Tag Archives: EPMA

After nearly three months, the newly renovated Kress European Collection Galleries at the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) are now open to the museum-going public.

Museum officials say, “This is the first major reinstallation since the museum opened its doors nearly 20 years ago in its current downtown location…all three galleries, measuring more than 3,200 square feet, underwent significant renovations.”

The galleries will display the gifts from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, alongside works from the EPMA’s permanent collection according to thematic groupings, allowing visitors to trace the evolution of iconic subjects like the Madonna and Child, the saints, and portraits and landscapes.

According to the museum’s website, the core of their European holdings is the Kress Collection, a group of fifty-seven tempera and oil paintings and two marble sculptures. The Kress Collection includes a thirteenth-century Byzantine Madonna, several outstanding Baroque pictures, and significant paintings of the 18th century.

The gift of this collection laid the foundation for the establishment of EPMA.

The project was made possible through funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the EPMA Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the City of El Paso.

The City of El Paso officials announced Tuesday that the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) was selected as one of 10 recipients of the 2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Services presented by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

“This recognition demonstrates the significance investing in quality of life and quality of place has on our community. Spaces like the El Paso Museum of Art play a crucial role in providing arts and cultural opportunities to our residents as well as our visitors from across the region and around the country,” said City of El Paso Mayor Dee Margo.

“EPMA’s location on the border provides us an opportunity to create a multicultural dialogue using our permanent collection and traveling exhibitions as a starting point. This focus has encouraged us as museum professionals to look at new ways to engage our audiences through programming and educational opportunities,” said El Paso Museum of Art Director Dr. Victoria Ramirez. “This has helped us become a place where diverse groups can come together through art to respect other perspectives and find a common ground.”

Via a news release, EPMA Officials added, “The El Paso Museum of Art uses services, programs, and art exhibits celebrate the diversity and cultural pride of the city. Through domestic and international outreach, EPMA builds community cohesion in both the United States and Mexico, demonstrating that cultural understanding and celebration are paramount for change and growth.

Since its founding in 1959, the Museum has been a cultural resource for West Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. The Museum’s permanent collection of American, European and Mexican work includes the second largest collection of Mexican retablos in the world.

Through special programming and the Art School, EPMA provides hands on art experiences to visitors of different ages and abilities. It is the only American Alliance of Museums accredited art museum within a 200-mile radius and welcomes nearly 100,000 visitors each year. General admission, school tours, and nearly all of its high-quality educational programming is free.

Selected from 29 national finalists, the 2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Service winners represent institutions that provide dynamic programming and services that exceed expected levels of service.

Through their community outreach, these institutions bring about change that touches the lives of individuals and helps communities thrive.

“It is a pleasure to recognize the 10 distinctive recipients of the National Medal of Museum and Library Service,” said IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew. “Through their programs, services, and partnerships, these institutions exemplify the many ways that libraries and museums are positively transforming communities across the nation.”

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. IMLS advances, supports and empowers America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grant making, research, and policy development.

The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to their communities that make significant and exceptional contributions to their communities. Over the past 24 years, the award has celebrated 182 institutions that are making a difference for individuals, families, and communities.

The City is pleased to announce the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) has been selected as a finalist for the 2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Service.

“Being one of 29 finalists is a testament to the high-quality exhibitions and programming EPMA offers to El Paso and the surrounding region,” said Director of the Museums and Cultural Affairs Department Tracey Jerome. “This distinction is a credit to the professionalism and commitment EPMA staff shows to consistently providing an excellent experience for everyone who walks through our doors.”

The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to their communities and is awarded each year by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Since its founding in 1959, the museum has been a major cultural resource for West Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico. The museum’s permanent collection focuses on American, European, and Mexican artwork including the second largest collection of Retablos in the world.

The EPMA provides opportunities to local and regional artists to show their work through programs like the Transborder Biennial.

Through special programming and the art school, the museum provides hands-on art experiences to visitors of different ages and abilities. It is the only accredited art museum within a 200-mile radius and welcomes nearly 100,000 visitors each year. General admission, school tours, and nearly all educational programming is free.

“EPMA’s location on the border provides us an opportunity to create a multicultural dialogue using our permanent collection and traveling exhibitions as a starting point. This focus has encouraged us as museum professionals to look at new ways to engage our audiences through programming and educational opportunities,” said El Paso Museum of Art Director Dr. Victoria Ramirez.

For the past 24 years, the award has celebrated 182 institutions that demonstrated extraordinary and innovative approaches to public service. The EPMA was nominated for the National Medal by U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke.

