Summer 2008
Free Admission
All events are open to the public and are held at The Menil Collection, 1515 Sul Ross, unless otherwise indicated by an asterisk.
Seating is limited. Programs subject to change; Call 713-525-9400 for current information.
June 1
3:00 p.m.
THE ARTIST'S EYE
Matthew Sontheimer
Gallery Talk on Hedda Sterne and Saul Steinberg
Born in 1969 in New Orleans, Matthew Sontheimer received a BFA from Stephen F. Austin University and an MFA from Montana State University, Bozeman. His work has been seen in recent solo gallery exhibitions in Houston, New York, and Dallas, and in shows at UCLA's Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; it can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Sontheimer currently lives and works in Denton, Texas.
The Artist's Eye series is generously underwritten by Charles Butt.
June 21
7:30 p.m.
Richmond Hall*
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Keiji Haino
Solo Acoustic Performance
Co-presented with Nameless Sound.
Ben Ratliff, writing in Artforum, calls Japanese vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Keiji Haino “a supernally cool . . . unearthly visionary wizard. Haino's art is based on his obsessive solitude, and consequently his solo performances are revealing. Stay with him, and he will move you.” Haino's performances are his first in the Southwest and the only American stops on this tour..
July 6
3:00 p.m.
THE ARTIST'S EYE
Duncan Ganley
Gallery Talk
Born in England, Duncan Ganley received a BA and MFA from the Edinburgh College of Art. He was a 2000-2001 Core Fellow at the Glassell School of Art, Houston, where he twice received the Eliza Randall Prize. Ganley was also awarded a Scottish Arts Council Grant and an Artist Residency at the Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland. His videos and photographs have been widely exhibited in solo and group shows in Texas and Britain. He lives and works in Houston.
July 12
11:00 a.m.
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston*
1:30 p.m.
The Menil Collection
GALLERY TALK & BOOKSIGNING
Dario Robleto
“On 'The Old, Weird America' and 'NeoHooDoo'”
San Antonio artist Dario Robleto's consecutive tours of two Houston museum exhibitions in which he currently has work starts at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH)'s “The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art.” At noon, box lunches will be available at CAMH, but they must be pre-ordered (visit www.camh.org. or phone 713-284-8257). Robleto resumes the gallery talks at The Menil Collection, discussing his work in “NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith.” The program concludes with a booksigning and refreshments on the Menil Bookstore deck. Tours are free. Transportation is not provided. Lunches and Menil refreshments must be purchased.
August 3
3:00 p.m.
THE ARTIST'S EYE
Rosane Volchan O'Conor
Gallery Talk on Marepe (Brazilian artist exhibiting in “NeoHooDoo”)
Born in Rio de Janeiro to Russian descendants, Rosane Volchan O'Conor studied music at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Brussels and art at the Auderghem Academy. Working in Houston, she is developing a series of abstract monoprints on paper and gauze, installation lightboxes, and wire sculptures. Volchan O'Conor has exhibited her work in galleries and public spaces in Houston, New York, New Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro.
August 23
6:30 p.m.
GALLERY TALK & FILM SCREENING
Peter Mowris
“Outlandish and Otherworldly: A Foray into Imaginary Spaces”
Peter Mowris, University of Texas Research Fellow-in-Residence at The Menil Collection, will lead a gallery tour that uses work in the exhibition “Imaginary Spaces” to consider concepts of space in twentieth-century art. The talk is followed by the film program described below.
August 23
8:00 p.m.
Outdoors at the east end of the museum*
“Space in Early Twentieth-Century Cinema”
Co-presented with Aurora Picture Show.
Following his gallery tour of “Imaginary Spaces,” Peter Mowris will introduce a selection of early twentieth-century film shorts-directed by artists like Fernand Léger, René Clair, and Hans Richter -that experimented with the abstract depiction of space in the cinema of
that period.
September 7
3:00 p.m.
THE ARTIST'S EYE
Al Souza
Gallery Talk
Al Souza has been Professor of Painting at the University of Houston since 1992. His work- represented nationally and internationally in corporate, individual, and museum collections-has been widely shown in museum, gallery, and one-person exhibitions. His many awards, honors, and residencies include two NEA Visual Art Fellowships and grants from the Ucross and Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundations. Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Al Souza has lived and worked in Texas since 1970.
September 13
6:00 p.m.
POETRY READING & BOOKSIGNING
Quincy Troupe
“NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith”
Poet, performer, biographer, and California's first poet laureate, Quincy Troupe is professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. His seventeen books include Miles: The Autobiography (for which he won the American Book Award) and eight volumes of poetry; Troupe contributed the sweeping poem “An Art of Lost Faith” to the NeoHooDoo catalogue. His reading and conversation with Franklin Sirmans in The Menil Collection foyer will be followed by a book signing on the Menil Bookstore's deck.
September 15-November 3, 2008 (no class September 29)
7:00-8:30 p.m.
THE MENIL COLLECTION; UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
The Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies at Rice University is offering a course that provides an intimate look at many aspects of the museum's collections led by museum curators. The course is co-sponsored by the Menil Collection.
For details, fees, or more information, visit:
The Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies
September 23
7:30 p.m.
LECTURE
Constantine Petridis
“Art and Power in the Central African Savannah”
Dr. Constantine Petridis, Curator of African art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, organized this exhibition that draws on the cultures of four sub-Saharan African peoples. He discusses the show's sixty resonant examples of carved wooden objects known as power figures, commonly in the shape of humans or animals.
The second biannual Menil/Rice Lecture Series again offers four talks on a common theme, two at each institution, during the course of one academic year. For this year's series-called “Museums and the Medical Humanities: The Arts of Transformation”-The Menil Collection has invited art historian Robert Farris Thompson to talk in the fall 2008 and artist Richard Tuttle to speak here in the spring 2009.
September 20
7:30 p.m.
MENIL/RICE LECTURE
Robert Farris Thompson
“Three Arrows from the Mountain: Calabar to Cuba, Unbreakable Transmissions in the Art History of the World”
Since 1958, Yale University art historian Robert Farris Thompson has devoted himself to studying the art history of the Afro-Atlantic world. Thompson is the author of, among other works, Black Gods and Kings and African Art in Motion. His articles have been widely anthologized; he has designed and organized major exhibitions of African and Afro-American art. His most recent book, Tango: The Art History of Love, explores the African base of that classical Argentine dance form.
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