Presented in partnership with: Trip Participants Doris and Alan Burgess Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell Bruce and Cheryl Kiddoo Wanda Kownacki Ann Marie Mix Evelyn Neely Yvonne and Mike Nevens Alyce and Mike Parsons
Your Hosts San Jose Museum of Art: S. Sayre Batton, deputy director for curatorial affairs Susan Krane, Oshman Executive Director Kristin Bertrand, major gifts officer
Art Horizons International: Leo Costello, art historian Lisa Hahn, president
Hotel St. Regis Houston Hotel 1919 Briar Oaks Lane Houston, Texas, 77027 Phone: 713.840.7600
Houston Weather Forecast (as of 10.31.16)
Wednesday, 11/2 Isolated Thunderstorms 85˚ high/72˚ low, 30% chance of rain, 71% humidity
Thursday, 11/3 Partly Cloudy 86˚ high/69˚ low, 20% chance of rain, 70% humidity
Friday, 11/4 Mostly Sunny 84˚ high/63 ˚ low, 10% chance of rain, 60% humidity
Saturday, 11/5 Mostly Sunny 81˚ high/61˚ low, 0% chance of rain, 42% humidity
Sunday, 11/6 Partly Cloudy 80˚ high/65˚ low, 10% chance of rain, 52% humidity
Day One: Wednesday, November 2, 2016 Dress: Casual
Independent arrival into George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport.
Here in “Bayou City,” as the city is known, Houstonians take their art very seriously. The city boasts a large and exciting collection of public art that includes works by Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Michael Heizer, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, Albert Paley, and Tony Rosenthal.
Airport to hotel transportation: The St. Regis Houston Hotel offers a contracted town car service for airport pickup for $120 that would be billed directly to your hotel room. Alternatively, the average taxi rate is $60 – 75. The commute time from the airport to the St. Regis during the late afternoon is an estimated 45 minutes.
3 PM Check in on your own at the: St. Regis Houston Hotel 1919 Briar Oaks Lane Houston, Texas, 77027 Phone: 713.840.7600
Located between River Oaks and the Uptown Galleria district in Houston, the Hotel St. Regis offers 5-Star luxury and true southern hospitality.
6:30 PM Gather in the hotel lobby to meet study tour leader Leo Costello and Art Horizons International President Lisa Hahn.
We will enjoy a welcome cocktail and hors d’oeuvres reception in the Ambassador Room, located on the Mezzanine floor of the hotel.
Dinner is on your own. A list of suggested restaurants will be provided in the welcome packet, along with the final copy of this itinerary
Day Two: Thursday, November 3, 2016 Dress: Casual Day/Business Casual Evening
6:30 – 9 AM Enjoy breakfast at The Remington Restaurant, located on the hotel lobby level, at your leisure. Vouchers will be provided.
9 AM Gather in the hotel lobby to promptly depart by bus.
9:15 AM Depart for private art collection.
9:30 AM Enjoy a visit to a private art collection. This distinctive private collection features exceptional twentieth-century, contemporary, and tribal masterworks. Gallerist and advisor Robert McClain, who will lead the walkthrough, describes the owners’ collecting vision as intensely personal with powerful, visceral works that strike a primal or expressive chord.
The majority of the collection falls into two sub-themes: figurative sculpture and portraiture with works by Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and Chaim Soutine; and abstract expressionist works by Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, and Jackson Pollock. Also collected are works by living artists such as Berlinde de Bruyckere, Adrian Ghenie, Magdelene Odundo, and Gerhard Richter.
10:45 AM Depart for another private art collection located nearby.
Enjoy a visit to a private art collection in Houston’s River Oak’s neighborhood. These two Houston art patrons and their children live with an extensive contemporary collection that includes paintings, works on paper, photography, and sculpture.