“The 29 National Medal finalists showcase the tremendous ability of libraries and museums to serve as vital community resources,” said IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew. “The Institute of Museum and Library Services is honored to recognize these leading institutions. We congratulate them on the work they are doing across the United States.”

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s approximately 120,000 libraries and 35,000 museums and related organizations. According to their website, their mission is to inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement.

Institute of Museum and Library Services’ grant making, policy development, and research help libraries and museums deliver services that make it possible for communities and individuals to thrive. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov .

The El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) invites the public to The Empire of Texas exhibition that opens March 2 at the museum and features the most recent photographic series of El Paso native Richard Baron.

The Empire of Texas series began in 2016 when Baron, now a resident of Houston, began traveling Texas in search of subjects both iconic and unfamiliar. The artist’s imagery ranges from the Alamo in San Antonio and the Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, to stacked mufflers at a shop in Victoria and a Texas-shaped waffle from a motel restaurant in Corpus Christi.

Each image follows a landscape format, follows the artisit’s commitment to street photography, and are exclusively in black and white.

“Baron’s Empire series provides a photojournalistic account through Texas, while his various viewpoints capture familiar monuments in novel, sometimes surreal ways, and uncover typically hidden sites,” said El Paso Museum of Art Senior Curator Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable.

From 1979 to 19872, Baron devoted himself to street photography in New York, regularly publishing in The Village Voice and The SoHo Weekly News. The Empire of Texas represents the most recent example of Baron’s penchant for working in discrete thematic series.

Baron will have a presentation about his work and career at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, in the El Paso Energy Auditorium of the EPMA, which is open to the public. A reception with the artist will follow the talk.

The Empire of Texas exhibition is free and remains on view to the public through June 24 at the El Paso Museum of Art. For additional information, visit EPMA’s website.

On Tuesday, the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) is temporarily closed the Kress European Collection Galleries section of the museum to renovate and redesign the area.

This is the first major reinstallation since the museum opened its doors nearly 20 years ago in its current downtown location. All three galleries, measuring more than 3,200 square feet, will undergo significant renovations before presenting the works in new thematic installations.

The section of the museum that includes European art will be closed temporarily; however, the museum will remain open to the public.

“The EPMA is one of only 18 Kress Regional Galleries nationwide to receive a ‘core collection’ of European masterworks. Since the unveiling in 1961, our collection continues to draw praise for its incomparable quality. The unprecedented opportunity to reinstall the collection according to its thematic strengths will provide visitors a fresh perspective on one of the Southwest’s most significant collections of European art,” said El Paso Museum of Art director Dr. Victoria Ramirez.

The newly installed galleries will display the extraordinary Kress gift alongside works from the EPMA’s permanent collection according to theme and chronology, allowing visitors to trace the evolution of iconic subjects like the Madonna and Child, portrait, and landscape.

Originally gifted by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1961, EPMA’s Kress Collection encompasses 59 Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, and French works that span more than five centuries from a thirteenth-century Madonna and Child painted on a gold wood panel to eighteenth-century Italian pastel portraits.

Renovation and redesign will be complete in May. The project is made possible through funding from the 2012 Quality of Life Bond, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the EPMA Foundation.

A new exhibit at the El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) explores the reality of endangered animals via contemporary art.

The exhibition Ethics, Excess, Extinction, explores ways humans affect the animal world through themes ranging from poaching to pollution to consumerism, opens Friday, January 26.

“Notably, while Ethics approaches a sensitive issue, together the artworks in the exhibition weave a visually compelling tapestry encouraging us to rethink and engage with the problem in new ways,” said El Paso Museum of Art Senior Curator Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable.

EPMA officials add, “At a time when science teaches us more than ever about the interconnectedness of the global environment, these artists remind residents of our intimate connections with animals, as well as our complicity in their suffering.”

The international array of artists includes several Americans such as Kiki Smith, Chris Jordan, and Esther Traugot, who variously used poetry, pathos, and sometimes the grotesque to evoke the plight of threatened species.

The EPMA will enrich the Ethics, Excess, Extinction exhibition through several educational programs and available merchandise in the museum store. The store will offer a book featuring the work of major artist Kiki Smith, earth-friendly solar lights by Solight Designs, and postcards.

On February 1, the EPMA will host an Educator Evening inviting teachers to enhance their curriculum through workshops and tours of the exhibition.

The EPMA’s special Family Day on April 14 will spotlight art by animals from the El Paso Zoo, created in conjunction with the Zoo’s Animal Enrichment Program.

Ethics, Excess, Extinction was organized by Art Works for Change and curated by Randy Jayne Rosenberg. The exhibit is free and open to the public. The exhibit runs through May.

