In September 1985 this magazine published twenty portraits from Richard Avedon's landmark "In the American West" series. I worked with the celebrated photographer on those shoots, and I documented the making of many memorable images. Here are five great behind-the-scenes stories.
Before cameras were allowed in courtrooms, artist Gary Myrick and his assortment of colored pencils provided Texas television audiences with a vivid look at the state’s high-profile legal proceedings against figures like T. Cullen Davis, Henry Lee Lucas, and Charles Harrelson.
My journey in early Texas art began while I was a student at Southern Methodist University, where I studied Frank Reaugh pastels and met Jerry Bywaters. After 24 years at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, curating exhibitions and traveling the state, I’ve come up with a list of greatest hits.
More than sixty art insiders gave us their list of favorite works of art to see in Texas. So grab your notepad, sketchbook, or iPad and take the ultimate tour of must-see art in Texas.
The associate editor on covering the arts scene in Texas.
A round-up of impressive art exhibitions.
It’s not just another roadside attraction—here’s to a lasting monument of Texas kitsch.
Thanks to his wildly popular bluebonnet paintings, Dallas artist W.A. Slaughter is living on easel street.
How Jerry Jones made Cowboys Stadium into one of the state’s best art galleries. Seriously!
A new collection of Keith Carter’s photographs captures the magical mojo of East Texas.
Photographer Keith Carter’s latest pet project reminds me of big Texas dogs I’ve owned—some clownish, some serious, but every one of them great.
The moment that members of the tejano band David Lee Garza y Los Musicales saw a poster by San Antonian John Dyer, they knew they had found the photographer for their next album. “We wanted more than just a face on a cover,” says bassist Richard Garza, “and his poster
Dominique de Menil—1908-1997
Dominique de Menil loves beautiful things and interesting people. In forty years of collecting them she has changed Houston.
Before chronicling the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference for Texas Monthly, New York illustrator Steve Brodner had never been to Austin—but that actually worked to his advantage. “The idea was to capture the scene as someone who just happened upon it,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to get
A quiltmaker’s musings on yards of fabric, windmill patterns, and the stories behind the quilts.
Even on her one-hundredth birthday, the Texas Capitol looks good in places other building don’t even have places.
The Menil removed "The Art Guys Marry a Plant," a controversial performance piece, from its collection, a move that is stirring up Houston's art scene once again.
How Gary Tinterow, the new director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is convincing the art world that Texas is a must-stop destination for major exhibitions.
As the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination approaches, the eyes of the world will be upon the city, and its cultural leaders are prepared for the attention.
Play about two male penguins raising a chick not allowed in the district's elementary schools.
How Trenton Doyle Hancock is reinventing his work.
Rugged, refined, and heavy as hell.
The man ushering the Kimbell Art Museum into a grand new era: Eric M. Lee.
The only American ever to design scarves for the exclusive French fashion house Hermès is Kermit Oliver, a 69-year-old postal worker from Waco who lives in a strange and beautiful world all his own.
A few pictures of work from Kermit Oliver, the Waco postal worker who moonlights as the famous fashion house's only American designer.
During a recent trip to Houston, I decided to make an early-bird dinner reservation so I could get over to the Rice University campus in time for the evening viewing of James Turrell’s Light Epiphany. Open since June, the site-specific “skyspace” was commissioned to mark the
Wayne Baize, one of America’s most admired cowboy artists, lives amid the soaring mountains and wide-open plains. But his eye is drawn to something else entirely.
Washington, D.C., has Abraham Lincoln, Salt Lake City has Brigham Young, Philadelphia has Rocky Balboa. And now Austin has Willie. The massive bronze sculpture, which was commissioned by a local group called Capital Area Statues, rests downtown at the corner of Willie Nelson Boulevard (formerly Second Street) and Lavaca outside the new studios of Austin City
The most famous of three tapestry versions of Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, has found a new home at the San Antonio Museum of Art after being displayed for nearly 25 years at the United Nations headquarters in New York. There, in 2003, officials controversially covered it with a blue curtain during Secretary
How a rare statue in an unassuming temple made the capital city a place to seriously study Buddhism.
The figures in the Tejano Monument, a 275-ton granite-and-bronze statue unveiled on the Capitol grounds in late March, depict the forging of modern Texas. A Spanish explorer gazes over a new world, his clothing and sword placing him in the early 1500’s, when Alonso Álvarez de Pineda became the first
For a quarter of a century, the Art Guys, Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, have been Houston’s master provocateurs, stirring up discussion with their wacky, thoughtful, and tenaciously marketed “social sculptures.” But have they finally gone too far?
After the island lost more than 35,000 trees to Hurricane Ike, a group of artists carved 35 stumps into beautiful and intricate sculptures.
Gary Panter, famous for designing the bizarre and far-out Pee-wee's Playhouse set, went home to Sulphur Springs for the holidays and showed his mind-bending art in a local gallery alongside his father's traditional oil paintings.
Six members from Women for the Arts share which museums, collections, and venues travelers should not miss.
The yarn bomber shows us some of her personal possessions.
The Gateway to Big Bend offers enough tasty food and worthy art to attract event the hiking-averse.
Karey Patterson Bresenhan and Nancy O’Bryant Puentes have finally completed their life’s work, a massive three-volume history of the quilts of Texas, from 1836 to the present. Here are ten that tell the story of quilting—and our state.
Trey Speegle on paint-by-numbers art.
In this high-desert hub just north of Big Bend National Park, you’ll find Western artwork, Mexican handicrafts, and the unexpected snow cone.
Horton Foote’s bountiful last act.
For more than thirty years, artist Damian Priour has crafted beautiful sculptures made of limestone, metal, wood, bronze, and glass.
Texas City–native Opie Otterstad discusses painting sports figures, being a Texan, and signing bats.
Self-proclaimed artist Jim Huntington spends his days in Coupland toiling away with clay models and giving shape to large pieces of granite.
Location: Dallas and Fort WorthWhat You’ll Need: Sketch pad, beretThe body of downtown Dallas has been prayed over more times than I can count. And while it may take an act of God to finally bring the Trinity River Project to life, there’s no question that when
Childhood memories come to life in the work of Chicana artist Carmen Lomas Garza.
Yes, Virginia, there is some art in Austin.
A new film presents a never-before-seen look at Dominique de Menil in her curatorial element.
A. Van Jordan on writing a poem.
