The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is the largest university art museum in the country and the third largest museum in Texas. Home to one of the most comprehensive collections of art in Central Texas, this museum welcomes and engages all visitors by offering personal, extraordinary experiences that connect art and ideas to stimulate the thriving, creative community that is Austin, Texas and beyond.
The Blanton was established in 1963 as the University Art Museum. On April 30, 2006, the museum opened the new facility on the University's campus, renamed the Blanton Museum of Art in honor of its former chairman, Jack S. Blanton.
The Blanton's permanent collection of more than 17,000 works is recognized for its European paintings, an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings, and modern and contemporary American and Latin American art. For more information please call (512) 471-7324.
Location:
MLK at Congress, Austin, Texas.
Public Tours:
The museum offers themed tours on the collection and special exhibitions every Saturday and Sunday at 2 PM, every Thursday at 12:30 PM, Third Thursdays at 7:00 and 8 PM, and during B scene on the first Friday of every month.
Admission:
Free for members, current UT faculty/students/staff, and children 12 & under; adults $7; seniors (65+) $5; college students with valid ID $3; youth (ages 13–21) $3.
Note: Except for Third Thursdays, the museum will now close at 5 PM on Thursdays. Admission remains free every Thursday including Third Thursdays.
Exhibitions:
Atelier 2008: Selections from the Department of Art and Art History Faculty, The University of Texas at Austin
April 19 - June 8, 2008
At The University of Texas at Austin are many respected artists of national and international reputation who successfully create their own bodies of work while teaching and supervising the work of the next generation of artists. The Blanton's popular faculty exhibition resumes in the new museum on a triennial basis. This year's guest curator James Elaine, curator of the Hammer Projects series at the Hammer Museum of Art at UCLA, selects a diverse cross-section of styles and mediums from among the faculty's broad range of artistic production.
The Language of Prints
April 19 - August 17, 2008
Prints are the most frequently experienced but least understood works of art. In the history of art, and most exhibitions, the medium is usually presented in terms of its great masters, from Albrecht DÃrer through Jasper Johns, or explained solely in terms of technique. Instead, this exhibition explores the medium as a uniquely rich and largely collective system of expression a "language" with distinctive principles, persistent tendencies, and special processes that are shared across time and space. Planned to coincide with the annual meeting of the Print Council of America, the first ever in the state of Texas, the exhibition will feature around 100 of the collection's finest and most distinctive prints.
WorkSpace: In Katrina's Wake
Through May 25, 2008
How do artists respond to calamity? In New Orleans, many resident artists and a number of those observing from outside have been moved by the need for community relief, healing, and support and have directed their work to address these immediate social and spiritual concerns. Whether through the commissioning of new cultural experiences that provide public forums for discussion and reflection, the inauguration of creativity workshops to provide encouragement for young people, or simply the creation of works that attempt to define and document the experience of catastrophe, artists can be a valiant force in the recovery of community-wide health and the forging of a future vision. This group exhibition, the result of a year's research by curator Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, a former resident of the city, will feature film and video, drawings, photographs, and mixed media works by artists including Willie Birch (New Orleans), Paul Chan (New York), Dawn Dedeaux (New Orleans), Jana Napoli (New Orleans), Cauleen Smith (Boston), and others.
