These significant dates mark the admission of women into the voter rolls, but they do not tell a story of universal victory. None of these dates designate a time after which full enfranchisement was enjoyed by all US citizens. Native American women, many of whom were not citizens in 1920, but rather wards of the government, largely continued to lack access to the vote. So too did many Black women and men, with Jim Crow era laws legally disenfranchising entire populations. Native, Black, LGBTQ, Latinx, and Asian American suffragists make up just a few of the critical but historically overlooked voices in the women’s voting movement.

In honor of all the women and their allies who fought to expand the right to vote to all citizens, we would like to take this historic moment—the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification—to commemorate the success of suffragists past and present, while also acknowledging how much more needs to be done. The work to achieve full enfranchisement is still of vital importance, as is the work to encourage civic participation. Five artworks drawn from the Blanton’s collection present some of the ways in which 20th-century artists have grappled with and celebrated voting in the US.

Women’s Work Is Never Done: Your Vote Has Power by Yolanda M. López

Yolanda M. López, “Women’s Work Is Never Done: Your Vote Has Power,” 1996, color screenprint, 25 1/16 x 24 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas, 2017

As a Chicana artist, Yolanda López places women’s and Latinx voices centerstage. Her work is often political and intersectional, addressing topics like immigration, civil rights, religion, family, and womanhood. In 1978, she designed a political poster with the words “Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?” depicting an Aztec god crumbling immigration policies—a not-so-subtle reminder of who was here first. In her seminal work Guadalupe Tryptic (1978), López reimagines the Virgin de Guadalupe as three generations of women: her grandmother, her mother, and herself.

While working with Self Help Graphics & Art in East Los Angeles, López created Women’s Work Is Never Done: Your Vote Has Power (1996). Using photographic imagery, she demonstrates the power of women’s work in elections worldwide. This print incorporates a pink-hued silkscreen of 1930s suffragettes behind images of Amy Biehl and Melanie Jacobs. Biehl was an American activist who worked to promote South African voter education. In 1993, she was fatally attacked in a violent riot in Cape Town as the country worked to establish nonracial democracy. At Biehl’s memorial service, her roommate Jacobs stated, “I want to say to people that you have killed your own sister.” Made in 1996, right before the U.S. presidential election, this print highlights the complex history of voting rights while also encouraging civic action. López created the print as part of a series of similarly titled works that highlight the importance of voting, especially for women. Other artworks from the series focus on women farmworkers, domestic help, and Chicana mothers.

American Women Unite (Unidad de la Mujer Americana) by Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett, “American Women Unite (Unidad de la Mujer Americana),” 1963, color woodcut, 9 1/2 x 12 3/4 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Purchase through the generosity of the Still Water Foundation, 2020

Elizabeth Catlett was born in Washington, D.C., a granddaughter of formerly enslaved people. Raised by her mother, Catlett studied art and philosophy at Howard University before enrolling in the MFA program at the University of Iowa. There she studied painting, sculpture, and printmaking, receiving particular encouragement from Grant Wood to test the possibilities of various media. Wood, best-known for his ode to Americana and resilience American Gothic (1930), was also an astute chronicler of landscape and everyday life via lithography. Catlett absorbed this training, and then used her own craft to create a lifelong body of work that was socially conscious, and spoke especially to race, gender, and the experiences of American and Mexican women.

After joining the Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People’s Print Workshop, known as TGP) in 1946, Catlett found a permanent home in Mexico City. There she taught at the National School of Fine Arts while continuing to produce art exploring themes of the maternal, of Black Power, and of contemporary activist figures. The print American Women Unite (Unidad de la Mujer Americana) embodies Catlett’s intersectional artistic spirit. Three women’s faces blend one into another, their skin tone varying, but their features shared. Their eyes, like their skin, are differentiated but mutual, as if declaring to the viewer that despite their individual experiences, these women share a united vision. Together, the women’s faces form a unit, a kind of female trinity. Across borders, across races, and across the carefully hewn lines of a woodblock, these female figures become one in their artistic composition, crowned by Nature herself.

League of Women Voters, 1920-1970 by Richard Anuszkiewicz

Richard Josepoh Anuszkiewicz, “League of Women Voters, 1920-1970,” 1970, color screenprint, 23 1/2 x 39 1/2 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Kenneth and Emma-Stina Prescott, 1983

Richard Anuszkiewicz investigated the intense optical effects that result from composing tight, repetitive patterns and juxtaposing vibrant, complementary colors. This interest among artists in the sixties came to be known as Op Art, or, Optical Art. Anuszkiewicz also studied the effect of light on color arranging in calculated, geometric compositions. He highlighted these techniques in his screenprint League of Women Voters: 1920-1970 (1970) created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification. The artist celebrated this historic anniversary using his distinct abstract language. Here, five rows of ten patterned squares—each representing a year in the anniversary—change from bright yellow to crimson red. This evolution allows for each square to exhibit a different visual effect in their unique color relationship.

The 50th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment was a significant commemoration. The National Organization for Women (NOW) organized the Women’s Strike Day March, which took place on August 26, 1970. In over 90 major cities and towns, more than 10,000 women participated in demonstrations and rallies to call for equal employment and educational opportunities as well as accessible childcare. The following year, Congress officially made August 26th Women’s Equality Day.

A Votar [To Vote], from The New Immigration by Léo Limón

Léo Limón, “A Votar [To Vote],” from “The New Immigration,” 1988, etching, 14 15/16 x 22 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas, 2017

In 1988, Sister Karen Boccalero and Dr. Gilberto Cárdenas worked together to organize a portfolio of ten etchings by five artists. The prints, sponsored by Self Help Graphics and co-published by Galería Sin Fronteras, were produced at Taller Romero in Mexico City by the printer Renato Esquivel Romero. According to Cárdenas, this series pays “homage to the perseverance and dignity of the new Latino immigrants as they struggle with the transition into American society.” He has also said that they are a reminder of “the role that immigrants and their children will have in making American society a better community for tomorrow—a community ‘sin fronteras.'” Each of the five selected artists presents a distinctive take on politics, immigration, and the border.

In this etching by Léo Limón, titled A Votar [To Vote], the artist exposes political corruption and voter suppression in both Mexico and the United States. Down the middle of the composition is a barbed wire, a long-standing symbol for the two countries’ border. Droplets, which hang from the threatening barbs, have skull-like faces representing the many lives lost reaching the border. Meanwhile, throngs of people with hands tied behind their backs wait for their turn at the ballot box. Unable to make their own decision, large disembodied hands vote for these faceless individuals. Limón warns of invisible forces influencing elections and devaluing inalienable rights.

Selling Females by the Pound by Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago, “Selling Females by the Pound,” 1991, gouache on Stonehenge paper, 22 x 30 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Judy Chicago; Gift from the Contemporary Austin to the Blanton Museum of Art, 2017

Among the pioneers of feminist art—as practice, and as teaching paradigm—stands Judy Chicago. Her confrontations with misogyny and calcified patriarchal structures in the art world led her, in part, to develop a radically frank form of artmaking in the late 1960s and 1970s. Her most famous installation, The Dinner Party (1974-1979), is a monumental, collaborative piece that celebrates women from across Western history through traditional female ‘crafts’ such as needlepoint and ceramics. Though works like this have at times been dismissed as kitsch (or, too obvious to be high art), Chicago has in fact used the assertive language of icons, text, and medium to tell narratives in forcibly accessible forms. Beyond the historical and contemporary neglect of women and their bodies, Chicago has also worked on projects dealing with such urgent and timeless themes as female fecundity, violent masculinity, mental illness, and the climate crisis.

This drawing is one of twelve studies for Arbeit Mache Frei/Work Makes Who Free? housed at the Blanton. They are part of another long-term work by Chicago, The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (1985-93). The resulting works include a tapestry, twelve pictures, and three stained glass panels. These pieces do not only depict the horrors faced by Jews and other minorities at the hands of the Third Reich. Rather, Chicago weaves in other historical events of genocide and persecution. The scars of American history are especially present, with depictions of Native Americans and Black people being tortured, sold, and otherwise drained of their lifeblood. Scrawled across these raw visual accounts are titles like “Southern Chivalry” and “Work Makes You Dead.”

In the study “Selling Females by the Pound,” a Black woman, breasts exposed, is literally weighed against gold on a scale.  The haunting image recalls stories of enslaved women being forced to nurse white babies even as their own children were sold away, among other atrocities. For instance, Sojourner Truth, after freeing herself and her daughter Sophia, continued to face questions not only of her personhood but of her womanhood. In 1858, while giving an antislavery speech, Truth was heckled by white men who went so far as to demand that Truth reveal her breasts to prove she was not a man. Truth did so, declaring “that it was not to her shame that she uncovered her breast before them, but to their shame.” It is in this same speech that Truth famously said “I am a woman’s rights.” From Truth, to Chicago, to countless other women—including trans, femme, and queer folx—the march towards women’s rights continues.

This blog post was written by Genevra Higginson, Curatorial Assistant, Prints and Drawings, Blanton Museum of Art; and Christian Wurst, Curatorial Assistant, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs.

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I’ve always counted my lucky stars since I landed my dream job as the Manager and Buyer of the Museum Store at the Blanton. An important focus of mine is to be able to support local makers and artisans by carrying their work in the shop. There are so many talented people in Austin and I love that I am able to help share their gifts with visitors from all over the world!

As appreciation for all the joy they have brought me I wanted to highlight a few of my local favorites and encourage everyone to support them by exploring their online stores while the Museum is temporarily closed. Since many of us are spending more time at home these days, here are a few little luxuries that are helping me stay centered.

 The Good Hippie

The Good Hippie is one of our newest lines, which I am currently obsessed with. Emily Butler has created an amazing line of all-natural bath, body and home products and I use the Calm Dwelling Mist daily. If your working from home environment is a juggle between different rooms, use this spray after 5pm to signify the change from “work” to “home “. Check out her entire line here and bring a little calm into your home.   

 Karacotta Ceramics

My “go to” housewarming gift is a sage bundle and abalone smudge tray from Karacotta Ceramics but right now I am enjoying my Descone incense dish.  My dish currently has a home on my kitchen windowsill and is being used as a ring dish since hand-washing is on a whole new level these days. Shop now and receive free shipping on orders over $40.

Benjamin Soap Company

Speaking of handwashing, I love the cold pressed soaps from Benjamin Soap Company!

Founder Jae Benjamin uses all-natural ingredients in her bars including homegrown organic herbs. My personal favorite is the sandalwood vanilla but this soap stack is a great way to try out different scents when you can’t smell them in the store.

Jae Benjamin at work. Photo: Will van Overbeek

Madhu Chocolate

If you’ve been doing a lot of extra walking like me, you might enjoy enjoy a fine quality treat after the exercise! These artisanal chocolates are not only beautiful but delicious too, with a favorite being the Orange Clove Chocolate Bar from Austin chocolatiers Madhu Chocolate. The perfect combination of spice, fruit and cacao! There’s a thoughtful incentive too; if you purchase two bars they’ll donate a third to a local hospital.

Tamalitoz 

We love experimenting with cocktail recipes at home, so add some extra fun by adding cocktail candy rims by Tamalitoz. I really enjoy the Cucumber Extravaganza with a cucumber lime martini cocktail recipe I found online by celebrity chef Bobby Flay. It really hits the spot on a warm day.

While we keep our doors temporarily closed, I want to remind everyone that we miss you! Our community is SO important and  I look forward to seeing familiar and new faces, as well as learning all about what you did during this time. Maybe you’ll even have some tips for my new cross-stitching hobby! I can’t share ALL my favorite vendors, but if you’re curious for more, Katrina O’Day, Smoke & Dagger , Rebekah Vinyard, Lisa Crowder, and Fibrous have incredible jewelry. For wood & resin home décor AND jewelry check out BDJ Craftworks. Little Minnow have beautiful scarves, Latika Body Essentials– are a go-to for bath and body products, and Slow North are scent-sational candles. Also, Davis Studio’s Raku Inner Spirit Rattles are a best seller for the past 6 years in a row! Happy online-shopping, folks!

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We were inspired by the Getty’s Animal Crossing Art Generator project to make our own virtual gallery of Blanton artworks available for our fellow villagers. If you have ever wished you could take the Blanton’s artworks home with you in your pockets, now it’s possible! Scan the QR codes in our gallery below to upload a selection of our favorite paintings to hang in your island home.

Follow the Getty’s step-by-step instructions here to download art into your game, then design your own deserted-island gallery. Create your own shirts, hats, posters, or find more ways to display any of these miniature artworks!

We selected some of our collection favorites to share with you and we hope you create your own galleries to enjoy from home while we are all missing exploring the Blanton’s galleries. Sonya Clark’s portrait of Madam C.J. Walker made of plastic combs is a staff and visitor favorite and we hope you will enjoy this miniature version. The black and white grid of 3,840 combs creates a stunning likeness of America’s first self-made female millionaire. Display her alongside some of our favorite portraits of other famous ladies like George Romney’s Lady Hamilton and Andy Warhol’s screenprint of star and icon Farrah Fawcett.

You can also select some of our knockouts of twentieth century American paintings like Thomas Hart Benton’s Romance and Jerry Bywater’s Oil Field Girls. We also hope you enjoy these abstracted miniatures of mid-century abstract paintings like Joan Mitchell’s Rock Bottom and Dorothy Hood’s Zeus Weeps.

Share your galleries and your best looks with us online by tagging @blantonmuseum and #ACArtGenerator – we can’t wait to see what you create!

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One of the ways we champion our love of the literary is through a continued partnership with Texas’ largest independent bookstore BookPeople in Austin, bringing authors to the museum for Art of the Book to discuss their work and interact with young audiences within our galleries. In celebration of International Children’s Book Day, we asked one of our Museum Educators, Monique O’Neil (Family and Community Programs), to share five of her favorite art-related reads for kids. We’ve also included useful links via BookShop.Org so you can support local and find these books at your local bookstore!

Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Javaka Steptoe

I was one of the lucky people that had the pleasure to hear this book read aloud by the author and illustrator himself, Javaka Steptoe, when he came to the Blanton as part of our collaboration with BookPeople. Through his rich and engaging illustrations painted and collaged onto found wood, you’re immediately drawn into this endearing story that celebrates the life of a young Jean-Michel Basquiat. An inspiring homage to a legendary artist who paved his own “messy” way through his unique style of art.

Idea Jar, by Adam Lehrhaupt

If your kids are a fan of the Exquisite Corpse art activity, or you as a parent are hearing your child say for the hundredth time, “I’m bored!”, then this is your book! Idea Jar brings to life a teacher’s special jar where students keep their story ideas, but eventually they get out, mixing together and creating the wildest of adventures. The Idea Jar is never ending!

Niko Draws a Feeling, by Bob Raczka

As a mother of a child with Autism, Niko Draws a Feeling holds a fond place in my literary heart. Niko’s journey will touch and inspire young readers of all abilities to create and embrace their unique perspectives, while also teaching about friendship and our desire to be understood.

Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood, by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell

When working with our community partners, I always love seeing the smallest of artists create something big! Inspired by a true story, Maybe Something Beautiful splashes color and life onto a young girl’s neighborhood, sharing an empowering story of community engagement and how art can transform people and the places they live. This book is also available in Spanish.

Shh! We Have A Plan, by Chris Haughton

This book gives my family and I the best belly laughs! With nets in hand, four friends embark on a journey into the woods and become determined to capture a beautiful bird they spot resting high up in a tree. Each turn of the page reveals their silly and elaborate plans which become foiled, one after another. You and your kids will find yourselves reading in unison – “Ready one … ready two … ready three… GO!”

Feature image caption: George Charles Miller (1894 – 1965) Printer, Diego Rivera (Guanajuato, Mexico, 1886 – 1957, Mexico City) Primary, La maestra rural [The Rural Teacher], 1932, Lithograph, 40.3 cm x 57.9 cm (15 7/8 in. x 22 13/16 in.), Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1986

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A 2019 study found that 87% of the artists in 18 major U.S. museums are male. Despite this continued imbalance, efforts are being made to transform the identity of the American art institution. Since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have used their interventionist art to protest such inequality. For all of 2020, the centennial of women earning the right to vote in the U.S., the Baltimore Museum of Art announced that it will only purchase works by women. And, beginning in 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NWMA) committed to raising awareness about gender inequality every March during Women’s History Month. Using the hashtag #5WomenArtists, NWMA asks the question: “Can you name five women artists?” At the Blanton, we include the works by a diverse range of women to highlight the importance of female representation and empowerment. Check out our list below of five women artists from our print collection aiming to change the world through their art, including works that challenge views on representation, identity, immigration, and racial justice.

Artist: Barbara Jones-Hogu

Barbara Jones-Hogu, a painter and printmaker, helped found AFRICOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) in Chicago in 1968. The artist collective’s goal was to express the ideals of the Black Power Movement—namely, self-determination, unity, and black pride—via images. To do so, they developed an innovative style that mixed bold colors, flat forms, and rhythmic patterns. The result is an artistic vocabulary celebrating the heroic and beautiful qualities of black lives in America.

Trained across printmaking techniques including woodcut, etching, and lithography, Jones-Hogu gravitated towards screenprints for their ease of production and their ability to take on oil-based, colorful inks. In Nation Time, a dominant figure leads a black ensemble to rise up against the American flag background. Closer looking reveals that the American flag’s stars are Ku Klux Klan members. In this way, the composition acknowledges how racism is deeply embedded in America, while also inspiring hope of overcoming that truth. The Blanton’s impression of this work is printed on gold paper. Gold was a theme in Jones-Hogu’s prints, helping to symbolize the luminosity and inherent value of black lives. As Jones-Hogu explained in a 2011 interview, “In AFRICOBRA, we discussed positive ideas to portray our people. We wanted to make positive images in making statements, in directing and motivating them with particular thoughts, attitudes, and postures that we wanted to portray to the viewers.”

Barbara Jones-Hogu (Chicago, Illinois, 1938 – 2017, Chicago, Illinois), “Nation Time,” 1970, Color screenprint on gold-colored paper, 78.5 x 63.2 cm (30 7/8 x 24 7/8 in.), Purchase through the generosity of Leslie Shaunty and Robert Topp, 2019

Artist: Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu was born in Ethiopia, emigrated with her family to Michigan, studied in Rhode Island and Senegal, and now lives in New York. Add to that itinerant life many artistic residencies around the globe, and it makes sense that Mehretu’s art explores society and culture. To engage with the idea of architecture as a framework for power constructs, Mehretu looks at maps, buildings, and human environments. Her work echoes those sources, and the results help us question how space can shape identity.

Mehretu has a very labor-intensive practice. Both her paintings and her prints involve creating a kind of geography through cumulative layering. After building up the surface of her canvas or paper, Mehretu can scratch away top layers to uncover individual images. In the Blanton’s print, Local Calm, lines scatter across the sheet, along with gashes of color and cloud-like assemblages. The title might be ironic, since its effect is a sense of chaos more than calm. As the Walker Art Center explains, “Mehretu’s art embodies the interconnected and complex character of a world that seems, at times, to be spinning out of control.” That feeling of disorder, or even dystopia, is integral to Mehretu’s work. She invites us to examine how unstable established structures can be, a call especially resonant in today’s political and environmental climates. In 2020, Mehretu had a mid-career retrospective co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Julie Mehretu (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1970 – ), “Local Calm,” 2005, Sugar lift aquatint with color aquatint and spit bite aquatint, and soft and hard-ground etching, 90.2 x 118.8 cm (35 1/2 x 46 3/4 in.), Blanton Museum Purchase, 2007

Artist: Carmen Lomas Garza

Born in Kingsville, Texas, Carmen Lomas Garza grew up in a small community near the Mexico-United States border. Watching her mother paint tablas (picture cards) and helping her grandmother make papel picado (cut, or “bitten,” paper) motivated Garza to become a visual artist. She was further influenced by the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s, which sought to represent the everyday lived experiences of Mexican Americans. Picking up on that ethos, Garza creates semi-autobiographical art ranging from paintings to prints to illustrated children’s books, all with images inspired by her childhood memories.

The Blanton’s print celebrates one such communal moment. In this masterful example of color lithography, family and friends gather at a birthday party. Babies squirm in mothers’ arms, children cast marbles on the periphery, and two elaborate piñatas hang enticingly from a tree—emblems of festivity as well as the legacy of cartonería (the Mexican art of making items from paper). Joy, humor, and a deep sense of connection radiate from each carefully observed detail. Other of Garza’s prints and drawings, as well as her personal papers, are housed in the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin in their Carmen Lomas Garza archive.

Carmen Lomas Garza (Kingsville, Texas, 1948 – ), “Cumpleaños de Lala y Tudi [Lala and Tudi’s Birthday Party],” 1991, Color lithograph, 55.8 x 76.7 cm (21 15/16 x 30 3/16 in.), Transfer from the Guest Artists in Printmaking Program, Art Department, The University of Texas at Austin, 1996

Artist: Natalia Goncharova

A leader of the Russian avant-garde, and a woman who challenged both social and gender conventions, Natalia Goncharova was a revolutionary artist. After spending her childhood in the Tula province of Russia in the 1880s, Goncharova studied for a time at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Because women were not officially awarded diplomas, Goncharova left and continued her training in the studios of other, more progressive painters. By combining European modernism with local folk art—drawing inspiration from traditional Russian sources such as textiles, carved wooden toys, and lubki (popular prints)—Goncharova produced unique art in such a wide range of media that her partner, the painter Mikhail Larionov, and the writer Ilia Zdanevich coined a term for her style: vschestvo (everythingism).

