Welcome to yet another day of 100°+ temperatures in Austin, Texas! Definitely an air-conditioned museum day. So I walked a few blocks up Congress Avenue to the Austin Museum of Art, where three exhibits are running through mid-September:
- Good Design: stories from herman miller is a touring exhibition featuring design classics from the Michigan furniture company, Herman Miller. I learned that “Good Design Explores, Inquires, Engages and Endures.” So I Explored the various displays. I Inquired if photographs were permitted (no). I was Engaged by Ergonomic Chair Design (and I now covet the Embody Chair). And I decided that Alexander Girard’s famous Eden design has Endured:
- New Works: The Mona Lisa Project features interpretations of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Photographer Rino Pizzi invited 16 Austin female artists to mimic the famous smile and pose and sit for a portrait session. The photographs were then printed to a variety of surfaces and personalized by each artist. Each interpretation was quite creative. I especially enjoyed this exhibit after seeing the original painting at the Louvre earlier this summer:
- Collection Selections features works from the AMOA collection, including Andy Warhol, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Charles Umlauf, and Dale Chihuly. Funny how I had been thinking about each of those artists during my summer travels….
Recently the AMOA board announced that they will not be renewing their downtown lease after October and will instead focus on their Laguna Gloria location near Lake Austin. That’s too bad…it’s been nice to have an art museum in downtown Austin.