Events
Museum Exhibits
Gifts and Prayers: The Romanovs and thir Subjects
September 28, 2019 - March 8, 2020
El Paso Museum of History
Appearing for the first time in the American Southwest, Gifts and Prayers displays a collection of objects from the Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, Georgia) including rare historical artifacts and sacred art from across centuries of the imperial family’s rule (CE 1613-1917). Diamond-encrusted swords, intricate military medals, gilded statuettes, ornate icons, and Fabergé-produced objects will adorn the museum, engaging the public in the lavish splendor of the Romanov era. Assembled by a single private collector, the collection has been virtually unknown for decades and has rarely been seen.
More Information: http://history.elpasotexas.gov/
Powerhouse of the Southwest: 120 Years of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce
October 11, 2019 - March 15, 2020
El Paso Museum of Hitory
Powerhouse of the Southwest: 120 Years of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce is part of EPMH’s exhibition series Wall of Giants, a multi-year project that has highlighted influential organizations within the El Paso region. The latest EPMH exhibit will focus on major milestones in the El Paso Chamber of Commerce’s history like its founding in 1900 and the Chamber’s role in establishing the star on the mountain. The exhibit will also draw attention to the Chamber’s role in local and national history, like the meeting between American President William Howard Taft and Mexican President Porfirio Diaz in 1909 that took place inside the Chamber.
More Information: http://history.elpasotexas.gov/
Ideas Unwrapped
February 17, 2020 - March 29, 2020
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
Pasos Urbanos: A Photographc Narrative of Borderlands Downtown Culture
November 15, 2019 - April 12, 2020
El Paso Musuem of History
Pasos Urbanos is composed of selected images from local photographers over the age of 18 currently residing within 150 miles of Downtown El Paso, including Ciudad Juarez. Earlier in August, EPMH put out a call for photography asking applicants to capture the vibrant culture and new developments that make Downtown an exciting, dynamic space. The binational component is meant to strengthen the relationship between the two sister cities, celebrating a shared past, present, and future.
Close to 500 images were submitted epitomizing downtown culture. Of the 98 photographers who submitted their work, 38 will have their images featured in Pasos Urbanos with 53 photographs chosen. The photographs were selected by a panel of community art administrators and two notable photographers from El Paso and Juarez.
More Information: http://history.elpasotexas.gov/
Leo Villareal: Early Light
September 27, 2019 - April 16, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
Raised on both sides of the El Paso/Juárez border in the 1970s, artist Leo Villareal (b. 1967) is now known internationally for activating spaces with LED light. Recently, he gained acclaim for large-scale, site-specific, public endeavors: In 2013 Villareal inaugurated The Bay Lights, a now-permanent artwork of 25,000 LEDs illuminating a light pattern along a nearly two-mile expanse of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and in 2008 he “lit” an underground walkway at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Villareal’s first museum exhibition in his hometown examines his early work. Complementing his light “mural” Sky, 2010, installed in El Paso’s federal courthouse, the exhibition features two large-scale sculptures on loan from the Chaney Collection of Houston, TX. Lightscape, 2002, is a ten-foot “screen” programmed to bathe surrounding space and people in a sequence of changing hues. Here Comes the Sun, 2004, is from Villareal’s most-recognized series of wall-bound sculptures, taking the form of a spiral made of LEDs. Leo Villareal: Early Light elucidates the early practice of one of today’s best-known contemporary artists.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/leo-villareal-early-light
2020 UTEP Department of Art Biennial Faculty Exhibition
January 30, 2020 - April 17, 2020
The Rubin Center for the Visual Arts
The Rubin Center for the Visual Arts is proud to showcase recent artwork by the distinguished faculty of the UTEP Department of Art in the 2020 UTEP Department of Art Biennial Faculty Exhibition. The exhibition, which takes place every two years, features members of the Department of Art and a wide range of artistic media including ceramics, metals, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, graphic design and more. The organization of this year’s exhibition includes participation by students in the Department of Art. Graphic design student Sara Isasi designed the invitation and publicity for the exhibit; art history students Karen Lizbeth Chavez, Jorge Hernandez, and Sarah Ostrowidzki contributed original texts under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Art History, Dr. Melissa Warak. The exhibition will be complemented by a series of panel discussions, lectures and studio demonstrations by our faculty in their areas of expertise.
More Information: https://www.utep.edu/rubin/exhibitions/current/2020-faculty-exhibition.html
The El Paso Museum of Art: 60 Years of Collecting
September 27, 2019 - May 10, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
It has been sixty years since the founding of the El Paso Museum of Art, and two decades since the museum moved into its downtown building. Now, for the first time, EPMA presents an exhibition about its history. Through artworks representing significant moments for the El Paso Museum of Art, 60 Years of Collecting shares stories of a museum that has grown through the generosity of families and individuals in the region. Highlights of the exhibition include paintings, sculptures, and prints from across EPMA’s significant holdings, and accounts by people key to the museum’s success. 60 Years of Collecting reflects the history of the El Paso Museum of Art, and of El Paso.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/the-el-paso-museum-of-art-60-years-of-collecting
The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art
April 10, 2020 - July 5, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
This exhibition features over fifty works of contemporary art that intersect with the world’s most popular sport: fútbol, or soccer. The exhibition introduces fans of the Mesoamerican-rooted sport to contemporary art while bringing art-lovers to “the beautiful game,” as it is known by many. Originally presented at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, this exhibition features a range of contemporary art—from video to photography, from painting to sculpture—by more than thirty of the best-known artists of recent decades, including Taryn Simon, Melanie Smith, Hank Willis Thomas, Andy Warhol, and Kehinde Wiley, who was commissioned by Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for Former President Barack Obama’s portrait. Together the contemporary artworks in The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art suggest that soccer is timeless and universal, and able to build bridges across borders.
