Articles

Sculpting Stories and Inclusion through Community Collaboration

Studio Visit with Jas Mardis by Emma Ahmad and Molly Sydnor

In anticipation for his artist workshop, which functions in dialogue with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s major exhibition Hugh Hayden: Homecoming, we sat down with multidisciplinary artist, writer, and storyteller, Jas Mardis, to discuss connecting the community of the Dallas-Fort Worth community and its culture to art making. 

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laser cut leather of a woman's face

Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Reflections on Samara Golden

In Golden’s work, memory and emotion summon spaces that no longer exist or that never really existed except in our wounded hearts or collapsed together in our recollections. Everyday spaces fold over each other: a luxurious den teetering off a cliff, a party of humans composed with gratitude from those who make labor possible. Golden’s mirrors summon lost spirits and tease out the pockmarked scars we carry from the lives and experiences we’ve led, not all of them on our faces. The mirrors and mirrored surfaces tell us with their infinities that there is always more to see. 

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Installation view of Blue Room. Faux abalone piano, guitar, lamp, vases, ash tray, candles and jewelry

Homecoming

A Conversation with Hugh Hayden

Dallas natives and New York-based artist Arthur Peña and Hugh Hayden discuss plants, assimilation, deadlines, and Hayden's upcoming show at the Nasher. 

 

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a wooden sculpture of a table and chairs

Butterfly Lightning

By Douglas Davis

Few topics are as current and divisive in this state and country than that of illegal immigration. However, for the migrants who attain entry to the United States, the catastrophic circumstances and journeys that led them to this country leave lasting scars on the psyche. Artist Guadalupe Maravilla understands these traumas. As an unaccompanied 8-year-old, he was smuggled from warring El Salvador through Central America and Mexico before crossing the Tijuana border into the United States. Decades later, his phantasmagorical sculpture Mariposa Relámpago pays tribute to the deceptive tradecraft of the coyote to deliver participants to a sound therapy session.   

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Artist installing art with the blue sky and clouds in the background

An Interview with Simon and Nikolai Haas

The Haas Brothers on Craft, Vintage Beads and Austin in the 90’s by: Emma Ahmad and Molly Sydnor

Before their major exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center opened, Nikolai and Simon Haas, known as the Haas Brothers, took the time to talk to us about the artwork and ideas behind their exhibition, Moonlight. The artist duo discussed their artisan background and reminisced about their childhood growing up in Austin, Texas, and how it continues to inspire their work today. 

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Simon and Nikolai Haas standing together in front of their Strawberry Tree

Artist Talk: Samara Golden

For nearly 15 years, Los Angeles-based artist Samara Golden has been creating installations that deploy architecture and mirrors to create disquieting and disorienting environments, often populated by individuals, or traces of their presence, that have in the past spoken to experiences of violence and its aftermath, disparities of class, or illness and recovery. Her often mind-bogglingly complex installations can range from seemingly chaotic to quietly seething. Golden populates them with handmade domestic forms and textures using such materials as plastics, epoxy, and spray foam to construct a setting both familiar and ill-at-ease in its artificiality. 

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A woman sits in front of sculptures that look like colorful intestines

Artist Talk: Hugh Hayden

Working in the tradition of wood carving and carpentry, New York-based artist Hugh Hayden builds sculptures and installations that explore the idea of the “American Dream.” Church pews, a dinner table and chairs, or a football helmet—signifiers of faith, family, and athletics—become surreal and somewhat sinister subjects in the hands of Hayden, who frequently carves thorns and branches into surfaces of things that would normally come into contact with the human body, implying potential harm, or at least discomfort, should they be engaged with.

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The Chuck & George Fun House

By Betsy Lewis and Photos By Phallon Wright

Reschedule your meetings. Cancel your plans. Lie to your family, if that’s what it takes. Today, you are visiting the home of Chuck & George.

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colorful pillow with chuck and george written in embroidery

Human Figures in Clouds

Arp, Surrealism, and Plaster by Lewis Kachur

The word “surrealism” was coined by the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire in response to the surprising juxtapositions of the ballet Parade at its premiere in 1917. Soon after, in the early 1920s, French writer André Breton adopted the term for the group of writers experimenting with free association. He gave a formal, dictionary definition of Surrealism in his manifesto of 1924: “Psychic automatism in its pure state. ... Dictation of thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”  

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black and white photo of a man sitting among sculptures

Art Talk: Laure de Margerie

French Sculpture: An American Passion

Director of the French Sculpture Census, Laure de Margerie, introduces her recently published book, French Sculpture: An American Passion. De Margerie unfolds the story of how French sculptures in a great variety of genres and styles came to the United States and uncovers the politicians, collectors, dealers, decorators, curators, and professors who were instrumental in this trade. De Margerie examines how the presence of French sculpture follows the close relations between our two nations, and shares the role and meaning of French sculpture in America’s ever-changing society.

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Left: Sculpture of a sleeping child. Right: A woman stands with arms crossed in a gallery.

