Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
210 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

07/23/22-12/04/22

Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby has described her motivations as an artist to “unapologetically center Black life, my experience as a Black woman, and the complexity of Black life—and to infuse every piece I make with love and joy, and this deep love I have for my Black experience.”

This intimate exhibition presents four new works by Akunyili Crosby. Still You Bloom in this Land of No Gardens, the largest work in the show, depicts the artist holding her young child on the outdoor terrace of her home, enveloped by lush plants and vines. She decided to create this painting on paper to counter the relative absence of images of loving Black mothers, to make “the images I wish to see.”

The other three paintings in the exhibition are new works made during the pandemic and exhibited publicly for the first time here at the Blanton. All prominently feature Akunyili Crosby’s distinctive photo-transfer technique that use reproductions culled from a vast image bank of photos of her family in Nigeria; magazine spreads depicting notable Nigerian athletes, models, musicians; and Vlisco clothing catalogues she has amassed “as a way of staying connected to home.”

The teeming presence of plant life, such as plumeria, fruit trees, and rubber trees, is also notable in these recent works. Their abundance suggests the garden as a space of sanctuary, but also the artist’s nascent interest in “cosmopolitan plants” that thrive in her native country of Nigeria and hometown of Los Angeles. While departing from her past focus on domestic interiors, these lush paintings reflect a continued interest in creating hybrid spaces that combine aspects of Nigerian and American life: “When you are an immigrant, no matter where you are, the histories and the cultures of where you grew up are always with you.”

Organized by Veronica Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Blanton Museum of Art

Credit
Njideka Akunyili Crosby is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art.

Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the Kahng Foundation, with additional support provided by Suzanne Deal Booth and Ellen and David Berman.

Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
211 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

08/27/22-11/27/22

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), whose monumental last work, Austin, is in the Blanton’s permanent collection, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His abstract paintings, sculptures, and prints are masterworks in the exploration of line, form, and color. In a lesser-known part of his practice, Kelly made collaged postcards, some of which served as exploratory musings and others as preparation for larger works in other media. From 1949 to 2005, Kelly made just over 400 postcard works. They show a playful, unbounded space of creative freedom for the artist and provide an important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced, and translated the world in his art.

Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards will present a comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages, with 150 works on view. Many postcards reveal specific places where Kelly lived or visited, such as Paris, where Kelly lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and where he often returned, or other areas in New York City—My New Studio (1970), is a picture postcard of downtown Old Chatham, New York, with a stapled arrow pointing to the second-floor windows of his new studio building.

This kind of overt biography and revealing details make the postcard collages unique among Kelly’s works. Flashes of the artist’s playfulness show through, which is less visible in his formally rigorous paintings and sculpture.

Credit
Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards is organized by The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and curated by Ian Berry in collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Studio, and with Jessica Eisenthal, Independent Curator.

The Blanton’s presentation is organized by by Carter E. Foster, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs.

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Jack Shear, and the Friends of the Tang.