Exhibition Artist
Over the past three decades, Haegue Yang has developed a prolific and hybrid body of work that envelops folk traditions into the canon of modern and contemporary sculpture-making. Informed by in-depth exploration into vernacular techniques and related customs and rituals, and her continual movement through and within disparate cultures, Yang's works subvert modernist ideas of sculpture through their materiality and references to the undervalued histories of non-Western culture.
Author and critic Michael Brenson offers new insight into sculptor David Smith, an artist he describes as "ferociously resistant to the notion of singular identity." Smith, a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism, did more than any other sculptor of his era to bring the plastic arts to the forefront of the American scene. So groundbreaking and prolific were his contributions to American art that by the time Smith was just forty years old, Clement Greenberg was already calling him “the greatest sculptor this country has produced.”
Michael Brenson’s David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor is the first biography of this epochal figure. It follows Smith from his upbringing in the Midwest, to his heady early years in Manhattan, to his decision to establish a permanent studio in Bolton Landing in upstate New York, where he would create many of his most significant works—among them the Cubis, Tanktotems, and Zigs. It explores his at times tempestuous personal life, marked by marriages, divorces, and fallings-out as well as by deep friendships with fellow artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell. His wife Jean Freas described him as “salty and bombastic, jumbo and featherlight, thin-skinned and Mack Truck. And many more things.” This enormous, contradictory vitality was true of his work as well. He was a bricoleur, a master welder, a painter, a photographer, and a writer, and he entranced critics and attracted admirers wherever he showed his work. With this book, Brenson has contextualized Smith for a new generation and confirmed his singular place in the history of American art.
An Interview with Mary Poole Driver By: Molly Sydnor
In conjunction with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s major exhibition Hugh Hayden: Homecoming, Assistant Manager of Visitor Experiences Mary Poole-Driver led us through the exhibition while exploring her own hyperlocal perspective on the artwork.
Studio Visit with Jas Mardis by Emma Ahmad and Molly Sydnor
In anticipation for his artist workshop, which functions in dialogue with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s major exhibition Hugh Hayden: Homecoming, we sat down with multidisciplinary artist, writer, and storyteller, Jas Mardis, to discuss connecting the community of the Dallas-Fort Worth community and its culture to art making.
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Reflections on Samara Golden
In Golden’s work, memory and emotion summon spaces that no longer exist or that never really existed except in our wounded hearts or collapsed together in our recollections. Everyday spaces fold over each other: a luxurious den teetering off a cliff, a party of humans composed with gratitude from those who make labor possible. Golden’s mirrors summon lost spirits and tease out the pockmarked scars we carry from the lives and experiences we’ve led, not all of them on our faces. The mirrors and mirrored surfaces tell us with their infinities that there is always more to see.
A Conversation with Hugh Hayden
Dallas natives and New York-based artist Arthur Peña and Hugh Hayden discuss plants, assimilation, deadlines, and Hayden's upcoming show at the Nasher.
By Douglas Davis
Few topics are as current and divisive in this state and country than that of illegal immigration. However, for the migrants who attain entry to the United States, the catastrophic circumstances and journeys that led them to this country leave lasting scars on the psyche. Artist Guadalupe Maravilla understands these traumas. As an unaccompanied 8-year-old, he was smuggled from warring El Salvador through Central America and Mexico before crossing the Tijuana border into the United States. Decades later, his phantasmagorical sculpture Mariposa Relámpago pays tribute to the deceptive tradecraft of the coyote to deliver participants to a sound therapy session.
The Haas Brothers on Craft, Vintage Beads and Austin in the 90’s by: Emma Ahmad and Molly Sydnor
Before their major exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center opened, Nikolai and Simon Haas, known as the Haas Brothers, took the time to talk to us about the artwork and ideas behind their exhibition, Moonlight. The artist duo discussed their artisan background and reminisced about their childhood growing up in Austin, Texas, and how it continues to inspire their work today.
