Gift of Art

Hanging Around Austin: 5 December art shows to wow your holiday guests

Many of us have family, friends or both coming to town this month, and our local gallery spaces have got plenty of aesthetic nourishment to help us space out the endless holiday shopping trips and meals at destination restaurants. There’s no snow in the forecast anytime soon (although anything’s possible, right?) so get out there and treat yourself and your loved ones to some of this beautiful stuff.

Folk and Dagger: Suburban Secrets
Yard Dog Gallery, through December 28

Montana native Andrea Heimer spent much of her childhood mutely observing the quiet desperation of her suburban neighborhood and its residents, and her blunt visual narratives recall that place and time in all its hidden tension and emotional claustrophobia. Her work scans as a Cave of the Beasts for the new millennium, presenting scenes both mundane and extraordinary with a gravity that transcends context and reveals the disquieting irreality beneath the skin of everyday life in the American suburb.

Lena Sotskova
ART on 5th, through January 3

Trained in Russian classical painting and tempered in the high-stakes crucible that is fine art restoration, Miami-based Lena Sotskova produces sensuous and lyrical images that have captured hearts across the world. She works without models, preferring to conjure textures and forms through imagination and experimentation, and draws on the essential candor of musical harmony to inform the direction taken by each piece.

Tami Bone: “This is where I’m going to be now…”
Photo Méthode Gallery, through January 9

At the age of two, Tami Bone fell off a pier into the Gulf of Mexico. The title of her current exhibition at Photo Méthode echoes a thought she had as she began sinking into the water, a thought that appeared recently in her work and brought with it deeply nuanced questions of being and belonging. Her ethereal, monochrome photographs and composites often blur the contrast between figure and ground, leaking dreamscapes into the realm of reality and inviting viewers to consider where we draw the lines that separate and connect us.

The Power of Insanity and The Room
Flatbed Press and Gallery, through January 10

Alice Leora Briggs brings a divergent pair of shows to Flatbed this month. In one, The Roomwritten by Pulitzer luminary Mark Strand, is explored line by line into a dozen woodcut studies of frailty and subtle human horror. Meanwhile, in The Power of Insanity, Briggs presents a series of paintings done by street pastor José Antonio Galván, founder of a refuge shelter in the Chihuahuan desert, and the residents of his asylum.

Do Ho Suh
The Contemporary Austin at Jones Center and Laguna Gloria, through January 11

Installation artist and sculptor Do Ho Suh’s work currently installed at the Jones Center downtown illustrates the diaphanous domesticity of the modern nomad, recreating actual inhabited spaces from his time in New York City with colorized, translucent walls and objects. His simultaneous exhibition at Laguna Gloria also addresses the notion of personal space, allowing visitors to step inside a tunnel of fishing net that reveals, upon closer inspection, a web of networked shapes much closer to the skin of human experience.

In Our House And Others I Knew, Redecorating Was A Way To Force Change Without Really Changing Anything At All by Andrea Heimer.

By Andrea Heimer Yard Dog

In Our House And Others I Knew, Redecorating Was A Way To Force Change Without Really Changing Anything At All by Andrea Heimer.

unspecified

New

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."

museums galleries history texas