Future Exhibitions at AMOA- Downtown
 

OPENS ON February 13, 2010  ON VIEW THROUGH May 9, 2010

American Letterpress: The Art of the Hatch Show Print

Like all art, the posters of Hatch Show Print in Nashville, Tennessee, are designed to stop us in our tracks, draw us in for a closer look, and make us pause for a moment of reflection. Pure artistry and masterful composition are what make Hatch posters part of the story of American art and culture. Snappy graphics, punchy titles, humor, and irony are what make them irresistible.

Hatch Show Print, founded in 1879, is still a working letterpress and design shop, creating posters today using the same letterpress methods as yesterday. The technology at this Nashville institutions has never changed, only the faces of the customers: from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello, Buddy Guy to Bruce Springsteen, Etta James to Emmylou Harris, the Carter Family to Coldplay. While Hatch’s name is synonymous with the music business, its posters promoting football games, vaudeville shows, state fairs, stock car races, and picture shows reflect the breadth of American popular culture. American Letterpress: The Art of the Hatch Show Print illustrates the fascinating fusion of art with popular culture and music history. This visually compelling exhibition includes approximately 120 original posters (including authorized restrikes from vintage block and contemporary restrikes), 20 hard-carved wooden printing blocks, text panels and labels.

American Letterpress: the Art of Hatch Show Print, an exhibition created by Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in collaboration with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, is supported by America’s Jazz Heritage, A Partnership of the Wallace Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.

Also on view: Collection Selections   

New Works: Luke Savisky
AMOA’s New Works exhibition series introduces fresh contemporary art by innovative Austin artists. 

May 22 - August 15, 2010

Chris Jordan: Running the Numbers

In 2006, Jordan began a series of digital photographs that present contemporary American culture via statistics regarding American excess. Each image portrays a specific quantity of consumption or cultural value; two million plastic beverage bottles represent the number used in the U.S. every five minutes. Jordan portrays these statistics by incorporating them visually in large, intricately detailed photographic prints assembled from thousands of smaller images. “Chris Jordan’s photographs are not only mesmerizing to look at, they also engage the viewer... The result is an undeniable confrontation with our behavior and responsibility as human beings.” Curator of the Museum of Art, Keith Wells, said.

The exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of this internationally-known artist’s work. It will focus on Jordan’s recent body of works, “Running the Numbers” (2006-present), and will also include examples of the previous series of straight, documentary photographs, “Intolerable Beauty” (2003-2005).

Organized  by the Museum of Art/Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

Also on view: Collection Selections   

New Works: Sunyong Chung
AMOA’s New Works exhibition series introduces fresh contemporary art by innovative Austin artists. 

August 28 - November 14, 2010

Also on view: Collection Selections   

New Works: Okay Mountain
AMOA’s New Works exhibition series introduces fresh contemporary art by innovative Austin artists. 

Image credit: Hatch Prints, Johnny Cash, Print, Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution * Chris Jordan, Recycling Yard #6, Seattle, 2004, 2004, Epson Ultrachrome pigmented inkjet , 44 x 59 inches, Collection of the Austin Museum of Art, 2008.1, © Chris Jordan

Exhibitions are subject to change.