
I came upon Thomas Struth’s photograph, Museo del Prado 5, Madrid (2005). Struth is a well-known German photographer, and this piece is part of his acclaimed Museum series, which depicts individuals as they view various works of art. This photograph shows a group of uniformed students standing in front of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1565) and not a single one of these adolescents looks at the painting.

The Nasher Museum recently welcomed MJ Sharp for a lecture and we got to learn a little about her love of the South, her nighttime photography techniques, and everything else…including her kitchen sink.

I have been working to catalogue the collection and create artist files that correspond to the artwork files already in our database. Poring through these files is an interesting process. You’re bound to find plenty of dry documents that tell you nothing about the artist or their background but, at the same time, you could come across a treasure. It was the act of searching through these files, and a little online research, that led me to Ai Weiwei.

This week’s Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Wangechi Mutu. Respected arts writer Tyler Green conducts a thoughtful interview with the artist on intriguing topics.

DUMA was located on East Campus, housed in the Friedl Building, where the Cultural Anthropology Department now resides. In 1969, the building was remodeled from the Women’s College Faculty Apartments and Science classrooms to house the little museum that could.

I could not be more excited about this upcoming exhibition, and not just because I was involved in the process. The Human Position will contain works from the Nasher Museum’s permanent collection that have not been recently displayed and will also bring together pieces that at first appear drastically different but actually have common themes and elements.

Within the dizzying spectrum of modern and contemporary artworks featured in the Nasher Museum’s current exhibitions, which sample everything from Ansel Adams’s distilled landscapes to Wangechi Mutu’s supernatural mediations on human form, a 5th-century BCE calyx krater may seem something of an outlier. How, you wonder, could the ancient Athenians have created anything even remotely comparable to the serene Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico or other-worldly Funkalicious fruit field?

Anthony Goicolea’s black and white digital combination print, Low Tide, 2007, shows an ocean bay besmirched by the hands of progress. Surrounded by natural rock formations, the once idyllic cove has been invaded by alien machinery.

As a senior in my final weeks of college, I am frequently asked the dreaded question: “What are you doing next year?” While I do not have an answer yet, I can now say with certainty that a career in stone carving is out of the question.