2010 OCTOBER BLOG

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It has been a year since I started my blog and 35 years since I sat on the "steering committee" of the Huntington Museum on the University of Texas campus. This past weekend my husband Charles, our friend McDonald Smith and I returned to the art building to see what has replaced the Huntington, later renamed the Blanton Museum. Pictured from left to right are CHARLES SIKES; JUDITH SIMS, Austin Museum of Art School and Laguna Gloria Site Director; JADE WALKER, director of the new U.T. Visual Arts Center and McDONALD SMITH, professor emeritus of Art History at U.T.

The museum space in the art building, formerly occupied by the Huntington/Blanton, was vacated when the Blanton Museum moved into its new building on M.L.K. Street. The Art Building is located on the corner of San Jacinto Steet across from Royal Memorial Stadium and west across Trinity Street from the Performing Arts Center (Bass Hall). Its museum space was recently converted into the Visual Arts Center (VAC). Jade Walker directs the new experimental laboratory and gallery for art students and faculty and visiting artists at U.T. It opened the last weekend in September with a crowd of 700 supporters at a special event and to the public on Sunday September 26.

When the Blanton Museum moved, a loading dock on the east side of the art building was replaced by an attractive and convenient street level entry and the receiving and storing spaces were free to become part of the exhibition space. Celebrated San Antonio, Texas, architects Lake-Flato created open, alive spaces by moving walls, relocating stairs and by removing the drop ceiling to reveal concrete vaulting. Natural light enters the formerly cocooned museum space through a huge protruding window in the south wall.

It was great fun to experience the changes in the museum we once knew so well. The new space is less sophisticated, less gentrified, and more available for experimentation of all kinds of creative works that defy the older categories of art.

With retired Art Education professor, Al Nichol, we were wondering why Max Brooks, the building's original architect, chose to put a drop ceiling under the more interesting vaulting. I was remembering the pretentious circular staircase that took up a huge corner of the exhibition space. Al told us that when the art building was completed in the early 1960s, he was commissioned by Mrs. Brooks to create a painting on the silk gown she wore to the celebration of the opening.

Watch for another impressive renovation. The new arthouse on Congress Avenue will soon be completed. These are two examples of how the visual arts are making marks on the cultural life of our city. Austin, Texas is renowned for its live music, but dance and theater and the visual arts are not far behind. It is past, but I must mention the thrilling performance of Carmina Burana combining the talents of Ballet Austin, the Austin Symphony Orchestra and the Conspirare singers. WOW this has been a wonderful start to fall, U.T. Football excepted!
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