Artist Talk: The Haas Brothers

The Haas Brothers—fraternal twins Nikolai and Simon Haas—launched a collaborative practice in 2010, creating playful environments populated with fantastical flora and fauna. Imbued with curiosity, humor, and passion for nature, their furniture, objects, and, most recently, large-scale sculptural installations awaken our imaginations and transport us to another fertile, fanciful, and futuristic world. 

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Two brothers sit on an outdoor wall.

Fleurs de Villes

March 20 - 24, 2024

Experience the artistry of flowers in Fleurs de Villes ARTISTE, a floral exhibition on view in Dallas for the first time at NorthPark Center.

Fleurs de Villes 2024 is on view from March 20 - 24, 2024

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Layering Memory

with Emily Margarit Mason

In anticipation for her artist workshop, which functions in dialogue with the Nasher Sculpture Center’s major exhibition Sarah Sze, we sat down with Santa Fe-based artist Emily Margarit Mason to talk about process, perspective, and the evolution of her photographic practice.

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Forever Blue Tape

By Tamara Johnson

Editor’s note: What if a Sarah Sze installation listed every material object? I’ve tried and gave up pages of notes in. However, one item seemed to reappear with special repetition: blue painter’s tape. In her materially dense compositions, you’ll find it attaching pictures to things, things to things, balled up on the ground as if discarded, and in its original rolled form, serving as a prop, a stand, or an object in and of itself. I don’t know what draws Sarah Sze to Blue Tape—I hope to ask her—but I know she’s not the only one stuck on it.

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on a white background, one piece of blue painters tape folded on one end to a point

Grasping Stillness

By Taylor Cleveland

An emerging new media artist reflects on the surprising stillness in Sarah Sze’s installations, inspiring his own distortion of contemporary reality. 

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stone around a circle of grass under blue cord woven

A Personal History of Time With Sarah Sze

By Jed Morse

In the spring of 2024, Sarah Sze’s intricate installations will spill across the Nasher. Ahead of that moment, the show’s curator reflects on his evolving impression of the artist’s work, alongside rarely shared images from inside her studio. 

Time is a slippery thing. As much as humans have attempted to define it, capture it, measure it in tranches from the infinitesimal to the immense, it still manages to elude simple quantification or understanding. Left to our five senses, our experience of time is even more fallible, seeming to expand and contract in unpredictable ways.

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studio view of table work in progress, paper tears

A Resting Place for Planets

By Dr. Leigh Arnold and Jed Morse

Nasher curators introduce an Alicja Kwade sculpture, both celestial and grounded, showing with works from our permanent collection this fall. By Dr. Leigh Arnold and Jed Morse 

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planets interacting with chairs in front of a white wall

From Clay

By Emma S. Ahmad

A Nasher museum guide contemplates Karla García’s La Línea Imaginari

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Outside In

By Claire Taggart

The Nasher’s conservator turns to the July sun to rid unwanted organisms from the sculptural materials used in GroundswelI: Women of Land Art

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a collection of branches

Mary Miss on Stream Trace: Dallas Branch

Interviewed in her studio in New York

In anticipation of her installation for ‘Groundswell: Women of Land Art,’ Mary Miss talks with Dr. Leigh Arnold, Associate Curator, Nasher Sculpture Center.

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Mirrored x-shaped installations sit atop stainless steel posts marking the route of an underground stream in the Nasher Garden.

The Buried Stream Within Us

On Mary Miss | By David Searcy

Beneath the concrete, flirting with the sewage, and out into where a river once was, Mary Miss asks us to imagine a running stream.

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Mary Miss in her studio holding a model of Stream Trace: Dallas Branch Crossing

Haas Brothers Imaginarium

By Adrienne Lichliter-Hines, Iris and Calvin, and Marlo and Faye

In anticipation for the Haas Brothers: Moonlight opening at the Nasher Sculpture Center, two sets of young twins explore the world of the Haas Brothers.

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River of Time 

By Ángel Faz 

Exploring river animacy, history, and justice through the Akokisa 

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jug of water sitting by a river with blue sky and clouds

Artist Talk: Tomás Saraceno

Informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences, and engineering, Tomas Saraceno’s floating sculptures, community projects, and interactive installations propose new, sustainable ways of inhabiting and sensing the environment. For more than two decades he has explored the possibility of a future airborne existence as part of his ongoing Air-Port-City / Cloud City project – a utopia of flying metropolises made up of habitable, cell-like platforms that migrate and recombine as freely as clouds themselves. Building on the progressive proposals and theories put forth by R. Buckminster Fuller, Gyula Kosice, Yona Friedman and other visionary architects before him, Saraceno develops engaging proposals and models that invite viewers to conceptualize innovative ways of living and interacting with one another, and with their surroundings at large.

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two figures in all black standing in a white room looking at a sculpture

Artist Talk: Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual. For over five decades, Chicago has remained steadfast in her commitment to the power of art as a vehicle for intellectual transformation and social change, and to women’s right to engage in the highest level of art production. As a result, she has become a symbol for people everywhere—known and respected as an artist, writer, teacher, and humanist whose work and life are models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist, and women’s right to freedom of expression.In 2018, Chicago was named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People," as well as one of the year's "Most Influential Artists," by Artsy.

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Large brightly colored blocks scattered on a gallery floor

Breaking the Mold

By Nicole Eisenman

Artist Nicole Eisenman recalls her adolescent foray into figurative sculpture. 

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Nicole Eisenman, ‘Tis but a scratch’ ‘A scratch?! Your arm’s off!’ ‘No, it isn’t’.

Go Figure

Collection Highlight | By Jed Morse

A large group of sculptures and drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Matthew Monahan joins the ranks of figurative works in the Nasher collection. 

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Left: Safe Cracker sculpture of a human leaning. Right: Fathom Fiver sculpture of a human figure

Sculpture Notwithstanding

On Nairy Baghramian | By Miwon Kwon

Art historian and curator Miwon Kwon considers how the work of exhibition artist Nairy Baghramian is a location for sculptural respite. 

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Nairy Baghramian sculpture title Sitzengebliebene / Stay Downers, 2017

Ambiguous Utility

By Su Wu

A curator considers her role in presenting works that straddle categories in spaces that challenge exhibition paradigms. 

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Ana Mendieta, Silueta del Laberinto (Laberinth Blood Imprint), 1974. Super 8 transferred to digital, color, siltent, 3 minutes. ©? The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong. 2022 / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Speak, Goddess

By Evan Moffitt

The host of the new podcast Precious Cargo highlights the historians working to give voice to sculptural artifacts that, like human bodies, have suffered from colonial violence. 

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Head of an Oba, 16th century. Nigeria, Igun-Eronmwen guild, Court of Benin. Edo artist. Brass, 9 1/4 x 8 5/8 x 9 in. (23.5 x 21.9 x 22.9 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979. / Head of a Queen Mother (Iyoba), 1750–1800, Nigeria, Court of Benin,

Water-filled Space Suits for our Skins

By Matthew Ronay

Nasher exhibition artist Matthew Ronay describes how flora, fauna and systems of the human body influence his colorful work. 

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Matthew Ronay, Sprout Capsule Implantation

Good Bones

Artist on Art | Francisco Moreno

A sculpture by Alberto Giacometti inspires a painter’s musing on Mexican memento mori.

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Jose Guadalupe Posada (b. 1852), La Calavera Catrina (Skull of the Female Dandy), c. 1910. Zinc etching, 13.58 x 9.05 in. (34.5 x 23 cm).

Nasher Public: Liss LaFleur

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Liss LaFleur talks about childbirth, LGBTQ+ visibility, and community building through storytelling. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public.

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Liss LaFleur in the Nasher Public Gallery in an orange dress and neon glasses

Nasher Public: Christian Cruz

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Christian Cruz talks about fabric sculpture, performance art, and the economy of unpaid labor. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Christian Cruz habla de la escultura en tela, el arte del performance y la economía del trabajo no remunerado. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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Christian Cruz stands outside the Nasher in a yellow dress

The Momentary | Sun & Sea

Dispatch from Arkansas | By Katie Burton

The Nasher’s Social Media Manager Katie Burton heads to Bentonville, Arkansas, to encounter a much-lauded project from the 58th Venice Biennale. 

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Sun & Sea (Marina). Photo: Ironside Photography, courtesy of the Momentary.

Jeff Gibbons's B.O.B.O.

Collection Highlight | By Jed Morse

A dynamic new sculpture—part machine, part musical instrument—brings new whimsy to the Nasher collection. 

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Installation image of Jeff Gibbons's B.O.B.O.

Made from Concentration: Lynda Benglis

By Tom Orr as told to Dr. Leigh Arnold

Dallas-based artist Tom Orr recalls the summer he spent as Lynda Benglis’s gallery assistant. 

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Lynda Benglis stands in studio with gas mask on while man stand akimbo with cowboy hat on

A Sense of Place

A Gallery Lesson | By Blake Lindsay

Blake Lindsay, the narrator of the Nasher’s audio guide for the blind, uses his sense of sound to tour the galleries and gardens. 

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Blake Lindsay walks in the Nasher Garden

Screen Test

Harry Bertoia at the Dallas Public Library | By Marin R. Sullivan

How a sculpture by Harry Bertoia, commissioned for the Dallas Public Library in 1955, challenged convention. 

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Harry Bertoia’s untitled multiplane construction at the Dallas Public Library, c. 1955

To Stave Off Silence

By Brandon Kennedy

Writer Brandon Kennedy winds through a landscape of fractured silence in scores by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, and Dick Higgins. 

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background of clouds in the sky with smaller images of sheet music and tree

Sound as Suture

By Christopher Blay

Artist and curator Christopher Blay draws out the body’s connections to sound in sculpture that remembers Black lives. 

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Nadine Robinson (b. 1968). Coronation?Theme: Organon, 2008. Speakers, sound system and mixed media. Houston: Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material, Culture, and the Sonic Impulse at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Chasing the Sounds

By Caitlin Woolsey

Historian Caitlin Woolsey dials into pioneering German sound artist Christina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks as portraits of cities. 