For nearly 15 years, Los Angeles-based artist Samara Golden has been creating installations that deploy architecture and mirrors to create disquieting and disorienting environments, often populated by individuals, or traces of their presence, that have in the past spoken to experiences of violence and its aftermath, disparities of class, or illness and recovery. Her often mind-bogglingly complex installations can range from seemingly chaotic to quietly seething. Golden populates them with handmade domestic forms and textures using such materials as plastics, epoxy, and spray foam to construct a setting both familiar and ill-at-ease in its artificiality.
Working in the tradition of wood carving and carpentry, New York-based artist Hugh Hayden builds sculptures and installations that explore the idea of the “American Dream.” Church pews, a dinner table and chairs, or a football helmet—signifiers of faith, family, and athletics—become surreal and somewhat sinister subjects in the hands of Hayden, who frequently carves thorns and branches into surfaces of things that would normally come into contact with the human body, implying potential harm, or at least discomfort, should they be engaged with.
By Betsy Lewis and Photos By Phallon Wright
Reschedule your meetings. Cancel your plans. Lie to your family, if that’s what it takes. Today, you are visiting the home of Chuck & George.
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Arp, Surrealism, and Plaster by Lewis Kachur
The word “surrealism” was coined by the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire in response to the surprising juxtapositions of the ballet Parade at its premiere in 1917. Soon after, in the early 1920s, French writer André Breton adopted the term for the group of writers experimenting with free association. He gave a formal, dictionary definition of Surrealism in his manifesto of 1924: “Psychic automatism in its pure state. ... Dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”
French Sculpture: An American Passion
Director of the French Sculpture Census, Laure de Margerie, introduces her recently published book, French Sculpture: An American Passion. De Margerie unfolds the story of how French sculptures in a great variety of genres and styles came to the United States and uncovers the politicians, collectors, dealers, decorators, curators, and professors who were instrumental in this trade. De Margerie examines how the presence of French sculpture follows the close relations between our two nations, and shares the role and meaning of French sculpture in America’s ever-changing society.
The Haas Brothers—fraternal twins Nikolai and Simon Haas—launched a collaborative practice in 2010, creating playful environments populated with fantastical flora and fauna. Imbued with curiosity, humor, and passion for nature, their furniture, objects, and, most recently, large-scale sculptural installations awaken our imaginations and transport us to another fertile, fanciful, and futuristic world.
March 20 - 24, 2024
Experience the artistry of flowers in Fleurs de Villes ARTISTE, a floral exhibition on view in Dallas for the first time at NorthPark Center.
Fleurs de Villes 2024 is on view from March 20 - 24, 2024
with Emily Margarit Mason
In anticipation for her artist workshop, which functions in dialogue with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s major exhibition Sarah Sze, we sat down with Santa Fe-based artist Emily Margarit Mason to talk about process, perspective, and the evolution of her photographic practice.
By Tamara Johnson
Editor’s note: What if a Sarah Sze installation listed every material object? I’ve tried and gave up pages of notes in. However, one item seemed to reappear with special repetition: blue painter’s tape. In her materially dense compositions, you’ll find it attaching pictures to things, things to things, balled up on the ground as if discarded, and in its original rolled form, serving as a prop, a stand, or an object in and of itself. I don’t know what draws Sarah Sze to Blue Tape—I hope to ask her—but I know she’s not the only one stuck on it.
By Taylor Cleveland
An emerging new media artist reflects on the surprising stillness in Sarah Sze’s installations, inspiring his own distortion of contemporary reality.
By Jed Morse
In the spring of 2024, Sarah Sze’s intricate installations will spill across the Nasher. Ahead of that moment, the show’s curator reflects on his evolving impression of the artist’s work, alongside rarely shared images from inside her studio.
Time is a slippery thing. As much as humans have attempted to define it, capture it, measure it in tranches from the infinitesimal to the immense, it still manages to elude simple quantification or understanding. Left to our five senses, our experience of time is even more fallible, seeming to expand and contract in unpredictable ways.
