DALLAS, Texas (October 13, 2020)—The Nasher Sculpture Center announces a new, year-long, two-pronged public art initiative called Nasher Public, which aims to generate access to public art by North Texas artists at the Nasher and throughout the greater Dallas community. The project will launch first at the Nasher in a newly formed gallery, presenting monthly exhibitions over the next year, followed by an ongoing series of off-site exhibitions in partnership with area businesses.
The aim of the project is to positively impact North Texas-based artists and the communities in which they reside, as well as use digital content to give the initiative international reach. The series kicks off at the Nasher beginning October 15 with an exhibition by Fort Worth artist Bernardo Vallarino.
“While this year has presented many challenges for art institutions around the world, it has also created new opportunities for them to work more closely with the local communities of which they are a part,” says Director Jeremy Strick. “Seizing this chance, Nasher Public will continue the mission of the Nasher Sculpture Center—to advance the appreciation of modern and contemporary sculpture—in a way that promises to give a global platform for artists working in and around North Texas. We are so very grateful to the many area businesses that have offered space and support for the off-site arm of this project.”
Nasher Public offers artists occasions to exhibit their work at a time when such opportunities in traditional spaces—museums and art galleries—remain limited, while allowing the public to experience works of art in person when visitation to museums and art spaces is restricted.
The project is steered by the Nasher curatorial team of Chief Curator Jed Morse, Curator Catherine Craft, and Associate Curator Leigh Arnold, with additional support from project advisors, artist Annette Lawrence and Founder of The Power Station, Alden Pinnell.
NASHER PUBLIC AT THE NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
Inspired by the success of the summer 2020 series Nasher Windows, which safely presented art to the public in the Nasher Sculpture Center’s vestibule while the museum was closed due to the pandemic, Nasher Public will comprise a series of monthly exhibitions, each presenting work by emerging and established artists in a newly constituted gallery space formerly occupied by the Nasher Store (which will reopen in late 2021). The new gallery fronts Flora Street and is directly accessible from the Nasher’s entrance foyer. For the duration of the project, the space will be open to the public free of charge during the museum’s public hours, and viewable through the windows during off hours.
For the first installation of Nasher Public in the Nasher Store gallery, Fort Worth artist Bernardo Vallarino will present an iteration of an ongoing project called Pedacitos de Paz, which combines installation with video and addresses the persistence of violence in our society, on view October 15 – November 8. The central element—hundreds of white ribbons looped in the style of advocacy movements and installed as a pile on a table—speaks to the “thoughts and prayers,” sentiments that often follow such atrocities as mass shootings yet remain empty refrains without concrete actions for change. Several times throughout the duration of the exhibition, the artist will sit at the table within the installation to make these ribbons, a performance the public may witness through the exterior windows of the Nasher building. Inspired by Vallarino’s childhood experiences in Colombia, where he was born, and the US, where his family emigrated in the 1990s, Pedacitos de Paz will continue to grow as a body of work as long as the violent issues that spurred it into being persist.
NASHER PUBLIC IN THE COMMUNITY
The second prong of Nasher Public involves the commissioning of artists living in North Texas to produce works for privately-owned but publicly accessible spaces—building windows and entries, lobbies, plazas, and more. These spaces, which will be found across the length and breadth of the city, will serve as sites for works in a range of materials, representing a variety of approaches to public art and sculpture, by a diverse array of artists. Individual works will be on view for varying periods of time, and new commissions will appear regularly throughout the duration of the initiative.
Initial off-site Nasher Public locations are made possible through partnerships with:
Fountain Place, Goddard Investments, AMLI Fountain Place
Good Space, in the Bishop Arts District
Tin District at Trinity Groves
Trammell Crow Center
The artists commissioned for these and additional sites will be announced on an ongoing basis.