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christina kubisch engaging in an electrical walk in oslo norway

Good Vibrations

Conversation | Olivia Block and Luke Fowler

Artists Olivia Block and Luke Fowler listen in on the sonic life of Harry Bertoia’s sounding sculptures. 

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artist olivia block playing harry bertoia's sonambient sculptures

The Science of Interaction

Notes from the Lab | By Claire Taggart

The Nasher’s conservator considers the sound-conducting properties of metal alloys in Harry Bertoia’s sculptures. 

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Conservator Claire Taggart with Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures

A Threshold to Fictional Lives

Excerpt from Nasher Prize Dialogues | Architecture and fabricated history in the work of three artists

Artist historian and Nasher Prize juror Briony Fer speaks with artists Michael Elmgreen, Nina Beier, and Martin Boyce, excerpted from Nasher Prize Dialogues: Sculpture + Architecture, presented in partnership with CHART, Copenhagen, Denmark, on August 31, 2019. 

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2019 Nasher Prize Dialogues panelists gather in Copenhagen

Seeing the Future

Excerpt from Artist Talk with Tavares Strachan | Moderated by Alysia Nicole Harris

Poet and linguist Alysia Nicole Harris speaks with artist Tavares Strachan about redressing Black histories to create new possibilities. 

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Tavares Strachan, We Belong Here, 2021. Neon, 532 x 176 in. (1351.3 x 447 cm) . Installation at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery. © Tavares Strachan.

Now Play This

By Ken Shimamoto

A wild idea to couple renowned musicians with Harry Bertoia’s sounding sculptures leads to a history-making experiment in music and art. 

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Now Play This with musicians of Sculpting Sound

Soft Launch

John Chamberlain’s Foam Sculptures | By Gavin Morrison

In the first installment of this ongoing series about the little-known histories of works in the Nasher collection, we see how an exhibition in West Texas helped reemerge an important body of work by John Chamberlain, of which a recent gift from the estate of former Nasher Sculpture Center Board Member William B. Jordan and Robert Brownlee was a part.

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Installation image of John Chamberlain's Foam Sculptures at Chinati

Force and Softness

The Collage Sculptures of Carol Bove | By Dr. Catherine Craft

Curator Dr. Catherine Craft previews the exhibition Carol Bove: Collage Sculptures at the Nasher.

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Offenbach Barcarolle steel sculpture by Carol Bove

Material Memory

Notes from the Lab | By Claire Taggart

The Nasher conservator considers the fragile side of a tough sculptural outlier in Nancy Grossman’s Untitled, Head Sculpture (1968). 

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two conservators examine the leather head sculpture of nancy grossman

Dispatch from New York

Carol Bove at the Met | By Lucia Simek

Anticipating the opening of the Nasher Sculpture Center exhibition Carol Bove: Collage Sculpture on October 16, 2021, Nasher Manager of Communications and International Programs, Lucia Simek, sends an enamored dispatch from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Bove’s work, The séances aren’t helping I, currently adorns the façade’s niches. 

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Installation view of The séances aren’t helping (detail),2021. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. Image The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photo Bruce Schwarz

Who is the Public?

Roundtable Discussion

Justine Ludwig, executive director of Creative Time; Cecilia Alemani,  Donald R. Mullen, Jr. director and chief curator of High Line Art; and Nasher Chief Curator Jed Morse consider public art during a pandemic and time of social and political change. 

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three stacks of pennies on the left and the high line walkway and sculpture by simone leigh titled brick house on the right

What Makes Art Public?

Family Guide by Colleen Borsh

A handy family guide for intrepid urban (suburban and rural too) explorers. 

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public art sculptures surrounded by question marks

Public Displays of Affection

Words by Su Wu | Photography by Sam Youkilis

In an essay with words and an essay with images, two Americans fall for objects both intimate and strange on the streets of Mexico. 

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market stalls of oranges with fruit sculptures

Tour de Force

By Grant Johnson

Grant Johnson leads a tour of the outdoor sculptural giants from MIT’s Percent-for-Art Program 

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blue interwining staircases extend between two buildings

Bloom Where You’re Planted

By Alysia Harris

In a small Texas town, a local community and an international art and literary residency work together to foster a place for sustainable creative growth. 

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woman in black outfit adjusting hanging sculpture in an artist studio

A Waltz Across Texas Art Environments

By Julie Webb (with Bruce Webb)

Julie and Bruce Webb of the beloved Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas, take a road trip to see some extraordinary yard art. 

