Events
Museum Exhibits
Sections: New Cities, Future Ruins at the Border
January 24, 2019 - April 6, 2019
Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso
New Cities, Future Ruins (NCFR) is a four-year curatorial initiative inviting artists, designers, and thinkers to re-imagine and engage the extreme urbanism of America’s Western Sun Belt. Fast-growing symbols of opportunity and entrepreneurialism, the region’s cities are sprawling agglomerations in delicate ecosystems, marked by resource overuse, dramatic demographic change, and political struggle that particularize and illuminate global crises of rapid urbanization. Suburban in texture, they are 21st-century spaces that resist creative and political strategies inherited from the industrial city. Bringing critical and innovative practices from around the world to bear on this urban landscape, NCFR is designed to foster visionary thought and artistic experimentation at these urgent sites.
More Information: http://rubin.utep.edu/index.php/current1/140
Convergence: New Contemporary Painting from Thinkspace, LA
January 24, 2019 - April 6, 2019
Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso
This exhibition features a series of paintings by emerging and established artists associated with the New Contemporary Art movement – a return to realism and representation in painting with an embrace of popular and counter-culture with themes that range from the fantastic to the mundane. The exhibition is curated in collaboration with LA-based Thinkspace gallery. Established in November of 2005, Thinkspace exists as a catalyst for the ever-expanding new contemporary art movement that is exploding forth from the streets and art schools the world over.
More Information: http://rubin.utep.edu/index.php/current1/141
Julie Speed: East of the Sun and West of the Moon
November 16, 2018 - April 7, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
Julie Speed has been working as an artist in Texas since 1978, and residing in Marfa since 2006. Her colorful, detailed, and evocative work possesses affinity with the figurative Surrealism of René Magritte, yet suggests scenarios that are simultaneously more personal and more open-ended. This exhibition will feature Speed’s vivid production from the last five years, exploring themes such as her mining of Western and Eastern sources to create her own meanings, her combination of structured and spontaneous processes, and her intention to create narratives and worlds that ignite the viewer’s imagination.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/julie-speed-east-of-the-sun-and-west-of-the-moon-12993cf9-c1dd-44da-adc2-64fbcedfc9f4
A Piece of Our Mind: Posters By Joe Scorsone and Alice Drueding
January 24, 2019 - April 12, 2019
Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso
A Piece of Our Mind is a retrospective of graphic artists Joe Scorsone and Alice Drueding (Scorsone/Drueding) who have have been designing posters together since 1986. In the context of graphic design, posters within the last century have served as an autonomous medium whose power of communication has proven its profound impact on society. This exhibition showcases 47 posters that are provocative and contemplative works contributing to a larger global conversation about hunger, the environment, immigration and human rights. Scorsone and Drueding utilize the accessibility of the poster and the power of visual literacy, irony and humor as a vehicle to contribute to a critical discourse in a deeply divided time, both socially and politically. The widespread impact of the wit and profundity of these works on the viewers lingers long after they are experienced, and it also teaches us about the enduring influence of visual culture throughout changing times.
More Information: http://rubin.utep.edu/index.php/current1/142
Rations, Rights, and Rivets: Experiencing World War II in El Paso
September 15, 2018 - April 13, 2019
Centennial Museum and Gardens
World War II was a defining point in history that saw the transformation of the world, the United States, and El Paso. El Pasoans experienced WWII, both here and abroad, with frustration and patriotism. The war offered opportunities for some, yet stifled the potential of others.
Women entered the workforce in greater numbers, families adopted rationing, and men went off to fight in both Europe and the Pacific. UTEP was also affected by the war, as more women enrolled as students and the research objectives of professors changed to help the war effort. This exhibit examines El Paso’s complex relationship with the Second World War.
More Information: https://www.utep.edu/centennial-museum/museum/exhibits.html
Astronomy and the Mesoamerican Cosmos
January 5, 2019 - April 20, 2019
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
Like the ancient peoples of the Old World, the inhabitants of the New World placed a high importance on the movement of the heavens throughout the year. In time, these groups developed astronomical systems that are distinct from those that modern Western Society find familiar. Astronomy and the Mesoamerican Cosmos is a look at the cosmos, constellations and mythology from a Mesoamerican perspective. This multimedia exhibit will feature the work and research of Fernando Rodriguez, artist and student of Mesoamerican Cosmology.
More Information: https://archaeology.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/changing-exhibits
Where the World met the Border: El Paso's First Ward
October 30, 2018 - April 27, 2019
Centennial Museum and Gardens
“Where the World Met the Border,” tells the stories of a place, El Paso’s 1st Ward. This is the story of El Paso’s first neighborhood: a fronterizo commercial center, where immigrants from all over the world made their homes. It is a place where newcomers intermarried into powerful families and where working-class people built railroads and industries. Together, the people of the First Ward transformed this desert oasis into a cultural capital.
This exhibits provides a window into the lives of people from all over the world—Mexico, Ireland, Syria, Italy, and China— who came to the First Ward to better their lives and make their homes.
More Information: https://www.utep.edu/centennial-museum/museum/exhibits.html
Power and Piety: Spanish Colonial Art
February 8, 2019 - May 5, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
“The empire on which the sun never sets”—a phrase coined by Spanish royalty and in reference to their own monarchy—was an apt description for the Spanish Empire, which boasted a three-hundred-year period of colonial rule in North, Central, and South America. It was during this time, from the 16th through the 19th century, that Spanish colonizers of the Americas came to be among the world’s wealthiest people and, through the introduction of Catholicism, came to fundamentally alter the religious landscape of the Americas. Power and Piety illuminates the overlap and tension between social power and religion in the Americas through nearly sixty extravagant works of religious art commissioned for cathedrals and homes.
Monumental oil paintings, luxury chairs with elaborate carved and pierced foliage patterns, and exquisitely crafted silver lamps and candelabras—all on view in the exhibition—were commissioned for cathedrals to emphasize the Church’s grandeur, overwhelm the senses, and inspire devotion. Similarly, Spanish colonists embellished and lavishly decorated their own homes, often to showcase their power and piety. The wealthiest of homes flaunted imported ivory sculptures with gilded wooden bases, and sumptuous decorative altars with hand-carved figurines. Power and Piety presents these works and more, contextualizing this period of opulent artistic production within daily life and religious practices of the Spanish colonies.
The exhibition is drawn from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and is co-organized by the Museum of Biblical Art, New York and Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/power-and-piety-spanish-colonial-art
Saints and Sacred Stories: Devotional Objects from New Spain
February 8, 2019 - May 5, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
From paintings and sculptures to personal altars and retablos, devotional objects permeated everyday life in New Spain, or present-day Mexico, from the 16th through 19th centuries. These objects were instructional in nature, used by the Catholic Church to teach Christianity to Spanish settlers, and also to convert the indigenous populations of the Americas. Taken almost entirely from EPMA’s collection and complemented by a significant loan from the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, Saints and Sacred Stories speaks to the extraordinary range of EPMA’s collection of Mexican art and illuminates the instructional nature of devotional objects, contextualizing them within daily social life of New Spain.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/saints-and-sacred-stories-devotional-objects-from-new-spain
The Salado Enigma: The Melding of Southwest Cultures
January 5, 2019 - June 1, 2019
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
The appearance of the Salado and their beautiful Redware Ploychromes in the Southwest has been the subject of much research and debate since the earliest days of archaeological investigation in the region. This exhibit will explore the Salado people, their possible origins, lifeways, and disappearance from the Salt and Gila River Basins in the Western New Mexico and Eastern Arizona Highlands. In addition, the exhibition will feature beautiful examples of Salado Polychromes both from the Museum’s own collection as well as objects loaned from other institutions in the region.
More Information: https://archaeology.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/changing-exhibits
Ancient Borderland: The Jornada Mogollon
April 27, 2019 - July 13, 2019
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
The people known by archaeologists as the Jornada Mogollon inhabited the Borderlands since Archaic times. Although there are few remains of this culture that are generally accessible to the general public, these people lived in several pueblos throughout the Hueco Basin, the area where the City of El Paso and Fort Bliss currently stand. This mini exhibition will complement the Rock Art of the Jornada Mogollon exhibit by presenting general information about these enigmatic people as well as showcasing a number of artifacts attributed to them.
More Information: https://archaeology.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/changing-exhibits
Rock Art of the Jornada Mogollon
April 27, 2019 - July 13, 2019
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
The Southern part of New Mexico, West Texas and North-Central Mexico is known by archaeologists as the Jornada Mogollon Region. This region is rich in prehistoric rock art left behind by the ancient inhabitants of the region. This exhibition will showcase petroglyphs and pictographs from iconic sites such as Hueco Tanks, Three Rivers and Otero Mesa, as well as lesser known treasure troves from both sides of the international border through the camera lenses of rock art experts, students and amateur enthusiasts alike.
