Events
Museum Exhibits
Two Sides of the Border
November 9, 2019 - December 6, 2019
El Paso Museum of Art
This exhibition presents architectural design work—models, drawings, digital renderings—by over one hundred architects, educators, and students from international architecture studios and thirteen universities in the United States and Mexico. The works address territorial economies, migration, housing, creative industry, and local production as they relate to the border. Photographs of the U.S./Mexico border region by Dutch photographer Iwan Baan and commissioned maps by Estonian architect and cartographer Thomas Paturet are interspersed with contributions by faculty from Columbia University, Cornell University, Texas Tech University College of Architecture at El Paso, Universidad Iberoamericana, and Yale University, among others. Two Sides of the Border illuminates cross-cultural dynamics, bringing together the efforts of artists, designers, educators, and students from the border region and across the world.
Two Sides of the Border is the result of an alliance of architecture studios organized by Mexican educator and architect Tatian Bilbao. In El Paso, the exhibition is organized by Ersela Kripa, Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University College of Architecture at El Paso, and is supported by TTU College of Architecture.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/two-sides-of-the-border
Total Collapse: Clay in the Contemporary Past
September 26, 2019 - December 13, 2019
Rubin Center
Total Collapse: Clay in the Contemporary Past presents a group of artists/collaboratives who present diverse and experimental developments in the field of contemporary ceramics.
Organized around ideas exploring the function of the ceramic object as an anthropological devise and early human technology, the exhibit features work in sculpture, performance, and site-specific installation. The exhibition further examines the value of the ceramic object, as an artifact with sociopolitical potential, but also puts into question the role of contemporary mass-produced ceramic objects and their impact on future histories.
In a post-consumer and post-global digital world, the value and impact of the everyday object is actively challenged and in flux. In a historic and anthropological context, everyday ceramic objects have been valued for their potential to withstand time and deterioration and in turn provide information about antiquity. However, in our contemporary reality we are constantly surrounded by ceramic objects, from dinnerware, toilets, tiles, electrical components, and mechanical automotive parts; these mass-produced objects fueled by capitalism can enrich our lives but also challenge our future livelihood.
More Information: https://www.utep.edu/rubin/exhibitions/future/total-collapse.html
Brian Maguire
September 26, 2019 - December 13, 2019
Rubin Center
“Brian Maguire is an artist of singular yet expansive vision: an activist, correspondent and a voice for dispossessed and marginalized individuals often considered dispensable by the rest of society. Since the onset of his professional career four decades ago, Maguire has been an instigator of numerous interactive projects with prisoners, refugees, and survivors; the artist’s practice is inseparable from his commitment to the community with whom he feels in service, navigating an often precarious exchange subject to the scrutiny of the public opinion under which it must operate.”
From the Foreword to Brian Maguire, Published by Fergus McCaffery, New York and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, October 2018.
More Information: https://www.utep.edu/rubin/exhibitions/future/brian-maguire.html
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
XOXO: Love & Forgiveness
November 10, 2019 - December 31, 2019
El Paso Holocaust Museum & Study Center
This is a meaningful and important conversation through a hands-on, interactive exploration of emotions, thoughts, actions, and reactions. Created in 2014 by the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum, XOXO has traveled all over the country and continues to spread the exploration of love and forgiveness. In a world full of negativity, anger, and hate, XOXO emphasizes kindness, empathy, standing up for yourself and others. Only three months ago, El Paso was traumatized by an act of hate-motivated violence that was unprecedented for our community. Through this exhibit, El Paso Holocaust Museum hopes to encourage conversations about coping with loss, fear, anger and to help inspire actions that uplift others. Acts of love and kindness can make a great and lasting impact. Please join us for this empowering and uplifting exhibit.
More Information: https://elpasoholocaustmuseum.org/events/
Tom Lea and World War II
August 23, 2019 - January 5, 2020
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
Illuminate: Artworks by EPMA Teaching Artists
July 17, 2019 - January 5, 2020
El Paso Museum of Art
EPMA’s talented and professional Teaching Artists are the driving force of the Art School. Teaching Artists share their talents and inspire students of all ages and abilities in Art School classes, camps, and workshops. In this exhibition, see the work of Ivan Calderon, Cindy Gutierrez–Krapp, Dina Edens-Perlasca, Phillip John Romero, and Ronnie and Elvira Carrizal-Dukes.
More Information: https://epma.art/art/exhibitions/illuminate-artworks-by-epma-teaching-artists
An Ageless Craft: Historic and Modern Pueblo Pottery
July 8, 2019 - January 11, 2020
El Paso Museum of Archaeology
For hundreds of years the peoples of the Rio Grande Valley and beyond made breathtaking pottery that was used for domestic as well as ceremonial purposes. Through the passage of time, generations of masters have continued to practice their arts, continuing to create stunning pieces that have merged centuries of traditions with modern artistic sensibilities. Although they are geographically close together and share many cultural similarities, each pueblo has developed its own style that is unique to them.
An Ageless Craft will display the work of potters from most of the Rio Grande and Western Pueblos including Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso, the Nampeyo family of First Mesa (Hopi), and Albert Alvidrez of Ysleta del Sur. This is a not to miss opportunity to experience the continuation of age-old pueblo traditions through over two hundred beautiful works of art from the Museum’s permanent collection, El Paso Archaeological Society’s collection, and items on loan from the private collection of Albert Alvidrez. This is the largest exhibition ever undertaken by the Museum to date.
More Information: https://archaeology.elpasotexas.gov/exhibits/changing-exhibits
The El Paso Museum of Art: 60 Years of Collecting
September 27, 2019 - March 8, 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
Leo Villareal: Early Light
September 27, 2019 - April 12, 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
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
Clandestino: A Project by Animales de Poder
April 24, 2020 - August 2, 2020
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
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