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ho baron concrete sculpture of choc mol next to cacti

Nasher Public: Jer'Lisa Devezin

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Jer’Lisa Devezin talks about making soft sculpture, developing intention, and representing Black bodies. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Jer’Lisa Devezin habla sobre la escultura suave, el desarrollo de la intención y la representación de los cuerpos Negros. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A woman kneeling in front of large hair sculpture

Nasher Public: Melanie Clemmons

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Melanie Clemmons talks about technology, click farms, and creating connections in a digital space. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Melanie Clemmons habla sobre tecnología, granjas de clics, y la creación de conexiones en un espacio digital. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A neon new media sculpture with a camera and phone screen

Nasher Public: Cameron Schoepp

Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista

Cameron Schoepp talks about time, control and stability, and the constant shifts within Twist. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Cameron Schoepp habla acerca del tiempo, el control y la estabilidad, y los constantes cambios dentro de Twist. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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cameron schoepp artist portrait

Nasher Public: Brian Molanphy

Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista

Brian Molanphy talks about working with ceramics, embracing space and the void, and finding inspiration from many sources. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Brian Molanphy habla acerca de trabajar con cerámica, abrazar el espacio y el vacío, y encontrar inspiración en muchas fuentes.? Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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ceramic sculpture line the floor and walls of the nasher store gallery

Nasher Public: Linda Ridgway

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Linda Ridgway talks about printmaking, assemblage and collage, and working in self-isolation. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Linda Ridgway habla acerca del grabado, ensamblar y collage, y trabajar en auto-aislamiento. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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Lynda Ridgway artist at her work table drawing

Nasher Public: Dan Lam

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Dan Lam talks about the playfulness of materials, beauty in art, and immersive sculpture. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / Dan Lam habla acerca del juego de los materiales, la belleza en el arte y la escultura inmersiva. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A woman with long black hair sitting against black background with colorful lighting

Sensing Sculpture

Connecting Virtually with Vision-Impaired Learners

By Lynda Wilbur, Manager of Tour and Access Programs

As a sculpture museum built around in-person experiences with three-dimensional artworks, finding ways to engage our public during the pandemic has brought about some exciting new approaches in the way we present educational programming. Most museums have – dare I say the word – “pivoted” to virtual versions of tours and workshops, but how do you continue to offer virtual programming to community members with vision impairment?

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Participants in a virtual workshop respond to the pose of Nic Nicosia's bighands, which has outstretched palms

Nasher Public: Shelby David Meier

Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista

Artist Shelby David Meier talks about security, technology and consumption, and the impact of time.  Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista Shelby David Meier habla sobre la seguridad, la tecnología y el consumo, y el impacto del tiempo.  Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A man with glasses, shoulder length hair, and dark shirt

Nasher Public: Vicki Meek

Artist Interview / Entrevista con la artista

Artist Vicki Meek talks about the connection between Stony the Road We Trod and other works that memorialize the history of African art and culture. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / La artista Vicki Meek habla sobre la conexión entre Stony the Road We Trod y otras obras que memorializan la historia del arte y la cultura africana. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A woman in blue jacket, yellow shirt in front of blue background

Nasher Public: Nyugen E. Smith

Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista

Artist Nyugen E. Smith talks about the Spirit Carriers series, Bundlehouses, and the movement for social and racial justice. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista Nyugen E. Smith habla sobre la serie Portadores del Espíritu, los Bundlehouses, y el movimiento por la justicia social y racial. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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man in camouflage shirt surrounded by hanging sculptures

Nasher Public: Giovanni Valderas

Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista

Dallas-born artist Giovanni Valdera talks about Grit/Grind, the role of car culture, and the American dream. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista nacido en Dallas Giovanni Valdera habla sobre Grit/Grind, el papel de la cultura automóvil y el sueño americano. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A man with glasses and gray jacket in front of piñata artwork

Nasher Public: Bernardo Vallarino

Artist Interview / Entrevista con el artista

Fort Worth artist Bernardo Vallarino talks about Pedacitos de Paz, the creative process, and themes of social justice. Hear more perspectives from artists and curators on their experience exhibiting work through Nasher Public. / El artista de Fort Worth Bernardo Vallarino habla sobre Pedacitos de Paz, el proceso creativo y temas de justicia social. Escucha más perspectivas de artistas y curadores sobre su experiencia al exhibir trabajos a través de Nasher Public.

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A man in white jacket in front of video art installation

Mixtape - Into the Garden

Track 1

The sculptures at the Nasher’s entrance reference nature in their materials and themes, inviting visitors to continue into the garden, which architect Renzo Piano described as “the museum without a roof.”

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Mixtape - For Bill Jordan

Track 2

Curator and scholar William B. Jordan organized the first museum exhibition of Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s sculpture collection; sculptures by John Chamberlain, David McManaway, and Joan Miró are part of a bequest from Jordan and his husband, Robert Dean Brownlee.

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Mixtape - The Ends of Minimalism

Track 3

This installation examines the legacies of Minimal art through the Nashers' support in the 1970s of artists including Siah Armajani, Martin Puryear, and Christopher Wilmarth, as well as the recent acquisition of a sculpture by Judy Chicago.

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Mixtape - Force of Nature

Track 4

Nature's example provided a powerful array of possibilities for artists working in the aftermath of Minimalism, even though the results may bear little resemblance to their source of inspiration.

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Mixtape - Lookin' down on my soul now

Track 5

Taking its title from lyrics to “Never Catch Me,” a song by Flying Lotus, featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar, this installation brings together a video work by lauren woods with sculptures by Joel Shapiro and Manuel Neri to reflect upon how we interpret images of historical events and human actions.