More Information: https://archaeology.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/changing-exhibits
Antonio Castro
April 19, 2019 - August 7, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
Born in 1941 in Zacatecas, Mexico, painter Antonio Castro has lived and worked for most his life in the El Paso/Juárez borderland. Combining previous work with newer creations, this exhibition explores Castro’s figurative art, characterized by religious and mythological imagery combined with autobiographical elements, personal symbols, and commentaries on life and culture.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/antonio-castro
Joy and Suffering: Mexican Retablos from the EPMA Collection
March 8, 2019 - August 25, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
Isolated from major city centers, inhabitants of 19th century rural Mexico looked to untrained artists to craft devotional Christian images for their homes. These artists utilized readily available materials and created modest, yet distinctive works of art by blending traditional Christian imagery with folk and pagan beliefs. EPMA, committed to collecting, interpreting, and presenting Mexican art, has amassed the second-largest museum collection in the United States of what are now called retablos, or small devotional paintings on tin and copper.
In March 2019, EPMA’s retablos collection will undergo an entirely reimagined installation, offering highlights representative of the breadth and depth of EPMA’s holdings, including the display of ex-votos, or works commissioned to commemorate miracles, as well as bultos, or carved wooden sculptures. The installation will examine images of the Virgin Mary in her many folk and formal manifestations, from the well-known Virgin de Guadalupe to the lesser-known Our Lady of Solitude. When considered together, EPMA’s retablos offer a framework for understanding the daily joys and sufferings of life in 19th century Mexico and demonstrate the continued desire, despite a lack of means, for personal devotional imagery.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/joy-and-suffering-mexican-folk-retablos-from-the-permanent-collection
Luces y Sombras: Images of Mexico
May 24, 2019 - September 8, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
Capturing modern Mexico’s culture, architecture, and people through photographs, Luces y Sombras presents over one-hundred works dating from the 1930s to the present day. Portraits of artists such as Frida Kahlo—by acclaimed photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo—and photographs of indigenous cultures by Manuel Carrillo and Graciela Iturbide are presented alongside contemporary photographs exploring the body, identity, and place.
This exhibition is provided by the Bank of America Art in Our Communities program. Educational programming for this exhibition is supported in part by Texas Women for the Arts.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/mexican-and-american-photography-from-the-bank-of-america-collection
From Fire & Earth
February 22, 2019 - September 22, 2019
El Paso Museum of Hisotry
The El Paso Museum of History and El Paso Museum of Archaeology present this exhibition of Casas Grandes ceramics that flourished during their Medio Period (AD 1200 – 1450) in the northwest corner of modern-day Chihuahua, Mexico. Pottery, as perhaps no other medium, reflects the culture of its maker. This exhibition shows the art expressions of the Casas Grandes people who would become prolific potters producing some of the finest pottery of the Pre-Columbian world. The Mata Ortiz pottery that we know today is one of the richest and most diverse pottery producing regions in the world. The exhibit features many examples of Casas Grandes and Mata Ortiz ceramics from the permanent collections of the El Paso Museum of Archaeology and the El Paso Museum of Art. These art pieces show not only the ancient art of pottery, but also the appreciation of Mesoamerican cultures.
More Information: http://history.elpasotexas.gov/
Tom Lea and World War II
August 23, 2019 - December 4, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
From 1941 to 1946, Tom Lea served as a World War II eyewitness artist correspondent for Life magazine, documenting the war from its front lines. The exhibition features works from the renowned World War II art collection at the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, as well as key pieces from EPMA’s significant collection of works by Lea. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by the Tom Lea Institute.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/tom-lea-and-world-war-ii
Ideas Unwrapped
February 17, 2019 - December 31, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
Artists’ ideas come from many places, including culture, history, personal experiences, and beliefs. Ideas Unwrapped presents fourteen artworks from the El Paso Museum of Art’s permanent collection that focus on how ideas transform into art. Filling EPMA’s Mac Rogers Gallery and Ginger Francis Seminar Room, the exhibition features works by internationally known artists Peter Coffin, Vik Muniz, Juan Quezada, Yinka Shonibare, and Kara Walker, as well as El Paso artists Guillermo “Memo” Gutierrez and Zeke Peña.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/ideas-unwrapped
