: A Commemoration and Exploration
August 18, 2020 by Genevra Higginson
It is hard to mark exactly when and how to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States. The 19th Amendment, which prohibits the states and federal government from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex, was first passed in the US Senate on June 4, 1919. It took…