By Dr. Leigh Arnold and Jed Morse
Nasher curators introduce an Alicja Kwade sculpture, both celestial and grounded, showing with works from our permanent collection this fall. By Dr. Leigh Arnold and Jed Morse
By Emma S. Ahmad
A Nasher museum guide contemplates Karla García’s La Línea Imaginari
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By Claire Taggart
The Nasher’s conservator turns to the July sun to rid unwanted organisms from the sculptural materials used in GroundswelI: Women of Land Art
Interviewed in her studio in New York
In anticipation of her installation for ‘Groundswell: Women of Land Art,’ Mary Miss talks with Dr. Leigh Arnold, Associate Curator, Nasher Sculpture Center.
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On Mary Miss | By David Searcy
Beneath the concrete, flirting with the sewage, and out into where a river once was, Mary Miss asks us to imagine a running stream.
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By Adrienne Lichliter-Hines, Iris and Calvin, and Marlo and Faye
In anticipation for the Haas Brothers: Moonlight opening at the Nasher Sculpture Center, two sets of young twins explore the world of the Haas Brothers.
By Ángel Faz
Exploring river animacy, history, and justice through the Akokisa
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Informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, and engineering, Tomas Saraceno’s floating sculptures, community projects, and interactive installations propose new, sustainable ways of inhabiting and sensing the environment. For more than two decades he has explored the possibility of a future airborne existence as part of his ongoing Air-Port-City / Cloud City project – a utopia of flying metropolises made up of habitable, cell-like platforms that migrate and recombine as freely as clouds themselves. Building on the progressive proposals and theories put forth by R. Buckminster Fuller, Gyula Kosice, Yona Friedman and other visionary architects before him, Saraceno develops engaging proposals and models that invite viewers to conceptualize innovative ways of living and interacting with one another, and with their surroundings at large.
Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual. For over five decades, Chicago has remained steadfast in her commitment to the power of art as a vehicle for intellectual transformation and social change, and to women’s right to engage in the highest level of art production. As a result, she has become a symbol for people everywhere—known and respected as an artist, writer, teacher, and humanist whose work and life are models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist, and women’s right to freedom of expression.In 2018, Chicago was named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People," as well as one of the year's "Most Influential Artists," by Artsy.
By Nicole Eisenman
Artist Nicole Eisenman recalls her adolescent foray into figurative sculpture.
Collection Highlight | By Jed Morse
A large group of sculptures and drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Matthew Monahan joins the ranks of figurative works in the Nasher collection.
On Nairy Baghramian | By Miwon Kwon
Art historian and curator Miwon Kwon considers how the work of exhibition artist Nairy Baghramian is a location for sculptural respite.
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By Su Wu
A curator considers her role in presenting works that straddle categories in spaces that challenge exhibition paradigms.
By Evan Moffitt
The host of the new podcast Precious Cargo highlights the historians working to give voice to sculptural artifacts that, like human bodies, have suffered from colonial violence.
By Matthew Ronay
Nasher exhibition artist Matthew Ronay describes how flora, fauna and systems of the human body influence his colorful work.
Artist on Art | Francisco Moreno
A sculpture by Alberto Giacometti inspires a painter’s musing on Mexican memento mori.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Liss LaFleur talks about childbirth, LGBTQ+ visibility, and community building through storytelling. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Christian Cruz talks about fabric sculpture, performance art, and the economy of unpaid labor. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Christian Cruz habla de la escultura en tela, el arte del performance y la economía del trabajo no remunerado. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Dispatch from Arkansas | By Katie Burton
The Nasher’s Social Media Manager Katie Burton heads to Bentonville, Arkansas, to encounter a much-lauded project from the 58th Venice Biennale.
Collection Highlight | By Jed Morse
A dynamic new sculpture—part machine, part musical instrument—brings new whimsy to the Nasher collection.
By Tom Orr as told to Dr. Leigh Arnold
Dallas-based artist Tom Orr recalls the summer he spent as Lynda Benglis’s gallery assistant.
