The Visual Arts Center (VAC) at the University of Texas campus opened just last year, but it has already made a huge impact on Austin’s art world.
In only 12 months, the VAC has presented 20 groundbreaking exhibitions, including a collaborative drawing project and performance by LA scenesters, Lucky Dragon, a student-curated show exploring the fraught and tender representations of animals in contemporary art and a project presented by UT faculty on gender and sexuality in African Art.
Also of note is the outstanding visiting artist program that garnered them the Austin Critics’ Table Award under the “Work of Art” category for Amanda Ross-Ho’s meditation on art production, “Untitled Nothing Factory.”
Besides art exhibits, the VAC organizes panel discussions, film screenings and experimental musical performances all in an effort to promote, as director Jade Walker describes, “meaningful connections.”
Facilitating these connections demands a fluid environment. Located directly in the Art Building, the VAC brings short-term contemporary gallery exhibitions that reach far across campus and into the Austin community at large.
San Antonio architects Lake | Flato are responsible for the staggering streamlined space – think white box with white walls, natural light streaming in from punched-out windows and vast vertical gallery spaces.
The five galleries spread across two floors flow through one another, encouraging conversation among the various exhibits and allowing the cross-pollination of student, faculty and creative thinkers in the Austin arts community.
“The VAC’s diverse programs are determined by the unique and knowledgeable faculty and students within the Department of Art and Art History and augmented by the many artistic initiatives led by alumni and friends of the department,” Walker explains. “This creative energy fuels an exhibition program that encourages the promotion of new ideas in the arts with each gallery participating in establishing this discourse.”
The VAC is now preparing for the upcoming year’s programs and collaborations. And if last year is any indication, this year is sure to challenge and thoughtfully engage.
The fall semester opens with the site-specific installation of the work of New York artist Mika Tajima. Curated by the Blanton Museum’s Aimee Chang, Tajima explores built environments such as office work sites relative to the human activities these spaces elicit.
The upstairs gallery will present “Queer State(s),” an exhibition that presents the work of 16 artists who engage in and transgress notions of “queerness.” Gay and straight alike, this exhibition seeks to expand and abstract our understanding of the performance of sexuality through visual representation.
The exhibition is curated by UT curatorial fellow, Noah Simblist, and Fort Worth artist and curator, David Willburn, and it will be accompanied by a day-long symposium featuring critics and scholars engaged in queer studies.
Besides all the new opportunities for exhibitions and performances, the VAC’s proximity to student activity is what makes it so essential to the UT Art Department.
Large windows that look into the gallery spaces allow students to witness the progress of installation while they walk to and from classes. Often in this past year, one would peer in and see artist-in-residents Ross-Ho or Ry Rocklen instructing a band of students on carpet cutting or guiding them through the process of papermaking.
The integration among students, faculty, artists and the public is what makes the VAC feel less like a stodgy exhibition space and more like a playing ground for experience, a laboratory of art made largely by and for the University of Texas community.
For more information about the Visual Arts Center, please visit www.utvac.org, or call 512-471-1108.