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Mixtape - Now We Know

Track 6

Subject of the Nasher Sculpture Center’s 2015 traveling retrospective Melvin Edwards: Five Decades, the artist Melvin Edwards recently made a generous gift of four sculptures and two drawings presenting a spectrum of the artist’s concerns, methods of working, materials, and themes.

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Mixtape - Live in Your Head

Track 7

How do artists think about sculpture when it may not be feasible, or even desirable, to execute three-dimensional objects in lasting materials? Scrims have been installed in this gallery to block light, making possible the presentation of a greater range of objects.

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Mixtape - Et in Arcadia Ego

Track 8

The Latin phrase, meaning “And in Arcadia [am] I,” implies that even in Arcadia—an idyllic, bountiful land of ancient legend—death is still present. The works in this installation consider other aspects of Mediterranean culture and its heritage beyond the more familiar values of classicism.

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Mixtape - Love and Delight

Track 9

At a time when the formation and sustenance of our connections with others have become more crucial than ever, Love and Delight offers a selection of works, collected by the Nashers between 1967 and 1986, that trace unexpected links between artworks through the human bonds shared among artists, collectors, dealers, families, friends, spouses, lovers, and admirers. On view through September 10, 2021.

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Mixtape - The Guerrilla Girls

Track 10

A selection of posters from the 1980s and 1990s by the anonymous collective targets museums, galleries, curators, writers, and artists seen as either responsible for or complicit in the exclusion of women and non-white artists from mainstream exhibitions and publications. On view through September 10, 2021.

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Tenuous Room: A Project by Magali Reus

with text by artist Magali Reus
and Nasher Curator Catherine Craft

In her second major US show, Dutch-born, London-based artist Magali Reus presents an installation that examines the relationships between people and objects through the distortion of common images. 

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A collage of family photos on a canvas with text the says Fill Dirt and Earthgro

The Controversy

The Egyptian Pavilion and the Venice Biennale

Drawings by William Powhida; essay by Paddy Johnson 

This paired essay and drawing story examines controversies at the Venice Biennale and the Egyptian Pavilion that highlight issues of inaccurate representation, lack of transparency, and the undermining of suffering.

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A drawing of a blue shipwrecked boat from Libya

Sculptures: Elmgreen & Dragset

Queer Figurations in the Sculpture of Elmgreen & Dragset by David J. Getsy

David J. Getsy writes about the queer attitudes that infuse Elmgreen & Dragset's sculptural practice and how their exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center highlights a queer stance toward the universality of sculpture.

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A pregnant white maid and a boy hiding in a fireplace

Barry X Ball

by Jeremy Strick

Barry X Ball reimagines and transforms historical artworks with the help of 3D-printing and stone-cutting technology. Jeremy Strick writes on the artist's materials and processes and introduces his January 2020 exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center.

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A ten-foot white onyx sculpture of two adults, one falling in the foreground and one appearing to support their weight from the back

Sweet Pass Sculpture Park Revels in Looseness

By Eve Hill-Agnus

Artists and partners Trey Burns and Tamara Johnson co-founded Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, an outdoor space for emerging and mid-career artists to exhibit their works on a temporary basis. Eve Hill-Agnus writes about the couple's foundations and how the idea for the park originated, as well as the future of the space.

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Sculpture in a field, a flat board with sixteen holes, supported by two legs

Nicole Eisenman's Sketch for a Fountain

by Arthur Peña

Artist Arthur Peña speaks with Nicole Eisenman about her work Sketch for a Fountain, a recent acquisition to the Nasher Collection, made possible through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists and the Green Family Collection, and on view in the Nasher Garden through March 2020. 

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Nicole Eisenman Sketch for a Fountain

Sterling Ruby: Sculpture

Organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center, Sterling Ruby: Sculpture is the first museum survey of Ruby’s work in the medium featuring nearly thirty sculptures ranging from the intimate to the monumental. The exhibition will be on view at the Nasher February 2 – April 21, 2019, and will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue featuring a new essay, “Sterling Ruby and the Transcendent Life of Objects,” by Nasher Chief Curator, and curator of the exhibition, Jed Morse. Parts of his catalogue essay have been excerpted and adapted here.

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Sterling Ruby

An Artistic Partnership

by Walburga Krupp

The sudden death in 1943 of Arp’s wife, the artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp, shattered a relationship that began with their first acquaintance in Zurich in 1915 and had developed in multiple ways during the French years (1926-1942), when it had become even closer and stronger, both artistically and personally. Arp’s lament in a letter to Taeuber-Arp’s sister—“Art doubtless bound us together, but it also robbed us of a great deal”1—makes art the core of their partnership. In that he stylized it as a higher power, he was able to think of Taeuber-Arp and himself as its acolytes, who willingly followed its dictates. For him, after her death, it was an elementary strategy for coming to terms with his loss. Art continued to be the defining constant of his life, and Taeuber-Arp would always remain present in his work.2

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Duo-Drawing

From Steel to Concrete: Head of a Woman

by Catherine Craft, Ph.D.

