Valerie Cassel Oliver speaks at Dougherty Arts Center
Wednesday, May 4, 4:30 pm

Valerie Cassel Oliver, Associate Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, will present a slide lecture titled "Radical Presence/Black Conceptualism in Contemporary Art" with a Q & A period to follow. Valerie Cassel Oliver most recently organized the group exhibition Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970. Since joining the Contemporary Arts Museum in 2000, Oliver has curated a number of exhibition projects including the first U.S. major solo museum exhibition of painter, Ghada Amer; solo exhibitions by Bill Lundberg (2002), Sanford Biggers (2002), and Anne Wilson (2004). In 2003, Oliver organized the exhibition Splat Boom Row! The Influence of Cartoons in Contemporary Art (2003) which toured to several venues in both the United States and Europe. Her forthcoming exhibitions include a survey exhibition of the work of sculptor, Leonardo Drew and smaller focused solo exhibitions of work by Su-en Wong, and Demetrius Oliver. Prior to assuming her position at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Oliver was the director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1996-2001), and a Program Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-1995). In 2000, she served as a co-curator of the Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Pics and Clips : An Evening of Selected Videos
with commentary by Regine Basha and Michael Smith
Arthouse at the Jones Center, Thursday, May 5, 7pm

Arthouse has brought back Pics & Clips! Here's the line-up:
Cory Arcangel I Beige, All the Parts from Simon and Garfunkel's 1984 Central Park Performance Where Garfunkel Sings With His Hands In His Pockets, 2004 (Running time: 6.33 min)
Jason Simon, Paul Schrader's Bag, 2003 (Running time: 10 min)
Kerry Tribe, Double, 2001 (Running time: 10:25 min)
Kota Ezawa, The Simpson Verdict, 2002 (Running time: 3 min)
Trent Harris, The Beaver Trilogy, 1979-1984 (Running time: 84 min)

For more information on each of the films, check out the Arthouse website: www.arthousetexas.org

Congratulations, Dave!

Dave Bryant, an Austin-based artist and co-director of the Fresh Up Club is the recipient of the Earthling Award 2005. This $1,000 award is a portion of artist Harrell Fletcher's recent Alpert Award in Visual Arts. The other 2005 recipients are: Kenneth Mroczek (New York, NY), Alyse Emdur (New York, NY), Michael Loggins (San Francisco, CA), Emily Prince (San Francisco, CA), Cleveland Leffler (Berkeley, CA), Dana Dart-McLean (Portland, OR), Jess Hilliard (Prospect, OH), Hope Hilton (Atlanta, GA), Santiago De Paoli (Atlanta, GA), and Anna Callahan (Seattle. WA).

Inaugurated in 1994, the Alpert Award in the Arts provides annual fellowships of $50,000 to five artists, one each, in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre and the visual arts. Administered by California Institute of the Arts and funded by the Herb Alpert Foundation, the Awards support individuals working and living in the United States who have demonstrated exceptional talent and commitment to their craft, are generating an important body of work, and are likely to be recognized, within their discipline, as artists shaping a vital voice, vision or language.