A Gallery Lesson | By Blake Lindsay
Blake Lindsay, the narrator of the Nasher’s audio guide for the blind, uses his sense of sound to tour the galleries and gardens.
Harry Bertoia at the Dallas Public Library | By Marin R. Sullivan
How a sculpture by Harry Bertoia, commissioned for the Dallas Public Library in 1955, challenged convention.
By Brandon Kennedy
Writer Brandon Kennedy winds through a landscape of fractured silence in scores by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, and Dick Higgins.
By Christopher Blay
Artist and curator Christopher Blay draws out the body’s connections to sound in sculpture that remembers Black lives.
By Caitlin Woolsey
Historian Caitlin Woolsey dials into pioneering German sound artist Christina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks as portraits of cities.
Conversation | Olivia Block and Luke Fowler
Artists Olivia Block and Luke Fowler listen in on the sonic life of Harry Bertoia’s sounding sculptures.
Notes from the Lab | By Claire Taggart
The Nasher’s conservator considers the sound-conducting properties of metal alloys in Harry Bertoia’s sculptures.
Excerpt from Nasher Prize Dialogues | Architecture and fabricated history in the work of three artists
Artist historian and Nasher Prize juror Briony Fer speaks with artists Michael Elmgreen, Nina Beier, and Martin Boyce, excerpted from Nasher Prize Dialogues: Sculpture + Architecture, presented in partnership with CHART, Copenhagen, Denmark, on August 31, 2019.
Excerpt from Artist Talk with Tavares Strachan | Moderated by Alysia Nicole Harris
Poet and linguist Alysia Nicole Harris speaks with artist Tavares Strachan about redressing Black histories to create new possibilities.
By Ken Shimamoto
A wild idea to couple renowned musicians with Harry Bertoia’s sounding sculptures leads to a history-making experiment in music and art.
John Chamberlain’s Foam Sculptures | By Gavin Morrison
In the first installment of this ongoing series about the little-known histories of works in the Nasher collection, we see how an exhibition in West Texas helped reemerge an important body of work by John Chamberlain, of which a recent gift from the estate of former Nasher Sculpture Center Board Member William B. Jordan and Robert Brownlee was a part.
The Collage Sculptures of Carol Bove | By Dr. Catherine Craft
Curator Dr. Catherine Craft previews the exhibition Carol Bove: Collage Sculptures at the Nasher.
Notes from the Lab | By Claire Taggart
The Nasher conservator considers the fragile side of a tough sculptural outlier in Nancy Grossman’s Untitled, Head Sculpture (1968).
Carol Bove at the Met | By Lucia Simek
Anticipating the opening of the Nasher Sculpture Center exhibition Carol Bove: Collage Sculpture on October 16, 2021, Nasher Manager of Communications and International Programs, Lucia Simek, sends an enamored dispatch from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Bove’s work, The séances aren’t helping I, currently adorns the façade’s niches.
Roundtable Discussion
Justine Ludwig, executive director of Creative Time; Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. director and chief curator of High Line Art; and Nasher Chief Curator Jed Morse consider public art during a pandemic and time of social and political change.
Family Guide by Colleen Borsh
A handy family guide for intrepid urban (suburban and rural too) explorers.
Words by Su Wu | Photography by Sam Youkilis
In an essay with words and an essay with images, two Americans fall for objects both intimate and strange on the streets of Mexico.
By Grant Johnson
Grant Johnson leads a tour of the outdoor sculptural giants from MIT’s Percent-for-Art Program
By Alysia Harris
In a small Texas town, a local community and an international art and literary residency work together to foster a place for sustainable creative growth.