In March 2016, I traveled to Paris to participate in a conference devoted to the sculpture of Pablo Picasso held at the Muse´e Picasso. It took place during the museum’s acclaimed exhibition of Picasso’s three-dimensional work co-organized with the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Raymond and Patsy Nasher collection includes seven sculptures by Picasso, four of which played important roles in the recent wave of interest in this aspect of the artist’s work.

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Places for Sculpture: Kettle's Yard

by Stephanie Madewell

The bell pull at Kettle’s Yard is the first clue to the place: a hefty rope with a thick knot at the end that suspends a weathered wooden disc, like a giant bead on a string. It’s unclear if the wooden object was made or found, but it is clear it was chosen. The tour guide will ask someone to volunteer to ring the bell. Pulling it, a melodious gong sounds, and then there’s the tap-tap of quick footsteps as someone comes to open the door.

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Orpheus Unsung

With a new sound, Orpheus Unsung delivers an old, timeless truth

By Catherine Womack

For millennia, Orpheus has channeled the power of music through his lyre and his voice, taming the underworld and conquering death itself. Now, thanks to composer and electric guitarist Steven Mackey’s wild imagination and talent, the ancient mythical figure has a new melodic weapon: a custom Tom Anderson electric guitar, deployed in a dynamic work called Orpheus Unsung. At the Nasher this October, the piece will be performed in the second half of the evening’s program, preceded by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s more sparse, but no less dramatic, Galgenlieder (1996).

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Why Sculpture Now

Excerpt from Nasher Prize Dialogues in London, 2015

On October 11, 2016 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Nasher hosted its first Nasher Prize Dialogue, a panel discussion in association with the Henry Moore Institute called “Why Sculpture Now?” which explored the position of sculpture within art practice today. The conversation was broadcast live around the world on Periscope. “Why Sculpture Now?” featured panelists Okwui Enwezor, Director of the Haus Der Kunst, Munich and Nasher Prize juror; artist and Nasher Prize juror Phyllida Barlow; artists Michael Dean and Eva Rothschild; and Nasher Sculpture Center Chief Curator Jed Morse. The panel was moderated by Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies at the Henry Moore Institute.

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Panelists Eva Rothschild, Jed Morse, Phyllida Barlow, Okwui Enwezor, Michael Dean, and Lisa Le Feuvre partake in a discussion

Sculpture + History

Excerpt from Nasher Prize Dialogues in Dallas, 2018

On March 6, 2017 the Nasher hosted one of its ongoing Nasher Prize Dialogues series, titled Sculpture + History. Taking place in Dallas, a city marked profoundly by the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and racial inequality, Nasher Prize Dialogues: Sculpture + History considered the complex ways in which sculpture tackles the past. Panelists included artists Alfredo Jaar, Jill Magid, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and lauren woods. The event was moderated by national art critic for Artnet News, Ben Davis, at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Excerpts from this discussion are included below.

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Panelists Ben Davis, Alfredo Jaar, lauren woods, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and Jill Magid  sit down and discuss Sculpture + History in Dallas 2018

The Public Place of Sculpture

Nasher Prize Dialogues: Excerpt from Mexico City 2017

On March 16, the Nasher Sculpture Center presented a talk in partnership with Museo Jumex in Mexico City called The Public Place of Sculpture. The talk considered socially-engaged sculpture in various modes, from social practice outright to objects which employ themes of monument and document and included artists Sanford Biggers (USA), Amalia Pica (Argentina), Damian Ortega (Mexico), and Pedro Reyes (Mexico) and was moderated by Nasher Prize juror and Curator of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, Pablo León de la Barra. The discussion centered on the historical role sculpture has played in public spaces and the dynamic and evolving ways it is currently presented, especially in light of the global political climate. Each artist presented a brief talk on their work which addresses these themes.

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Panelists Damian Ortega, Sanford Biggers, and Amalia Pica discussing The Public Place of Sculpture  in Mexico City

A New View: Harrow by artist Linnea Glatt

by Leigh Arnold

In the second installment of The Nasher’s series of essays highlighting public sculpture in Dallas, we turn our attention to a work that has been on view in downtown Dallas for more than 25 years. In a shady plaza across from the Omni Hotel at the intersection of Young and Market streets, Linnea Glatt’s large-scale Cor-Ten steel cone, titled Harrow, rotates around a sand-covered circular track, completing one revolution every 24 hours.

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In the Archive: Stiftung Arp, Berlin

Curator Catherine Craft, Ph. D. shares insights on the daily life of Jean Arp from her travels to the archives of artist in Berlin. 

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Collection Focus: Antoine Pevsner

An Abstact Realist

Constructivism, an artistic movement born during the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution, embraced abstraction as a means to represent intangible attributes of the universe at large. Amid social and political upheaval, Russian artists like Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner interpreted abstraction as the highest form of creative expression, a bridge to a more genuine reality based on scientific aspiration and spiritual transcendence. Pevsner, in particular, sought to employ a formal language that examined the visual relationship between positive and negative space, as well as movement and time.