Although Goncharova’s work found acclaim among artistic circles, it also courted controversy. Upon exhibiting some of her paintings of female nudes in Moscow, Goncharova became the first modern artist to be charged with the production of “corrupting imagery” (despite her nudes not being any more revealing than those painted by men). Goncharova also painted religious icons, something that the Russian Orthodox Church had not sanctioned women to do. Further, Goncharova’s serene paintings of Jews challenged the ongoing pogroms carried out by the Tsarist government. Goncharova eventually moved to Paris, not only to work on costume and set designs, but perhaps also to find more artistic freedom. The Blanton’s print is Goncharova’s contribution to one of the Bauhaus print portfolios, which brought together artists who believed in the power of design to reshape modern life. Here, the single frontal torso resembles Russian icons, yet is a representation of a modern woman rather than a religious figure. Knit together with elemental shapes and primary colors, this woman could represent anyone enlightened enough to graft herself onto the bold figure. In this way, the print reflects Goncharova’s artistic ethos: to make art that satisfies not only her aesthetics, but also her conscience.

Natalia Goncharova (Negayevo, Russian, 1881 – 1962, Paris), “Weibliche Halbfigur [Female Torso], from Bauhaus Drucke – Neue Europäische Graphik, 4te Mappe: Italienische Und Russische Künstler [Bauhaus Prints – New European Graphics, 4th Portfolio: Italian and Russian Artists],” circa 1922, Color lithograph, 50 x 33.5 cm (19 11/16 x 13 3/16 in.), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gonzalez, 1989

Artist: María Magdalena Campos-Pons

Women and the ocean are recurring elements in the work of María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Raised on a sugar plantation in Cuba, Campos-Pons has Nigerian, Hispanic, and Chinese heritage. Her Nigerian ancestors were brought to Cuba in the nineteenth century as enslaved people, and the trauma of that history—hers, as well as so many others’—is refracted in Campos-Pons’s multidisciplinary art. Of today’s immigrants and refugees, Campos-Pons has said, “Between Cuba and Miami, bodies float always… What kind of despair are people in when the embark on journeys so improbable?”

In the print Are Those Tears or Pearls, My Beloved One?, a young girl gazes out across a stretch of murky water. The frothiness of wavy whitecaps is depicted by individual bubbles, allowing an effervescence into the scene. We do not see the girl’s face, so the only visible tears (or pearls) are the strands that seem to rain from the sky: white droplets against dark water; black droplets against light sand. The girl has a bag slung over her shoulder, with ever-growing leaves and feathers descending down the shore. Thus, while she is tied to the land and its histories for now, there is hope she might take flight. Indeed, Campos-Pons infuses her work with the weight of the past and the promise of the future. “My credo,” she says, “is that we are more close than apart. To not understand that is an incredible failure of knowledge.”

María Magdalena Campos-Pons (Matanzas, Cuba, 1959 – ), “Are Those Tears of Pearls, My Beloved One?,” 2008, Etching and aquatint, 78.6 x 57 cm (30 15/16 x 22 7/16 in.), Anonymous gift, 2009

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We’re here to help you navigate our abundant arts calendar so you can incorporate it into your busy Austin based to-do schedule and don’t miss a thing! Check out our quick reference list of some spectacular shows coming to the Blanton in 2020.

Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins

Opens January 11, 2020

The renowned American artist Ed Ruscha combines the wry vernacular of his Oklahoman roots with a decades-long collection of drumheads in this new body of work to be featured in our Contemporary Project gallery. Informed by memories of the distinctive slang he grew up hearing in Oklahoma, the phrases featured in Drum Skins consist of double and triple negatives such as “I Ain’t Telling You No Lie” and “I Never Done Nobody No Harm.”

“I grew up with people that spoke this way,” Ruscha explains, “I was very acutely aware of it and amused by it. It seems like you’d run from incorrect English, but I embraced it. I like seeing it and exposing it.” Mark your calendars for a special artist conversation with Ruscha led by our curator Veronica Roberts at the Blanton on May 7, 2020.

Ed Ruscha, “I Don’t Hardly Disbelieve It,” 2018. Acrylic on vellum drumhead, diameter 30 3/4 inches x 1 inch depth. Photo: Paul Ruscha, courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.

The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s

Opens February 16, 2020

Co-organized by the Blanton and Museo de Arte de Lima, The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta premiered at one of Spain’s most respected museums, the Reina Sofia last winter. After traveling to Lima and Mexico City, it will return home to the Blanton in February. Make sure to see this innovative exhibition that explores art and politics in the 1920s in Latin America and beyond.

Installation view of “The Avant-garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s” at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, 2019. Photograph: Joaquín Cortés / Román Lores.

Expanding Abstraction: Pushing the Boundaries of Painting in the Americas, 1958-1980

Opens June 21, 2020

One of the strongest areas of our permanent collection are paintings of the 1960s and 70s from the United States and Latin America. The visual language of this era will be explored in this profound presentation of works, many of which are large scale and never been seen before, providing a narrative on how the artistic process was transformed during these decades.

Celebrate the opening of this exhibition at our B scene: Psychedelic Summer party on June 26, 2020.

(Left) Alice Baber (Charleston, Illinois, 1928 – New York City, 1982), Lavender High, 1968 (left, detail), Oil on canvas, 75 1/2 x 75 1/2 inches, Michener Acquisition Fund, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. (Right) Alejandro Puente (La Plata, Argentina, 1933–Buenos Aires, Argentina 2013) Estructura (3 panels), 1966, Oil on canvas, 74 13/16 x 63 x 78 3/4 inches. Purchase as a gift of Margaret McDermott in honor of Barbara Duncan, and Judy S. and Charles W. Tate, Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin.

