Cool Art for Hot People

Hanging Around Austin: 5 cool summer art exhibits for your hot, hot life

Astounding installations and intergenerational collaborations are hanging around Austin this month. Here are five cool summer exhibits not to miss.

A Place Beyond
Wally Workman Gallery, through August 2
The talented husband-and-wife duo of Sara and Shane Scribner flex classical techniques in a modern light, bringing a sense of fluid motility and a few light touches of unreality to their uncommonly deft explorations of the human figure. If you’re on the fence about experiencing their work for yourself in the next few weeks, a look at the Scribners’ personal online gallery should make your choice an easy one.

Kasey Short: 5 Plus Hearts
Big Medium Gallery at Canopy, through August 8
This installation by local mixed- and multi-media artist Kasey Short uses metaphysical fingers and feathers to prod and palpitate your subconscious and explore human behavior as it relates to survival. It’s a bleacher-bound perspective festival that employs audiovisual and experiential stimulation. Expect nothing, experience everything.

Advanced Young Artists: Teen Artist + Mentor Exhibition!
pump project art complex, through August 9
Here’s a formula for expanding minds: Take 10 outstanding high school art students, set each of them up with a professional artist-mentor and give the pairs seven months to work collaboratively in a studio environment. The Contemporary Austin has done just that, and you can check out the 2014 results of this intergenerational collaboration at the pump project space on Shady Lane at Seventh Street to feel a warm swell of hope for our collective visual future.

Orly Genger
The Contemporary Austin – Laguna Gloria, through August 24
Sculptor Orly Genger’s massive installations of knotted cord have graced museums and exhibition spaces from coast to coast, and a striking example of such has assumed control of Laguna Gloria for the summer season. Go walk among the flowing, winding walls, built of lobster rope reclaimed from the sea, on any day when the weather’s nice.

Kevin Greenblat and Shelley Wood: Texas Soil
Photo Méthode Gallery, through August 29
The unified talents of Wood and Greenblat bring together two distinct photographic approaches for an examination of life at ground level in Texas. Wood’s frank look at the lifestyle of ranched animals and Greenblat’s intimate visual dialogues come together to create a journey that tells a big story with small details and stretches out like a Lone Star night in a thousand shades of gray.

Orly Genger's installation at Laguna Gloria.

Orly Genger Contemporary Austin Laguna Gloria

Courtesy of The Contemporary Austin

Orly Genger's installation at Laguna Gloria.

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Historic Austin museum will close for more than a year for restoration

Photo courtesy of the City of Austin

The Elisabet Ney Museum will close at the end of 2024 and reopen in mid-2026.

Every building needs some maintenance here or there, and the historic Elisabet Ney Museum needs some extra-special care. Formerly the art studio and residence of its namesake, it's been standing since 1892. It'll spend 2025 in relative solitude, as it undergoes renovation for a year and a half with no visitors allowed.

The museum will close to the public December 30, 2024, and open again in the summer of 2026 if all goes according to plan, a news release from the City of Austin shares. It'll be a quiet period compared to the 21,000 people visiting from around the world each year.

According to a museum overview on the city's website, Elisabet Ney, a European portrait sculptor, bought the property and called her new studio Formosa. She worked on sculptures depicting important Texans like Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, and collected works of European contemporaries.

The building at 304 East 44th St. includes 3,700 square feet of museum space, which was converted by Ney's friends after her death in 1907. It retains its unique look that juxtaposes a Neo-Classical main studio from 1892 with a later addition from 1902 including a tower for her husband, Edmund, to write in. It is also on 2.5 acres of land, which has largely been restored to its natural state with native species.

A press release lists these tasks (verbatim) within the scope of the new work, referred to as the Capital Improvement Project (CIP):

Restoration of original exterior wood doors and windows
Upgrades and replacement of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system
Replacement of the exhibit and general lighting systems
Repairs to the roof, masonry, plumbing, and interior finishes.

There will also be work to do outside of the building. Workers will replace the pedestrian bridge across Waller Creek, stabilize a 20,000-square-foot portion of the bank, and make the grounds more accessible by adding new pathways.

Funding comes from several sources, according to a release: "the 2012 Bond, Proposition 14, the Parkland Dedication Fund, the Historic Preservation Fund, Partners in Preservation through the National Trust, and contributions from the Friends of the Elisabet Ney Museum."

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Hanging Around Austin: 5 cool summer art exhibits for your hot, hot life

Orly Genger's installation at Laguna Gloria.

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Historic Austin museum will close for more than a year for restoration