Sparrow’s Song by Lani Vlaanderen from the Coors Western Art Show |
Out & About
The Urban Gallery has opened on Main Street in Scottsdale, AZ. The gallery specializes in black-and-white photographs and functional art furniture.… James Ratliff Gallery in Sedona, AZ, has moved to an expanded space at the Hozho Center. The gallery specializes in contemporary art and represents David K. John and Louis De Mayo, among others…. The new Houston Center for Contemporary Craft opens next month with exhibitions, workshops, gallery talks, and a retail shop…. S. Hudson’s Calvert Gallery at the Opera House opens this month in Calvert, TX…. The new Meadows Museum building opens this month on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX…. The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, IN, has received a $1 million contribution from Michael L. Eagle, vice president of manufacturing for Eli Lilly and Co.
Coors Show Breaks Records
The annual Coors Western Art Show, part of the National Western Stock Show in Denver, CO, opened with an intent-to-purchase sale on January 4. More than 800 collectors packed the show, and over $225,000 worth of artwork was sold on opening night—topping last year’s opening-night sales by $30,000. The Mary Belle Grant Award, given annually to the artist who best exemplifies the western way of life through their work, went to photographer Barbara Van Cleve.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
Top 25 Museums
Travel Holiday magazine recently published the results of their nationwide museum survey. The magazine selected the top 25 venues based mainly on the art, display, and architecture of each museum. More than a third of the museums chosen were in the West or Southwest, and California led the entire field with four museums making the top 25. The museums located west of the Mississippi include the Menil Collection, Houston, TX (ranked second behind the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC), Denver Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Norton Simon Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, St. Louis Art Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Auction Report
A Navajo man’s wearing blanket from the 19th century sold for $34,500 at Skinner’s January 6 auction of American Indian and Ethnographic Art in Bolton, MA. Other top sellers included a 19th-century Southwest polychrome lidded pottery olla, which fetched $17,500—well over the $4,000 estimate—and a large Southwest pottery bowl from Cotchiti Pueblo, which sold for $11,500.
New Director at CAA Museum
Michael Duty is the new executive director of the Cowboy Artists of America Museum in Kerrville, TX. He succeeds Natalee Nunn, who is retiring. Duty comes to the museum from San Francisco, where he was most recently executive director of the California Historical Society. He has also been executive director of the Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY, and founding executive director of the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, IN.
Palice Pavilion
The Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona celebrates the opening of its new Palice Pavilion with an elegant fundraising gala event March 14. Ten rooms of historic property have been remodeled into a unique gallery for housing the museum’s Art of the Americas. Call 520.624.2333 for ticket information.
Featured in March 2001