By Julie Webb (with Bruce Webb)
Julie and Bruce Webb of the beloved Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas, take a road trip to see some extraordinary yard art.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Jer’Lisa Devezin talks about making soft sculpture, developing intention, and representing Black bodies. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Jer’Lisa Devezin habla sobre la escultura suave, el desarrollo de la intención y la representación de los cuerpos Negros. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Melanie Clemmons talks about technology, click farms, and creating connections in a digital space. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Melanie Clemmons habla sobre tecnología, granjas de clics, y la creación de conexiones en un espacio digital. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista
Cameron Schoepp talks about time, control and stability, and the constant shifts within Twist. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Cameron Schoepp habla acerca del tiempo, el control y la estabilidad, y los constantes cambios dentro de Twist. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista
Brian Molanphy talks about working with ceramics, embracing space and the void, and finding inspiration from many sources. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Brian Molanphy habla acerca de trabajar con cerámica, abrazar el espacio y el vacío, y encontrar inspiración en muchas fuentes.? Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Linda Ridgway talks about printmaking, assemblage and collage, and working in self-isolation. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Linda Ridgway habla acerca del grabado, ensamblar y collage, y trabajar en auto-aislamiento. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Dan Lam talks about the playfulness of materials, beauty in art, and immersive sculpture. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Dan Lam habla acerca del juego de los materiales, la belleza en el arte y la escultura inmersiva. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
Connecting Virtually with Vision-Impaired Learners
By Lynda Wilbur, Manager of Tour and Access Programs
As a sculpture museum built around in-person experiences with three-dimensional artworks, finding ways to engage our public during the pandemic has brought about some exciting new approaches in the way we present educational programming. Most museums have – dare I say the word – “pivoted” to virtual versions of tours and workshops, but how do you continue to offer virtual programming to community members with vision impairment?
Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista
Artist Shelby David Meier talks about security, technology and consumption, and the impact of time. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista Shelby David Meier habla sobre la seguridad, la tecnología y el consumo, y el impacto del tiempo. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
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Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista
Artist Vicki Meek talks about the connection between Stony the Road We Trod and other works that memorialize the history of African art and culture. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / La artista Vicki Meek habla sobre la conexión entre Stony the Road We Trod y otras obras que memorializan la historia del arte y la cultura africana. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
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Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista
Artist Nyugen E. Smith talks about the Spirit Carriers series, Bundlehouses, and the movement for social and racial justice. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista Nyugen E. Smith habla sobre la serie Portadores del Espíritu, los Bundlehouses, y el movimiento por la justicia social y racial. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
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Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista
Dallas-born artist Giovanni Valdera talks about Grit/Grind, the role of car culture, and the American dream. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista nacido en Dallas Giovanni Valdera habla sobre Grit/Grind, el papel de la cultura automóvil y el sueño americano. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
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Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista
Fort Worth artist Bernardo Vallarino talks about Pedacitos de Paz, the creative process, and themes of social justice. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista de Fort Worth Bernardo Vallarino habla sobre Pedacitos de Paz, el proceso creativo y temas de justicia social. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.
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Track 1
The sculptures at the Nasher’s entrance reference nature in their materials and themes, inviting visitors to continue into the garden, which architect Renzo Piano described as “the museum without a roof.”
Track 2
Curator and scholar William B. Jordan organized the first museum exhibition of Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s sculpture collection; sculptures by John Chamberlain, David McManaway, and Joan Miró are part of a bequest from Jordan and his husband, Robert Dean Brownlee.
Track 3
This installation examines the legacies of Minimal art through the Nashers' support in the 1970s of artists including Siah Armajani, Martin Puryear, and Christopher Wilmarth, as well as the recent acquisition of a sculpture by Judy Chicago.
Track 4
Nature's example provided a powerful array of possibilities for artists working in the aftermath of Minimalism, even though the results may bear little resemblance to their source of inspiration.
Track 5
Taking its title from lyrics to “Never Catch Me,” a song by Flying Lotus, featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar, this installation brings together a video work by lauren woods with sculptures by Joel Shapiro and Manuel Neri to reflect upon how we interpret images of historical events and human actions.
Track 6
Subject of the Nasher Sculpture Center’s 2015 traveling retrospective Melvin Edwards: Five Decades, the artist Melvin Edwards recently made a generous gift of four sculptures and two drawings presenting a spectrum of the artist’s concerns, methods of working, materials, and themes.
