Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin
Panel discussion: October 31, 2015, 1pm
Blanton Museum of Art
200 East Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard
Austin, TX 78712
The Blanton Museum of Art will soon begin construction of Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin, a stand-alone, 2,715-square-foot stone structure, singular to Kelly’s career. In celebration, the museum will host a panel discussion on Kelly’s work on October 31, with leading scholars and curators from across the country.
Austin is the only building ever designed by Kelly, and once realized, it will become part of the Blanton’s permanent collection. The work will be sited on the museum’s grounds, and will include luminous colored glass windows, a totemic wood sculpture, and 14 black-and-white stone panels in marble, all designed by the artist. Kelly gifted the design concept for the work to the Blanton last January; completion of the project is slated for 2017.
The October 31 panel will feature internationally recognized scholars and curators, including Richard Shiff, the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin; Tricia Y. Paik, curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Carter Foster, the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawing at The Whitney Museum of American Art; and Gavin Delahunty, the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. The event will take place at the Blanton and will be moderated by Veronica Roberts, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, who is part of the team working to realize Austin. The program coincides with the publication of a major new monograph on Kelly produced by Phaidon Press. The book was created in close collaboration with the artist and is the first publication to cover his entire career, from the 1940s to today. It will highlight all of Kelly’s major works, including the Blanton’s Austin.
The Blanton currently holds a significant early canvas by Ellsworth Kelly, High Yellow (1960), a gift from novelist James A. Michener and his wife, Mari, as well as an untitled print gifted to the museum by Robert Rauschenberg. In celebration of the Blanton’s commitment to building Kelly’s Austin, David Booth has promised the museum a recent painting by the artist, Red Relief with White (2007), further deepening the Blanton’s Kelly collection.
*Ellsworth Kelly, Austin, 2015. Model; interior view, artist-designed building with installation of colored glass windows, marble panels, and redwood totem, 60 x 73 x 26.25 feet. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. © 2015 Ellsworth Kelly. Image courtesy the Blanton Museum of Art.
