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Texas art gets its due in major San Antonio exhibition

The 250-year overview is the most comprehensive ever on the subject, but you only have till Aug. 25 to check it out.

The oldest of Texas' major cities, San Antonio, is certainly the best place to mount an exhibition titled "The Art of Texas: 250 Years." The Witte Museum has a long tradition of collecting Texas art in addition to its natural and historical collections. And now — voila! — a vast exhibition at the museum and a very heavy book are literally the most comprehensive ever to deal with the subject of Texas art.

The book will be around a long time and is, to tell the truth, quite independent of the exhibition, but I wanted to let everyone know that the exhibition will not travel. You need to get there by Aug. 25 to see works culled from public and private collections throughout the state.

R. Vernon Hunter's 1928 work Cowboy is on loan from the Collection of the Panhandle-Plains...
R. Vernon Hunter's 1928 work Cowboy is on loan from the Collection of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. (Witte Museum)

Mounted in galleries that are not up to the standards of Austin, Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth museums (with rubber wall guards, airport carpeting and less-than-ideal lighting), the exhibition has a large selection of work that is at once generous and full of surprises. As I suspected, it is very strong in what is now called "early Texas art," and it gets weaker and weaker the closer we get to the present, when we are, as a state, at our best and most diverse.

Quibbling aside, there has never before been an exhibition of its scope and ambition, and it is definitely worth a visit. As many of us contemplate the creation of a new Museum of Texas Art (MoTA) in Dallas' Fair Park, we have a lot to learn from this exhibition and its book.

I will review the book in the fall. The exhibition is at the Witte Museum; visit wittemuseum.org for hours and information.

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