The art leans toward representational work, sometimes conceptual, and usually with an ironic twist. Artists represented include many working in Texas, other important American artists (George Condo, John Currin, Carroll Dunham, Barkley Hendricks, Jim Nutt, David Salle, Laurie Simmons, Philp Taafee, Fred Tomaselli, William Wegman), and artists from Japan (Yasumasa Morimura, Yoshitomo Nara, and Hiroshi Sugimoto), Great Britain (Peter Blake, Julian Opie, Richard Patterson, and Yinka Shonibare), Latin America (Monica Costillo, Luis Gonzales Palma, Liliana Porter, and Vik Muniz), and elsewhere in the world (Wim Delvoye and Stephen Balkenhol).
The pieces in the home range from a 1930s painting by Francis Picabia (temporally the oldest piece in the collection), to mid-century work (among notable others, a 1956 drawing by Larry Rivers and a 1969 John Wesley work on paper), to pieces made in the last year (such as an amusing outdoor sculpture by artist Ray Smith).
12:30 PM Depart by bus for lunch.
12:45 PM Lunch at Canopy Restaurant. Enjoy seasonal fare in a dining room decorated with murals of trees and other eco-chic touches.
2:30 PM Depart for an artist’s studio.
3 PM Enjoy a visit to the studio of Trenton Doyle Hancock. Influenced equally by the history of painting as by the pulp imagery of pop-culture, the Texas-born artist transforms traditionally formal decisions—such as the use of color, language, and pattern—into opportunities to build narrative, develop sub-plots, and convey symbolic meaning. Hancock’s works are suffused with personal mythology presented at an operatic scale. He often reinterprets Biblical stories that he learned as a child from his family and church community. His exuberant and subversive narratives
employ a variety of cultural tropes that range in tone from comic-strip superhero battles to medieval morality plays. He is influenced in style by Hieronymus Bosch, R. Crumb, Henry Darger, Max Ernst, and Philip Guston. Text embedded within the paintings and drawings both drives the narrative and acts as a central visual component. Hancock's resulting installations often sprawl beyond the edges of the canvas and onto surrounding gallery walls.
Meanwhile, in New York…
291 GRAND ST | OCT 21 – NOV 28, 2016
James Cohan is pleased to present Pandemic Pentameter, Trenton Doyle Hancock’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition, presenting a group of large scale paintings produced this year, opens Friday, October 21, and will be on view through November 27 at the gallery’s Lower East Side location. Click here for full press release
For more reading re: Hancock, see Art Ltd Magazine: http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1473465834&archive=&start_fr om=&ucat=28&
4:15 PM Return to the hotel by bus.
4:45 PM Arrival at hotel.
6 PM Depart for Rice University.
6:15 PM Special sunset visit to the James Turrell’s Twilight Epiphany skyspace. Located adjacent to the Shepherd School of Music on the Rice University campus is the Suzanne Deal Booth Centennial Pavilion, site of James Turrell's Twilight Epiphany skyspace. Twilight Epiphany (2012) is acoustically engineered to host musical performances and to act as a laboratory for music school students. Constructed of grass, concrete, stone, and composite steel, the structure is equipped with a LED- light sequence that projects onto the ceiling and through an aperture in the 72-foot
square knife-edge roof just before sunrise and at sunset. Turrell's composition of light complements the natural light present at twilight and transforms the skyspace into a locale for experiencing beauty and reflective interactions with the surrounding campus and the natural world. (Sunset is at 6:34 PM)
7:15 PM Depart for a private art collection by bus.
7:30 PM Visit a collecting couple’s private gallery residence. Buffet dinner to be served at 8:30 PM.
Return to the hotel after dinner.
Day Three: Friday, November 4, 2016 Dress: Casual Day
6:30 – 9:15 AM Enjoy breakfast at The Remington Restaurant, located on the hotel lobby level, at your leisure. Vouchers will be provided.
9:15 AM Gather in the hotel lobby to depart by bus.
9:30 AM We will begin our day with a visit to the non-denominational Rothko Chapel, which houses fourteen canvases by Mark Rothko. Architect Philip Johnson collaborated with Rothko on the design of the chapel.
10 AM After our visit to the Rothko Chapel, we will enjoy a before-hours visit to the Menil Campus, located in Houston’s Museum District. The Menil Campus is anchored by Renzo Piano’s first American building, the Menil Collection.
We will begin with an exclusive tour, led by modern and contemporary curator Toby Kamps, of the Menil’s “Treasure Rooms”—where great works of art are stored when not on view.
To learn the story of the creation of the Treasure Rooms, see this blog from the perspective of Curator Michelle White. http://houston.culturemap.com/news/arts/10-03-11-hidden-treasures- the-menil/#slide=0
11 AM Introduction to the Menil collection by Toby Kamps. The Menil’s permanent collection is one of the most important privately assembled collections of the twentieth century. The museum opened in 1987 to preserve and exhibit the art collection of John and Dominique de Menil. Designed by Renzo Piano, this understated but elegant expanse of gray clapboard features a roof of white louvers, used both in the gallery spaces and on the building’s exterior, to unify the structure. The “leaves” function as a method of controlling light levels and also as a means of returning air flow.
The Menil Collection houses approximately 15,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and rare books. Masterpieces from antiquity; the tribal
cultures of Africa, Oceania, and the American Pacific Northwest; and the major modern and contemporary art movements are particularly well represented. Highlights of the museum include its surrealist holdings, particularly the works of Max Ernst; it is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost collections of its kind.
For more reading about The Menil:
Sacred Modern: Faith, Activism, and Aesthetics in the Menil Collection Pamela G. Smart https://books.google.com/books?id=BcSD8Zk4JjQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=rothko+chapel:+ writings+on+art+and+the+threshold+of+the+divine&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzpYuNrPXP AhUnwFQKHUx_CfYQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q&f=false
How the de Menils and Their Art Museum Changed Houston The Journal of the American Institute of Architects June 19, 2013 http://www.architectmagazine.com/awards/aia-honor-awards/how-the-de-menils-and-their-art- museum-changed-houston_o
A must-see: Cy Twombly Gallery Across the street from the main museum, the eponymous Cy Twombly Gallery houses a body of work that is at once baroque and spare, ancient and modern. Cy Twombly (1928–2011) emerged from the New York art world of the early 1950s, but his approach to painting and sculpture defied affiliation with any predominant movement of the later twentieth century, such as abstract expressionism, pop art, or minimalism.
A collaboration between the Menil, Dia Art Foundation, and the artist himself, the Cy Twombly Gallery opened in 1995. It reflects the depth of this institution's commitment to individual artists and to a standard of presentation that honors the creator's intent as it immerses visitors in a carefully created environment. The works on view in the Cy Twombly Gallery, dating from 1953 to 2004, comprise a veritable retrospective of the artist’s career, including a number of large canvases, sculptural works, and suites of paintings and drawings.
Special Exhibitions on View: Picasso The Line Famous for pioneering Cubism in the early 1900s, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was one of the most innovative and prolific artists of the twentieth century. Picasso was a master across disciplines and one of the most accomplished draftsmen in modern art. He pursued drawing assiduously throughout his career. Picasso The Line explores the distinctiveness of Picasso’s line drawings and considers the essential position that these works hold within the artist’s oeuvre.
Picasso The Line includes drawings from the most important periods of the artist’s long career; it gathers about ninety of his works on paper that span a wide range of media, from pen or pencil to charcoal and collage. The exhibition presents drawings
from public and private collections in the United States and Europe, several of which have never been exhibited in the United States. Others are seldom-seen examples from the Menil Collection’s holdings.
Andy Warhol: Sunset A rare, unfinished film by Andy Warhol, Sunset is a meditation on the temporality of an everyday phenomenon. Warhol began making the film in 1964 when the Menil Collection’s founders John and Dominique de Menil commissioned the artist to create a new film, one with spiritual significance. Warhol shot sunsets in San Francisco, East Hampton, and New York, but never completed the project, stating, “I filmed so many sunsets for that project, but I never got one that satisfied me.” On view in the Menil’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel: Francis Alÿs: The Fabiola Project The Fabiola Project consists of more than 450 reproductions of a lost 1885 painting of fourth-century Roman Saint Fabiola by French artist Jean-Jacques Henner. The project was initiated by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs in the early 1990s, shortly after he moved to his current home in Mexico City. Fascinated by the artisanal culture of the city and short on funds, Alÿs decided to build an art collection for himself by combing the city’s flea markets and antique and junk shops. He expected to find copies of masterpieces by painters like Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Jean- François Millet. Instead, he found and bought versions of Henner’s Fabiola, depicted in left-facing profile wearing a red headscarf. Gradually, Alÿs’s casual collecting project gathered steam as he and his friends discovered new images of the saint during their travels around the world.
Today, The Fabiola Project consists primarily of paintings but also includes bas-relief wood carvings and images in needlepoint, painted ceramics, jewelry, and, in one case, a mosaic made of rice and beans. On view in the Menil’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel where slower and deeper reflection is encouraged, the exhibition is curated by Toby Kamps, curator of modern and contemporary art.
12:30 PM Enjoy lunch at Bistro Menil. Chef Greg Martin reclaims the classic definition of a bistro by providing casual dining in his friendly, lively establishment. Bistro Menil offers European-inspired, American fare.
2 PM Depart for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
2:15 PM Guided tour of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District dedicated to presenting the contemporary art of our time to the public.
As a non-collecting museum, it provides a forum for the visual arts of the present and recent past and documents new directions in art while engaging the public and encouraging a greater understanding of contemporary art through education programs. The Contemporary Arts Museum’s stainless-steel building was designed by Gunnar Birkerts and opened its doors in 1972.
Special Exhibitions on View: Right Here, Right Now: Houston, Volume 2
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present three simultaneous solo exhibitions by Amy Blakemore, Thedra Cullar-Ledford, and Susie Rosmarin. The presentations are part of the museum's ongoing series “Right Here, Right Now,” which celebrates the region's vibrant creative community. Its second iteration showcases the work of these three Houston-based artists with decades- long practices there. CAMH's Director Bill Arning, Senior Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, and Curator Dean Daderko respectively selected Cullar-Ledford, Rosmarin, and Blakemore.
A Traveling Show A Traveling Show is an exploration of language, linguistics, and personal communication. At its heart is a selection of mail art exchanged over the past eight years by artists Matt Keegan and Kay Rosen. Their correspondence is augmented by a selection of artworks that includes wall paintings, sculptures, and drawings that demonstrate the artists’ unique and individual approaches to language.
3 PM Depart by bus for an artist’s studio visit.
Enjoy a visit to the studio of Laura Lark. Lark has been creating pointillist portraits and video installations for the past decade. Meticulously detailed and almost obsessive in artistic process and dot application, her portraits display a delicate and even nostalgic aesthetic that walks a fine line: the softness of the images is almost undermined by the painstaking effort it takes to complete them. Seeing the miniscule details with awareness of the time and potential agony involved in creating such works opens a window to viewers and adds complexity to the surface of a portrait.
5 PM Return to the hotel.
Dinner is on your own. A list of suggested restaurants will be provided in your welcome packets.
Optional activities include Opera: Houston Grand Opera, Elixir of Love, 7:30 PM Live music: Firehouse Saloon Dancing: Wild West Houston
Day Four: Saturday, November 5, 2016 Dress: Casual Day/Business Casual Evening
6:30 – 9:30 AM Enjoy breakfast at The Remington Restaurant, located on the hotel lobby level, at your leisure. Vouchers will be provided.
9:30 AM Gather in the hotel lobby to depart by bus for the Project Row Houses.
10 AM Enjoy a visit to the Project Row Houses, a non-profit arts organization established by African-American artists and community activists in Houston's “Third Ward.”
Executive Director Eureka Gilkey will greet our group and lead a tour of PRH’s campus, which since its inception in1993 has grown from the original block-and-a- half to six blocks and from twenty-two houses to forty properties. It includes twelve artists’ exhibition and/or residency spaces, seven houses for young mothers, office spaces, a community gallery, a park, and low-income residential and commercial spaces.