Track 7
How do artists think about sculpture when it may not be feasible, or even desirable, to execute three-dimensional objects in lasting materials? Scrims have been installed in this gallery to block light, making possible the presentation of a greater range of objects.
Track 8
The Latin phrase, meaning “And in Arcadia [am] I,” implies that even in Arcadia—an idyllic, bountiful land of ancient legend—death is still present. The works in this installation consider other aspects of Mediterranean culture and its heritage beyond the more familiar values of classicism.
Track 9
At a time when the formation and sustenance of our connections with others have become more crucial than ever, Love and Delight offers a selection of works, collected by the Nashers between 1967 and 1986, that trace unexpected links between artworks through the human bonds shared among artists, collectors, dealers, families, friends, spouses, lovers, and admirers. On view through September 10, 2021.
Track 10
A selection of posters from the 1980s and 1990s by the anonymous collective targets museums, galleries, curators, writers, and artists seen as either responsible for or complicit in the exclusion of women and non-white artists from mainstream exhibitions and publications. On view through September 10, 2021.
with text by artist Magali Reus
and Nasher Curator Catherine Craft
In her second major US show, Dutch-born, London-based artist Magali Reus presents an installation that examines the relationships between people and objects through the distortion of common images.
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The Egyptian Pavilion and the Venice Biennale
Drawings by William Powhida; essay by Paddy Johnson
This paired essay and drawing story examines controversies at the Venice Biennale and the Egyptian Pavilion that highlight issues of inaccurate representation, lack of transparency, and the undermining of suffering.
Queer Figurations in the Sculpture of Elmgreen & Dragset by David J. Getsy
David J. Getsy writes about the queer attitudes that infuse Elmgreen & Dragset's sculptural practice and how their exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center highlights a queer stance toward the universality of sculpture.
by Jeremy Strick
Barry X Ball reimagines and transforms historical artworks with the help of 3D-printing and stone-cutting technology. Jeremy Strick writes on the artist's materials and processes and introduces his January 2020 exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center.
By Eve Hill-Agnus
Artists and partners Trey Burns and Tamara Johnson co-founded Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, an outdoor space for emerging and mid-career artists to exhibit their works on a temporary basis. Eve Hill-Agnus writes about the couple's foundations and how the idea for the park originated, as well as the future of the space.
by Arthur Peña
Artist Arthur Peña speaks with Nicole Eisenman about her work Sketch for a Fountain, a recent acquisition to the Nasher Collection, made possible through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists and the Green Family Collection, and on view in the Nasher Garden through March 2020.
Organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center, Sterling Ruby: Sculpture is the first museum survey of Ruby’s work in the medium featuring nearly thirty sculptures ranging from the intimate to the monumental. The exhibition will be on view at the Nasher February 2 – April 21, 2019, and will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue featuring a new essay, “Sterling Ruby and the Transcendent Life of Objects,” by Nasher Chief Curator, and curator of the exhibition, Jed Morse. Parts of his catalogue essay have been excerpted and adapted here.
by Walburga Krupp
The sudden death in 1943 of Arp’s wife, the artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp, shattered a relationship that began with their first acquaintance in Zurich in 1915 and had developed in multiple ways during the French years (1926-1942), when it had become even closer and stronger, both artistically and personally. Arp’s lament in a letter to Taeuber-Arp’s sister—“Art doubtless bound us together, but it also robbed us of a great deal”1—makes art the core of their partnership. In that he stylized it as a higher power, he was able to think of Taeuber-Arp and himself as its acolytes, who willingly followed its dictates. For him, after her death, it was an elementary strategy for coming to terms with his loss. Art continued to be the defining constant of his life, and Taeuber-Arp would always remain present in his work.2
by Catherine Craft, Ph.D.