Off the Walls: Gifts from Professor John A. Robertson

Opens July 11, 2020

Our collection continues to grow due to the generosity of some extraordinary donors, so we’re celebrating this fact with a show presenting a selection of prints, drawings, collages, and photographs gifted to the Blanton by the late, great scholar and professor John A. Robertson (1943–2017). Featured artists include Michael Ray Charles, Sue Coe, and Glenn Ligon, with a complement to this exhibition in the form of UT Professor Emeritus Bill Lundberg’s pioneering film installation Swimmer (1975) screening in our Film & Video Gallery August 29–December 6, 2020.

Philip Guston, Pile Up, 1980, lithograph, 19 x 29 in., Blanton Museum of Art, Bequest of John A. Robertson, 2018

Diedrick Brackens: darling divined

Opens October 17, 2020

Texas-born Brackens has been causing quite a stir in the art world, having featured in the Hammer Museum‘s 2018 “Made in L.A.” biennial, winning a Studio Museum in Harlem’s $50,000 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize that fall, and entering the Brooklyn Museum collection in 2019. His first institutional solo show at the New Museum, New York, will now travel to Austin, Texas, presenting a stunning installation of intricate wall weavings that speak to the complexities of black and queer identity in the United States. Not to be missed!

Diedrick Brackens, bitter attendance, drown jubilee, 2018, woven cotton and acrylic yarn and silk organza, 72 x 72 in., Hammer Museum. Los Angeles; purchased with funds provided by Beth Rudin DeWoody

Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia

Opens October 11, 2020

Summon some inner calm in time for this exhibition, drawn from the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which presents an international survey of Buddhist art. It begins with objects associated with Buddhism’s origins in India and follows its spread through Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, and East Asia. It will explore the life story of the Buddha, the role of the bodhisattva, Buddhist cosmology, and key concepts that have found their way into popular culture such as dharma, karma, mantra, and nirvana. This impressive display of some 150 rare and beautiful works will delight various audiences.

Buddha Shakyamuni, India, Uttar Pradesh, late 6th century. Copper alloy with traces of paint, 15 1/2 x 6 3/4 x 4 inches, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gift of the Michael J. Connell Foundation (M.70.17)

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Featured image: “Diedrick Brackens: darling divined,” 2019. Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Photograph: Dario Lasagni.

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When I began my tenure as the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Prints and Drawings, and European Paintings at the Blanton this year, I was surprised to discover that these two works that have been attributed to Vasari – the subject of my doctoral dissertation – had never been written about by a previous scholar. Best known for his Lives of the Artists (1550 and 1568), a set of biographies of artists working mostly in Italy from the fourteenth- to sixteenth-centuries, Vasari was also a painter, an architect, and an avid collector. In his Libro de’ Disegni, or Book of Drawings, Vasari assembled drawings by his fellow Renaissance artists, cut and pasted them onto larger sheets of paper, and then drew decorative borders to frame and unify the drawings. Following his death, Vasari’s albums of drawings were broken up by subsequent owners and dispersed; many of the sheets were cut up, and Vasari’s collected drawings were resold. The only full sheet from Vasari’s Libro in the United States is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C; the other full sheets are scattered in various European collections. No scholar to date has been able to definitively reconstruct Vasari’s Libro.

Giorgio Vasari, Decorative Border with the Portrait of Fra Filippo Lippi, from Il Libro de’ Disegni, after 1568, pen and ink, wash, and woodcut on paper mounted on paper, 8 7/8 x 6 7/8 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Suida-Manning Collection, 1999

The two works in the Blanton’s collection feature woodcut prints of Italian Renaissance artists Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507) and Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406-69) that have been meticulously cut from one sheet of paper and pasted onto another sheet. These works contain literal and figurative layers of history and prove the importance of object-based research for the art historian. In digital form, these works appear flat and cohesive, but in reality they are composite pieces of paper. On both the mounts and woodcuts, an artist – possibly Vasari – drew a fictive architectural framework with pen, adding wash and decorative motifs on both pieces of paper to seamlessly incorporate the woodcut portraits into a larger composition. Each work is therefore a blend of printmaking and draftsmanship. When considering the context of Vasari’s collection of drawings, these two Blanton works were likely part of larger sheets from the Libro, which presumably would have once united the woodcut portraits with drawings by Rosselli and Lippi, and which have since been cut up.

Giorgio Vasari, Decorative Border with the Portrait of Cosimo Rosselli, from Il Libro de’ Disegni, after 1568, pen and ink, blue and brown washes, and woodcut on paper mounted on paper, 8 7/8 x 6 7/8 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Suida-Manning Collection, 1999

Of the extant Libro pages, several of them are dedicated to a single artist, with a woodcut portrait of the artist pasted at the top and drawings by that artist below. I have been able to connect the Blanton works to nine Libro sheets that feature a similar woodcut portrait of an artist cut and pasted at the top of the page, surrounded by an inventive ornamental framework drawn in pen and ink that merges the woodcut with the collected drawings below. In their original construction, the portraits of Rosselli and Lippi likely were positioned in a similar fashion.

After I conducted extensive analyses of the technique and paper structure of the Blanton’s two works, including their stamps, collectors’ marks, and visual motifs, it was necessary to compare the Blanton works to others associated with Vasari’s Libro, particularly the ones with woodcut artists’ portraits. Through generous funding from the Mellon Foundation, I was able to visit collections in England and France to analyze other remaining sheets and fragments tied to Vasari’s collection. It was crucial that I see such works in person to examine the layers of pasted paper and overdrawing, as well as the dimensions and precise material qualities of the objects. Through this research I gathered fundamental information, including what was part of the original drawing and what was added later by collectors. Despite advancements in technology, photographs and digital reproductions fail to reveal crucial physical details like where one paper ends and another begins. Fragmentary works like these can be easy to dismiss when removed from their original context, but researching them can reveal substantial information about early collecting practices, Vasari himself, and the value subsequent owners attached to the Libro de’ Disegni. There is still much to discover, but the research I conducted as a curatorial fellow has shed light on the connection between the Blanton’s portraits of Rosselli and Lippi and Vasari’s Libro.