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Antoine Pevsner

Nasher Prize Dialogues: Artists & Authorship

Reference, Relationships and Appropriation in Contemporary Sculptural Practice

The following excerpt is from a panel discussion presented in partnership with The Common Guild and Glasgow International 2018 on May 2, 2018 at the Trades Hall of Glasgow as part of the Nasher Prize Dialogues series. Speakers included artists Christine Borland, Sam Durant, Mark Leckey, and Director of The Common Guild, Katrina Brown.

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Nasher Prize Dialogues at the Trades Hall of Glasgow

NP Dialogues: Performance As Sculpture

Ragnar Kjartansson, Theaster Gates, and Markús Þór Andrésson in conversation

Artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Theaster Gates discuss the role that performance plays in their respective practices in a Nasher Prize Dialogues talk in Reykjavik, Iceland.

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Ragnar Kjartansson, Theaster Gates, and Markús Þór Andrésson in conversation

Alternative Art Fairs

Julie Baumgardner talks with leading voices in the burgeoning, international alternative art fair scene.

In April, during Dallas Art Fair weekend, the Nasher will present a 360 Speaker Series panel discussion: Going Rogue: Alternative Art Fairs. The talk will explore how pop-ups, gallery weekends, and alternative art fairs are innovating the market and offering collectors new ways to discover and engage with artists. At a time when established fairs abound, we consider events that disrupt, enhance, or even become the industry standard. Here for The Nasher, seasoned culture writer Julie Baumgardner chats with some of the leading voices in the alternative art fair scene.

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Aida Muluneh, 'All in one'

Chalet Dallas

Conversation with Piero Golia and Edwin Chan

Nasher Assistant Curator, Leigh Arnold, spoke with Chan and Golia about Chalet Dallas and how they will adapt it to its new, vastly different environs in Renzo Piano’s Nasher gallery. What follows is a condensed version of their conversation, which has been edited for flow.

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Piero Golia and Edwin Chan in the Chalet Hollywood

Catching Up With Diana Al-Hadid

The Nasher’s Communication Director Lucia Simek caught up with Diana recently and chatted about this most recent work, as well as what’s up next for the artist.

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Artist to Artist

Kate Yoland & Mai-Thu Perret

British artist and recent UTD CentralTrak resident, Kate Yoland, interviewed Mai-Thu Perret for the website Art This Week when Sightings: Mai-Thu Perret opened in March. The two artists had a fascinating conversation that ranged from Perret’s notions of utopia and the conflicts in the Middle East that inspired the work in the show, to the ideas behind the two performances she will stage here at the Nasher in June. 

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Mai-Thu Perret, Les guérillères III, 2016

2017 Nasher Prize Laureate Pierre Huyghe

An Essay by Curator Catherine Craft

The 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate Pierre Huyghe has profoundly expanded the parameters of sculpture through artworks encompassing a variety of materials and disciplines, bringing cinema, music, and dance into contact with science and philosophy and incorporating time-based elements as diverse as microclimates, ice, rituals, parades, robotics, computer programs, games, dogs, bees, or microorganisms.

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Untilled, 2011-12 (detail)

Students Respond to Chalet Dallas

by Colleen Borsh / Manager of School and Family Programs / Nasher Sculpture Center

On October 17, 2015, the Nasher hosted 40 high school and college students from schools around North Texas to be part of an interactive learning experience in Chalet Dallas. Students were invited to read about the project, then meet in the space to discuss with other students and create art with artists. We asked four participants to share their take on the day.

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A student introduces herself during Student Chalet

Pablo Picasso Flowers In A Vase

by Jed Morse / Chief Curator / Nasher Sculpture Center

Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection On the Road

This fall, one of the most extraordinary works in the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Pablo Picasso’s Flowers in a Vase, will travel to New York to be featured in a landmark exhibition of the artist’s sculptures at The Museum of Modern Art.

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Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman

by Catherine Craft / Associate Curator / Nasher Sculpture Center

Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection Highlight

The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection is fortunate to number among its holdings seven sculptures by Pablo Picasso, several of which will be on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center this fall.
 

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The Traveling King

by Melisa Durkee / Collections Registrar / Nasher Sculpture Center

As a Collections Registrar, I am seldom able to form relationships with the pieces I care for in the same manner as a curator, artist, or patron. The stories that I learn about an individual artwork are typically not revealed to the public, and a relationship forms through a particular level of intimacy. 

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Jeff Koons sculpture | Stainless steel bust of King Louis XVI

Giuseppe Penone’s Garden of Fluid Sculptures

by Catherine Craft / Associate Curator / Nasher Sculpture Center

Between 2003 and 2007, the sculptor Giuseppe Penone created Il Giardino delle Sculture Fluide (The Garden of Fluid Sculptures) for La Venaria Reale near Turin, Italy. Born in nearby Garessio in 1947, Penone is widely regarded as one of Italy’s leading contemporary artists. 

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