In March 2016, I traveled to Paris to participate in a conference devoted to the sculpture of Pablo Picasso held at the Muse´e Picasso. It took place during the museum’s acclaimed exhibition of Picasso’s three-dimensional work co-organized with the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Raymond and Patsy Nasher collection includes seven sculptures by Picasso, four of which played important roles in the recent wave of interest in this aspect of the artist’s work.
by Stephanie Madewell
The bell pull at Kettle’s Yard is the first clue to the place: a hefty rope with a thick knot at the end that suspends a weathered wooden disc, like a giant bead on a string. It’s unclear if the wooden object was made or found, but it is clear it was chosen. The tour guide will ask someone to volunteer to ring the bell. Pulling it, a melodious gong sounds, and then there’s the tap-tap of quick footsteps as someone comes to open the door.
With a new sound, Orpheus Unsung delivers an old, timeless truth
By Catherine Womack
For millennia, Orpheus has channeled the power of music through his lyre and his voice, taming the underworld and conquering death itself. Now, thanks to composer and electric guitarist Steven Mackey’s wild imagination and talent, the ancient mythical figure has a new melodic weapon: a custom Tom Anderson electric guitar, deployed in a dynamic work called Orpheus Unsung. At the Nasher this October, the piece will be performed in the second half of the evening’s program, preceded by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s more sparse, but no less dramatic, Galgenlieder (1996).
Excerpt from Nasher Prize Dialogues in London, 2015
On October 11, 2016 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Nasher hosted its first Nasher Prize Dialogue, a panel discussion in association with the Henry Moore Institute called “Why Sculpture Now?” which explored the position of sculpture within art practice today. The conversation was broadcast live around the world on Periscope. “Why Sculpture Now?” featured panelists Okwui Enwezor, Director of the Haus Der Kunst, Munich and Nasher Prize juror; artist and Nasher Prize juror Phyllida Barlow; artists Michael Dean and Eva Rothschild; and Nasher Sculpture Center Chief Curator Jed Morse. The panel was moderated by Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies at the Henry Moore Institute.
Excerpt from Nasher Prize Dialogues in Dallas, 2018
On March 6, 2017 the Nasher hosted one of its ongoing Nasher Prize Dialogues series, titled Sculpture + History. Taking place in Dallas, a city marked profoundly by the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and racial inequality, Nasher Prize Dialogues: Sculpture + History considered the complex ways in which sculpture tackles the past. Panelists included artists Alfredo Jaar, Jill Magid, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and lauren woods. The event was moderated by national art critic for Artnet News, Ben Davis, at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Excerpts from this discussion are included below.
Nasher Prize Dialogues: Excerpt from Mexico City 2017
On March 16, the Nasher Sculpture Center presented a talk in partnership with Museo Jumex in Mexico City called The Public Place of Sculpture. The talk considered socially-engaged sculpture in various modes, from social practice outright to objects which employ themes of monument and document and included artists Sanford Biggers (USA), Amalia Pica (Argentina), Damian Ortega (Mexico), and Pedro Reyes (Mexico) and was moderated by Nasher Prize juror and Curator of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, Pablo León de la Barra. The discussion centered on the historical role sculpture has played in public spaces and the dynamic and evolving ways it is currently presented, especially in light of the global political climate. Each artist presented a brief talk on their work which addresses these themes.
by Leigh Arnold
In the second installment of The Nasher’s series of essays highlighting public sculpture in Dallas, we turn our attention to a work that has been on view in downtown Dallas for more than 25 years. In a shady plaza across from the Omni Hotel at the intersection of Young and Market streets, Linnea Glatt’s large-scale Cor-Ten steel cone, titled Harrow, rotates around a sand-covered circular track, completing one revolution every 24 hours.
Curator Catherine Craft, Ph. D. shares insights on the daily life of Jean Arp from her travels to the archives of artist in Berlin.
An Abstact Realist
Constructivism, an artistic movement born during the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution, embraced abstraction as a means to represent intangible attributes of the universe at large. Amid social and political upheaval, Russian artists like Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner interpreted abstraction as the highest form of creative expression, a bridge to a more genuine reality based on scientific aspiration and spiritual transcendence. Pevsner, in particular, sought to employ a formal language that examined the visual relationship between positive and negative space, as well as movement and time.
