Events
Museum Exhibits
After Posada: Revolution
October 12, 2018 - January 20, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada (b. 1852 Aguascalientes, d. 1913 Mexico City) died three years into his country’s revolution, yet the thousands of satirical illustrations he left behind suggest he was always fighting injustice. After Posada: Revolution revolves around over one-hundred rarely seen Posada images as they circulated during his lifetime: in broadsheets, or popular single-page newspapers illustrating political commentary, crime stories, ballads about everyday life, and more. Featured are the printmaker’s beloved calaveras (skulls), as well as his fiercest works depicting moments from the Mexican Revolution, such as the exploits of leader Emiliano Zapata. The exhibition, drawn from the collection of Lineaus Hooper Lorette, recontextualizes Posada’s influential work, which is often presented through posthumously-produced stand-alone prints. Here the broadsheets are shown, alongside several seldom-seen small “chap” books and metal-faced wood printing blocks, photographs from the period by Agustín Víctor Casasola, and related archival material, including satirical political magazines Posada may have read. Further, After Posada illuminates the printmaker’s legacy through commissioned works by Andrea Bowers and Cruz Ortiz, contemporary artists who each have distinct relationships to Posada’s practice. While Bowers has produced large-scale prints of political figures in homage to Posada’s, for Ortiz the printmaker has served as a lifelong touchstone for his own activities inside and outside the studio. Both intergenerational and multi-media, After Posada: Revolution enlivens understandings of not only a seminal Mexican artist but also what it means to address social and political injustice in art, past and present.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/jose-guadalupe-posada-and-the-mexican-revolution
Jacob Lawrence’s “Toussaint L’Ouverture” Series: The Haitian Revolution
October 31, 2018 - February 27, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
In 1937 Jacob Lawrence (b. 1917 Atlantic City, d. 2000 Seattle) began a group of tempera panels about the Haitian Revolution. The twenty-year-old graduate of the American Artist School in New York would become well-known for a series of painted panels he commenced three years later, about the Great Migration. But it was in Lawrence’s first series, in which he tells the story of Haiti’s struggle for independence from France through the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture (1742–1803), a slave turned revolutionary leader, that he developed his signature approach. Over forty-one panels, Lawrence described social injustice in narrative sequence, using jagged forms fleshed out with bold patches of color. In the final decades of Lawrence’s life he returned to his first series, distilling the dozens of 11 x 19” painted panels into fifteen prints, each roughly 18 x 28” and accompanied by a descriptive text. This exhibition features all fifteen serigraphs prints, which trace L’Ouverture’s trajectory from birth to commander to capture. This series provides audiences an opportunity to consider Jacob Lawrence’s skill at addressing racial inequality through image.
The exhibition Jacob Lawrence’s “Toussaint L’Ouverture” Series: The Haitian Revolution features works from the Collection of Harriet and Harmon Kelley in San Antonio.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/jacob-lawrence-s-toussaint-l-ouverture-series-the-haitian-revolution
The Ninth Wall of Giants Economy in Action: Centennial Commemoration of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, El Paso Branch
August 31, 2018 - February 28, 2019
El Paso Museum of History
The El Paso Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas supports El Paso’s financial life and gives the region a voice in national economic decision-making. It is part of the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States. El Paso’s importance as an economic center led to the opening of a Federal Reserve branch here in 1918. Today, the El Paso Branch works with banks, businesses and communities in our border region to build a strong economy and a stable financial system. Come visit us to learn more about the Federal Reserve Bank and its impact on our community.
More Information: http://history.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/current-exhibits
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
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
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
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
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
