November 15, 2019

The Blanton’s Growing Reputation

By roads-rus

The Blanton Museum on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin is well on its way to becoming a 5 Compass attraction.  It’s near several other Austin attractions-of-note like the LBJ Presidential Library, the State Capitol Building, and the fine Bullock Texas State History Museum.  Earlier this year Ruth and I went to this exploding city for SXSW and to see the new Ellsworth Kelly limestone and stained-glass secular chapel that’s part of the Blanton but outside.  The first thing that impressed us inside was the grand staircase just passed its reception desk.   When is a staircase a work of art all by itself?  When it’s in the reception area of The Blanton Museum.

The Blanton’s temporary shows are on the 1st floor.  Currently there are 5.   The most interesting one to me is just there until 1/12/20 and is called “Medieval Monsters:  Terrors, Aliens, Wonders”.  The medieval mind was learning about the world, beginning to map it, fighting the bubonic plague, and creating scary monsters to decorate most maps and various religious works.  As gaping visitors, Ruth & I could  see one or more of the temporary shows or head up the beautiful staircase shown above that has Teresita Fernandez’s sculpture “Stacked Waters” somewhat incorporated into it.  When we were there earlier this year, one of the temporary shows was called “Words/Matter”.  Below is an example.   This show is long gone. 

 Up those thrilling steps was the Blanton’s growing permanent collection.  It has grown to more than 18,000 items, so what’s seen upstairs is just a sample.  One of the Blanton’s chief focuses is contemporary and colonial Latin American art with holdings from Spain and Portugal featured.

A couple named the Hubers recently gifted the Blanton with 119 works of art from their Latin American treasures, and Galveston’s Moody Foundation gave the Blanton $20 million earlier this year to improve external spaces.  Above are 2 of this museum’s Latin American acquisitions by artists I admire, Fernando Maze and David Siqeuros.  Maza’s is triangular, Dali-like, and “Untitled” and Siqueros vividly depicted the Emperor Cuauhtemoc being tortured by explorer Hernán Cortés.  Luis Jiménez’s sculpture below is called “Border Crossing”.  It’s upstairs and has a very contemporary, news-feed feel.

All of this and the Kelly chapel outside make for an exciting museum experience worth going all the way to Austin for.  While there, check out its new library too.   Everything in this city, a genuine go go place, seems pretty new and exciting.

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Friday, November 15th, 2019 at 9:08 pm and posted in Great City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Comments are disabled.

%d bloggers like this: