Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I recently returned from Houston, where we hosted our spring Fine Arts Advisory Council meeting. Members traveled from across Texas—Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso and other locales—to gather in our state’s largest city, where we had the opportunity to dialogue about the work of the college in advancing the future of the arts.
We kicked off our gathering with a reception at the Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino gallery, co-owned by UT alumna Allison Armstrong Ayers. The gallery hosted our group for a private viewing of an exhibition of works by Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora. Some of the group had been lucky enough to see more work by de la Mora at the Museo Jumex in Mexico City just two weeks prior during a visit with Landmarks leadership and supporters.
We held our business meeting at Bayou Bend, the home of Miss Ima Hogg, where we had the opportunity to take in its 19th-century collection of antiques and early American portraits. We also visited the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to see Frida: The Making of an Icon, an exhibition curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the MFAH and founding director of the Museum’s International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Ramírez has deep ties to UT, as she established the Latin American art program in the Huntington Art Gallery, which later became the Blanton Museum of Art, and she served as the curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton.
At our business meeting we discussed our pathway to career programs, including our life design and Arts Administration Fellowship programs in the college. We also discussed the continued importance of support for scholarships to ensure our undergraduate and graduate students are set for success as artists and creatives by minimizing their student debt. We highlighted the impact of our faculty advancing research and how our college continues to be focused on leading our field as an incubator of new works, scholarship and pedagogies.
We got to spend two days focused on exploring the ways the arts bring us all together to contemplate our histories, advance our struggles and anchor economies of care and well-being. I left Houston inspired and feeling a boost of confidence that our work will continue with focus, vision and generosity.
Sincerely,