11:30 PM Depart for lunch.
12 PM Lunch at Etoile Cuisine et Bar. Authentic French cuisine.
1:30 PM Depart for private art collection located in the Memorial Area of Houston.
1:45/2 PM Enjoy a visit to a cutting edge contemporary collection of innovative new art from the 1990s until the current decade. The collection’s extensive holdings include masterpieces by many of the top artists who emerged during this period. They have assembled comprehensive sub-collections of art from the following key movements that define this exciting era: Photography, Young British Artists, Brooklyn School, Return of Painting, Asia, New Media; which refers to time-based, photographic and other works utilizing various new technologies and artists’ works from Houston. The collection is currently installed with a show that illustrates the global aspect of art today. This show contains over 50 artworks and features works from all mediums.
3:15 PM Depart for Hiram Butler Gallery.
3:45 PM Arrive at Herman Butler Gallery
3:30 PM Enjoy a visit to the gallery of dealer Hiram Butler. Hiram collects contemporary prints and drawings and owns works by Jennifer Bartlett, John Cage, Vernon Fisher, Jasper Johns, Sherrie Levine, Agnes Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Sachs, James Turrell, and many more.
Exhibition on view: INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE: ANNOTATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MURRAY MOSS
4:45 PM Return to the hotel.
5:00 PM Approximate arrival at the hotel.
6:30 PM Depart by bus for dinner.
6:45 PM Farewell dinner at Hugo’s Restaurant. Located in the heart of Houston's Montrose area, Hugo's brings the exciting and earthy flavors of Mexico across the border.
Return to the hotel after dinner by bus.
REMINDER: Set your clocks back an hour before you go to sleep. Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, November 6, at 2 AM!
Day Five: Sunday, November 6, 2016 Dress: Casual
Departure Day—Free day of leisure!
6:30 AM and on Enjoy breakfast at The Remington Restaurant, located on the hotel lobby level, at your leisure. Vouchers will be provided.
12 PM Check out of the hotel and handle your incidentals.
Airport to hotel transportation The St. Regis Houston Hotel offers a contracted town car service for airport transportation for $120 that would be billed directly to your hotel room. Alternatively, the average taxi rate is $60 – 75.
Suggested Sunday activities
12:15 – 7 PM The Houston Fine Arts Museum 1001 Bissonnet Houston, Texas 77005 713.639.7300 www.mfah.org
SJMA and Art Horizons International wish you a pleasant journey home!
** Portions of this itinerary are subject to change based on availability.
About our Art Horizon Guides:
Leo Costello, Associate Professor, Art History at Rice University, Houston Costello has taught and published on art from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. He is a specialist in art of the Romantic period in Europe. His book J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History was published by Ashgate in 2012. Before coming to Rice he also worked at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and continues to be involved with the contemporary art world in Houston and elsewhere.
Costello has contributed to exhibitions and catalogs for shows at the MFAH; Tate Britain, London; National Maritime Museum, London; and others. Costello is now at work on a book entitled Pictures of Nothing: Romantic Figurations of the Void.
Lisa Hahn, President, Art Horizons Hahn received her BA from Princeton University, New Jersey, where she majored in Classical Archaeology, a program she initiated that bridged the Art History and Classics Departments.
Hahn attended the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where she worked on her thesis and traveled extensively. Her thesis topic was: "The Cult of Aesclepius at Epidaurus."
Hahn attended New York University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for an MA degree. Her major was Performance Studies, a department formed to address critical writing issues in the performing and visual arts. She had the opportunity to study acting and directing with Joseph Chaikin (founder of The Open Theatre) and playwriting with Jean Claude van Itallie.
In December 1993, Hahn participated as a speaker at The Salzburg Seminar in Austria in a session called "The Arts in the World Economy." This session has been published as a book by the University Press of New England and features Lisa's essay in the company of fellow contributors Jane Alexander, George Soros, and John Brademas.
Hahn spends time during the summer helping her mother run a performing arts center called Windhover in Rockport, Massachusetts, forty miles north of Boston.