The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami and is curated by Director Franklin Sirmans with Assistant Curator Jennifer Inacio.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/the-world-s-game-futbol-and-contemporary-art
Cercle et Carré and the International Spirit of Abstract Art
May 8, 2020 - August 2, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
In Paris at the end of the 1920s, more than eighty artists from the Americas, Europe, and Russia formed one of the earliest groups on the continent dedicated to abstract art. The group, which included prominent abstractionists Sonia Delaunay and Wassily Kandinsky, published a journal and mounted a seminal exhibition in 1930, before disbanding shortly thereafter. Cercle et Carré and the International Spirit of Abstract Art tells the story of the group. Pairing rarely seen drawings, paintings, and prints from the exhibition with earlier and later works, Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) illuminates the international legacy of abstract art.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/cercle-et-carre-and-the-international-spirit-of-abstract-art
Tiny Tunnels, Big Connections: Ant Relationships Shape the World
February 13, 2020 - August 8, 2020
Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens
The Centennial Museum and Chihuahuan Desert Gardens in partnership with the University of Texas at El Paso’s Biodiversity Collections is proud to present “Tiny Tunnels, Big Connections”, an exhibition about ants and their unique interactions with plants and animals across various ecosystems of the world. Featuring specimens from the Biodiversity Collections’ massive 230,000 specimen collection of ants, this exhibit offers a rare peek into the hidden research collections of UTEP and the diversity of ants as farmers, warriors and relationship experts. Images, augmented reality and 3D prints throughout the exhibit allow visitors to get up close and personal with these tiny ecosystem engineers.
More Information: https://www.utep.edu/centennial-museum/museum/current-exhibits.html
Rachel Rose: Lake Valley
January 24, 2020 - August 16, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
This exhibition features a video and sound installation by Rachel Rose, one of the best-known artists working with moving images in America today. Lake Valley, 2016, is an animated piece that explores a day in the life of a young girl and her pet, using children’s book illustrations and noises to form a family’s world that is at once unique and every day. This family-friendly exhibition includes an area with books and activities for all ages.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/rachel-rose-lake-valley
From the Edge of Center: The Chacoan Outliers
January 25, 2020 - September 5, 2020
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
The Chacoan Culture flourished between AD 860-1150 and was originally centered at Chaco Canyon in Northwestern New Mexico. The Chacoans built immense great houses and great kivas capable of hosting large groups of peoples for ceremonies and other public activities.
More Information: https://archaeology.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/changing-exhibits
Photographing White Sands: Brett Weston in the 1940s
April 24, 2020 - September 27, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
Brett Weston (1911-1993), distinguished himself in mid-century America as a black-and-white photographer, especially of the natural world. This exhibition presents an extraordinary group of images he shot in the 1940s, in and around White Sands, New Mexico. The photographs are signature Weston, depicting a landscape made elegant and strange, a sea of shape and line.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/photographing-white-sands-brett-weston-in-the-1940s
Luces y Sombras: Images of Mexico
July 31, 2020 - November 1, 2020
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.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/mexican-and-american-photography-from-the-bank-of-america-collection
Clandestino: A Project by Animales de Poder
October 16, 2020 - February 14, 2021
El Paso Museum of Art
This exhibition features a new project by Juárez-based collective Animales de Poder. Comprised of related artworks made in 2018 and 2019, the exhibition includes altered photographs and paintings of vehicles modified for urban narco warfare, sculptures fabricated with neon lights and bulletproof glass, a sonic installation produced from covert broadcast signals, and objects that speak to the history of contraband along the Juárez/El Paso border. Informed as much by research as surveillance, the artworks on view gesture toward Animales de Poder’s idea of “narcofuturism,” suggesting a current of the clandestine in Juárez extending from subterranean smuggling and fraternal organizations to, more recently, illicit nightlife and underground violence. With Clandestino, Animales de Poder evokes a past, present, and future of Juárez, and, more broadly, the effects on people of the physical, legal, and psychological barriers that emerge around national boundaries.
Part of the El Paso Museum of Art’s ongoing series examining the border through art, Clandestino: A Project by Animales de Poder is a follow-up to the 5th Transborder Biennial exhibition, from which Juárez-based Animales de Poder was selected for a solo presentation at the El Paso Museum of Art. The Transborder Biennial is a decade-long bi-national collaboration between the El Paso Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez. In 2018, the fifth edition featured artworks by thirty-two border-based artists and collectives living along the two-thousand mile border between the United States and Mexico. As a companion project, in 2018 EPMA organized a bi-national convening that brought together over one-hundred artists, academics, journalists, and art-lovers from across the country and the community to consider the next Transborder Biennial in 2020, and the future of arts programming on the border.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/clandestino-a-project-by-animales-de-poder