If you would like to see these works for yourself, the Julia Matthews Wilkinson Center for Prints and Drawings at the Blanton Museum of Art is open to the public by appointment through email at prints@blantonmuseum.org. Also be sure to drop by to see our monthly Pop-up Exhibitions that feature the Blanton’s broad collection of works on paper.

This post is authored by Allison Kim, a visiting assistant professor in art history at Skidmore College. She held the Blanton’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Prints and Drawings in the 2018 – 2019 academic year.

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For more than a decade now I have had the opportunity to participate as a museum educator in an emerging national trend of collaboration between medical schools and art museums.  Initial experiments at Yale and Columbia focused on honing observation skills, so relevant to medical diagnosis, through close looking at art.  My own work, developed in partnership with physician-educators affiliated with Harvard and now at UT’s Dell Medical School, has focused on developing empathic communication skills, promoting resilience and work-life balance, cross-disciplinary teamwork, and cultural competency.

Here is a glimpse into a way of working in museums that I believe has real implications for preventing physician burn-out and better patient care:

The group of young physicians had been looking with great interest at an Etruscan sarcophagus from around the 3^rd century, BCE, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  The sculpture shows a reclining married couple in late middle age, softly embracing, covered by a light “sheet”—all carved in stone, together for eternity.

After several minutes of close looking and trying to imagine something of the experience of this couple, with their imperfect bodies and tender gazes, I invited the group of medical interns to reflect on any possible connections to their own clinical work.  There was a brief silence, during which I thought my question might have seemed too far afield.  “I just thought this might resonate, somehow, with your work in the hospital,” I said.

One young man offered, “Well, yes.  Earlier this week, shortly after learning the news that his wife of fifty years is going to die of cancer, a man came rushing out of her room with tears in his eyes.  He ran into me in the hall, and he looked up at me, waiting for me to say the right thing.  I felt so inadequate—I’m only 26—but I was the physician.  I was supposed to know what to say to this man.”

This halting confession caused sympathetic murmurs from surrounding colleagues, nods that said, “we know just how that feels.”  The conversation continued for another twenty minutes, with some words of advice and encouragement from the attending physician in charge of Internal Medicine’s “humanistic curriculum.” 

The art museum environment seems to offer something unique and important to caregivers and medical professionals—something of a respite from the charged hospital environment, with its relentless demands for courage and decisive action, and its high stakes. Removing them from the competition and hierarchy, the art museum can serve as a place for medical professionals to share thoughts and feelings about their work, to build on one another’s ideas in a search for meaning. They can reflect and recharge in this environment, surrounded by beauty and inspired by expressions of human experience from many times and places.

Works of art offer interpretive challenges that resonate with the familiar challenges of diagnosis.  When a group finds difficulty in reaching consensus on a work’s meaning, participants have an opportunity to practice confronting the ambiguity that is inherent to complex medical problems—to learn about their own reflexive tendencies, listen, and consider other strategies.

Claude Vignon, David with the Head of Goliath, circa 1620-1623, oil on canvas, 52 5/8 in. x 38 9/16 in., Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Suida-Manning Collection

Paintings like Claude Vignon’s pensive David with the Head of Goliath or provocative sculptures like Border Crossing by Luis Jiménez stimulate important conversations for medical professionals.  They nourish empathic responses—which we all hope for from our health care providers—and the Jiménez raises important questions about who is able to gain access to quality medical care.

Through displacement, professional and personal reflections can be shared in conversations that are partly about the works of art, and partly about the participants’ own experiences.  By allowing individuals to move in and out of the realm of the intimate, the museum becomes a safe place for a level of introspection and sharing that the hospital actively blocks.

The Blanton is a place for non-linear learning, for exploring values and choices, for making metaphors, and creating connections.  It’s also a great place for inter-professional conversations—we often teach students and professionals from the fields of nursing, social work, pharmacy and medicine.  We have a team of museum educators ready to collaborate on designing experiences with our rich collections that will help develop the kind of health care professionals we need in our community and State.

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Our permanent collection contains the works of many phenomenal women artists and continues to acquire more works thanks to our curatorial team who actively seek to improve gender representation at the museum. We are proud to be one of more than 1,000 cultural institutions from seven continents and 47 countries participating this year. Check out our list below of women artists from our collection selected by members of our team.

Lynne Maphies, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art

Artist: Alison Saar

 
Alison Saar (b. 1956, Los Angeles) was raised in an unusually artistic environment. Her mother is the well-known artist Betye Saar—who she credits with exposing her to the metaphysical and spiritual traditions that underlie much of her work. Her father, Richard Saar, was a ceramicist and art conservator. Saar worked in her father’s conservation studio for eight years, encountering everything from Pre-Columbian and African art‍ to Egyptian mummies. It was through conservation work that she developed her appreciation for a broad range of materials and techniques and a life-long curiosity about other cultures. Saar combines all these influences to make work that addresses issues of race, gender, history, spirituality, and humanity. Her sculptures, installations, and prints are almost exclusively figurative, and quite often focus on the female form.