The El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) and the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez (MACJ) announce the call for entries to the Transborder Biennial 2018; artists can submit entries online through December 5.

The Transborder Biennial 2018 will be on view from June 1 to September 16, 2018, at EPMA and MACJ. This contemporary art exhibition brings together artists from the entire US-Mexico border in a dual exhibition featured at the museums.

The focus of the unique international biennial is the transborder theme, which can range from immigration, politics, economics, violence, and landscape, along with the exploration of personal, cultural, linguistic, or conceptual identities related to the border region.

Artists living within 200 miles north and 200 miles south of the US-Mexico border are invited to submit their work.

“The El Paso/Juárez region is the world’s largest international border metroplex,” said EPMA Director Victoria Ramirez. “We are extremely proud of the number of artists our biennial inspires, with 287 entrants for the last biennial, as well as the role its themes play for the US-Mexico borderland community.”

The El Paso Museum of Art began its biennial exhibition in 2008. In 2011, the biennial program received a prestigious Award for US-Mexico Cross-Border Cooperation and Innovation from the Border Research Partnership. The last biennial held in 2015–16 received a record number of submissions from almost 300 artists, with work by 23 American artists and 21 Mexican artists shown.

“This biennial offers a unique forum for our local artists and for artists from larger and smaller border communities to place their art and concerns within the context of broader artistic themes and cultural issues,” said EPMA Senior Curator Patrick Shaw Cable.

Two jurors from the U.S. and Mexico, who are distinguished scholars and practitioners in the field of contemporary art, will judge the submissions.

The judges are Gilbert Vicario, a San Diego native who since 2015 has been the Selig Family Chief Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum, and Carlos Palacios, originally from Venezuela and now Curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City.

Prizes, which include one EPMA acquisition award, two solo exhibition opportunities awarded to a Mexican artist at EPMA and an American artist at MACJ, and two binational prizes for residencies at SOMA in Mexico City, will be awarded to selected artists.

The retablo is an important art form in Mexican Catholicism and folk art which comes from the human need to connect with the divine.

Visitors to the El Paso Museum of Art will be able to view the most recent additions to its significant retablo collection during the Santos, Cristos y Vírgenes: Highlights from the Hamilton Collection exhibition opening on Friday, December 4, 2015. A public reception and open house will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 13, 2015, in the C2 Gallery. Nancy Hamilton will be in attendance to meet with guests.

This exhibition honors the significant gift of Nancy Hamilton to the El Paso Museum of Art’s permanent collection late last year. Hamilton’s gift consists of around 500 objects including retablos, bultos, prints, postcards, nichos, altar objects, and frames.

In order to showcase the majority of Ms. Hamilton’s retablo collection, this exhibition has been divided into three categories: Cristos, Vírgenes, and Santos, representing 111 different subjects through 158 retablos. The exhibition showcases the differences and similarities between the portrayals of a span of various devotional subjects.

Many times when the image of a Christ, Virgin, or Saint was brought over from Spain to the New World the images were modified and familiarized to fit Mexican folk culture. The retablos capture the individuality of each retablo artist and the subject they depict. These devotional images demonstrate how different portrayals of the same subject include similar objects and symbolism but they also reveal how the artists took the liberty to paint the subject as their own unique representation.

A special feature of this exhibition is the presence of retablos by known artists: Donaciano Aguilar, Agustin Barajas, and the “dyslexic” painter. Also included is a contemporary work by Mona Puente of Guadalajara.

The addition of retablos and ex-votos from the Hamilton gift make the EPMA the second largest retablo repository in the United States, with a collection of 900 retablos after New Mexico State University’s collection of 1700 retablos.This exhibition celebrates Ms. Hamilton’s professional contributions to the El Paso community as an important retablo collector and historian.

Over the course of 50 years, Ms. Hamilton built her collection through flea market and antique store finds as well as visits to other collectors. From August 1991 through 2002 Ms. Hamilton edited and published the Retablo Newsletter for collectors, museums, and libraries.

The existing EPMA retablo collection has come from a variety of sources, but most importantly thanks to gifts from the following major patrons: Dorrance and Olga Roderick, Frank and Sara McKnight, as well as the McKnight couple’s children, Dr. Steven McKnight, Elizabeth McKnight Manning, and Nancy McKnight Howell.

This retablo exhibition honoring Ms. Hamilton’s gift represents a continuation of this generosity within one of the most important realms of our institution’s collection and collecting mission.

For more information please call (915) 212-0300, or visit ElPasoArtMuseum.org

Author: City of El Paso