Reference, Relationships and Appropriation in Contemporary Sculptural Practice
The following excerpt is from a panel discussion presented in partnership with The Common Guild and Glasgow International 2018 on May 2, 2018 at the Trades Hall of Glasgow as part of the Nasher Prize Dialogues series. Speakers included artists Christine Borland, Sam Durant, Mark Leckey, and Director of The Common Guild, Katrina Brown.
Ragnar Kjartansson, Theaster Gates, and Markús Þór Andrésson in conversation
Artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Theaster Gates discuss the role that performance plays in their respective practices in a Nasher Prize Dialogues talk in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Julie Baumgardner talks with leading voices in the burgeoning, international alternative art fair scene.
In April, during Dallas Art Fair weekend, the Nasher will present a 360 Speaker Series panel discussion: Going Rogue: Alternative Art Fairs. The talk will explore how pop-ups, gallery weekends, and alternative art fairs are innovating the market and offering collectors new ways to discover and engage with artists. At a time when established fairs abound, we consider events that disrupt, enhance, or even become the industry standard. Here for The Nasher, seasoned culture writer Julie Baumgardner chats with some of the leading voices in the alternative art fair scene.
Conversation with Piero Golia and Edwin Chan
Nasher Assistant Curator, Leigh Arnold, spoke with Chan and Golia about Chalet Dallas and how they will adapt it to its new, vastly different environs in Renzo Piano’s Nasher gallery. What follows is a condensed version of their conversation, which has been edited for flow.
The Nasher’s Communication Director Lucia Simek caught up with Diana recently and chatted about this most recent work, as well as what’s up next for the artist.
Kate Yoland & Mai-Thu Perret
British artist and recent UTD CentralTrak resident, Kate Yoland, interviewed Mai-Thu Perret for the website Art This Week when Sightings: Mai-Thu Perret opened in March. The two artists had a fascinating conversation that ranged from Perret’s notions of utopia and the conflicts in the Middle East that inspired the work in the show, to the ideas behind the two performances she will stage here at the Nasher in June.
An Essay by Curator Catherine Craft
The 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate Pierre Huyghe has profoundly expanded the parameters of sculpture through artworks encompassing a variety of materials and disciplines, bringing cinema, music, and dance into contact with science and philosophy and incorporating time-based elements as diverse as microclimates, ice, rituals, parades, robotics, computer programs, games, dogs, bees, or microorganisms.
by Colleen Borsh / Manager of School and Family Programs / Nasher Sculpture Center
On October 17, 2015, the Nasher hosted 40 high school and college students from schools around North Texas to be part of an interactive learning experience in Chalet Dallas. Students were invited to read about the project, then meet in the space to discuss with other students and create art with artists. We asked four participants to share their take on the day.
by Jed Morse / Chief Curator / Nasher Sculpture Center
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection On the Road
This fall, one of the most extraordinary works in the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Pablo Picasso’s Flowers in a Vase, will travel to New York to be featured in a landmark exhibition of the artist’s sculptures at The Museum of Modern Art.
by Catherine Craft / Associate Curator / Nasher Sculpture Center
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection Highlight
The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection is fortunate to number among its holdings seven sculptures by Pablo Picasso, several of which will be on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center this fall.
by Melisa Durkee / Collections Registrar / Nasher Sculpture Center
As a Collections Registrar, I am seldom able to form relationships with the pieces I care for in the same manner as a curator, artist, or patron. The stories that I learn about an individual artwork are typically not revealed to the public, and a relationship forms through a particular level of intimacy.
by Catherine Craft / Associate Curator / Nasher Sculpture Center
Between 2003 and 2007, the sculptor Giuseppe Penone created Il Giardino delle Sculture Fluide (The Garden of Fluid Sculptures) for La Venaria Reale near Turin, Italy. Born in nearby Garessio in 1947, Penone is widely regarded as one of Italy’s leading contemporary artists.