For the work currently on view at the Blanton, Lost Boys, 2008, Saar revisits a theme found in one of her three-dimensional works of the same title—an installation from 2001 of 13 bronze-cast shoe soles suspended from strips of red fabric nailed into a wall. The title references the Lost Boys of Sudan—the more than 27,000 children displaced or orphaned during the second Sudanese civil war (1983–2005). Ranging in age from 7 to 17, the boys were forced to flee from Sudan to international relief camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, often without shoes. This work is a wonderful example of Saar’s ability to communicate her ideas through form:

“I wanted to make art that told a story, that would engage people. I wanted them to be moved by my work, whether it was specifically what my intentions were or not did not matter. I wanted them to be drawn in and affected by my [work].”

Alison Saar
(b. 1956, Los Angeles, CA)
Lost Boys, 2008
Etching printed in dark brown with red ribbons
75.8 cm x 103.5 cm (29 13/16 in. x 40 3/4 in.)
Purchase as a gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein, 2013

Holly Borham, Assistant Curator, Prints and Drawings

Artist: Clare Leighton

 
The wood engraver Clare Leighton created this snowy scene of Canadian lumberjacks packing up their camp at the end of logging season by carving into a block of hard boxwood with a pointed steel rod. From the deep black bodies of the horses to the curving shadows of the broom, shovel, and chair legs on the snow, Leighton varies the width and depth of her incised lines to render an incredible range of light to dark tones.

Leighton was a master of the wood engraving technique, which was often used for book illustration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to providing illustrations for fifty-one books by such authors as Emily Brontë, Thomas Hardy, and Henry David Thoreau, Leighton authored and illustrated fifteen of her own works. Drawn to rural scenes in her native England and in her adopted home of the United States, Leighton enjoyed commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic. She shared her passion for the medium of wood engraving by writing a manual, Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts (1932), and teaching art at Duke University in the 1940s. The Blanton is fortunate to have 752 of the 789 designs carved by this prolific artist.

Clare Veronica Hope Leighton
(b. London, England, 1898 – d. 1989, Woodbury Connecticut)
Breaking Camp, 1931
Wood engraving.
Gift of the Still Water Foundation, 1987

Christian Wurst, Curatorial Assistant, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs

Artist: Sophie Taeuber-Arp

 
Sophie Taeuber-Arp is widely considered to be one of the earliest pioneers of geometric art. A multi-disciplinary artist working with paint, wood, textiles, and glass, she strove for compositional balance by carefully arranging shapes and colors on flat planes. Her early work shows restraint and sophistication that her older contemporaries took years to develop. Her advantage was a background in textiles, which allowed her to visualize and execute vertical-horizontal compositional structures, similar to the “warp and woof” structure in weaving.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Davos
(b. Switzerland, 1889 – d. Zurich, Switzerland, 1943)
Untitled, 1919
Color screenprint
Gift of Charles and Dorothy Clark

Florencia Bazzano, Assistant Curator, Latin American Art

Artist: Claudia del Río

 
I learned about Argentinean Claudia del Río’s work while researching the Blanton’s collection of Latin American art for our exhibition Words/Matter (on view through May 26, 2019). In the 1990s, Claudia del Río sent us as a gift a piece of Mail Art, which consists of a wonderful envelope addressed to the museum, containing additional artworks, including A Edward D. Wood, Jr. [To Edward D. Wood, Jr.], which is now displayed in the show. For this piece, del Río shot a series of photographs of soap bars and collaged on them figures taken from periodicals. I saw this piece as a complex reflection on women’s work, especially revealing of the ways in which domestic space can be ideologically coded.

I asked del Río why she dedicated this work to such an unlikely American filmmaker. She responded, “In the 1990s, I saw the complete filmography of Ed Wood, and I was amazed. It could have been made in Argentina! We were trained to work with few resources so we made using ‘low technology’ a kind of a style.” In this piece, del Río embraced this approach to creativity by choosing ordinary subjects: the type of laundry soap bars used with washing boards, and figures cut out from the well-known magazines Mecánica Popular and Selecciones del Reader’s Digest. Woven into this work there is a poetic homage to the United States inventiveness and popular culture. “I greatly admired the American dream in my childhood and now I love the US,” affirmed the artist.

Claudia del Rio
(b. 1957, Rosario, Argentina)
A Edward D. Wood, Jr. [To Edward D. Wood, Jr.] (detail), 1995
photographs, collage, paper, stamps
5 1/8 x 10 1/16in.
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of the Artist, 2005

Claire Howard, Assistant Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art

Artist: Mary Corse

 
Mary Corse’s untitled 1969 painting hangs alongside work by Jo Baer, Louise Nevelson, Eleanor Mikus, and Lee Lozano in our women-driven “Minimal Gestures” gallery. The monochromatic white painting is nine feet square and features a shimmering grid rendered in acrylic paint with glass microspheres, better known as the reflective material used in highway dividing lines. “I didn’t want to paint a picture of the experience of light—I wanted the painting to be the light experience itself,” Corse has said of this series, the White Light paintings, which she began in 1968. In-person activation is essential to these works: the paintings’ surfaces appear to change as the viewer moves around them, and they are notoriously difficult to photograph. Glass microspheres aren’t the only material with which Corse has experimented; she built her own kiln to fire large black ceramic slabs for her Black Earth series and studied quantum physics to utilize Tesla coils in a group of light boxes. One of the few women affiliated with the Light and Space Movement—a West Coast strain of Minimalism interested in light and perception—Corse finally received her first solo museum survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a long-term installation at Dia:Beacon in 2018.

Mary Corse
(b. 1945, Berkeley, CA)
Untitled, 1969,
Acrylic with glass microspheres on canvas
108 1/4 in. x 108 11/16 in. (275 cm x 276 cm)
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin
Gift of Mari and James A. Michener, 1979

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