VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Glassell School of Art presents the  2010 Core Exhibition.  

The exhibition features the work of current artists-in-residence Nick Barbee, Natasha Bowdoin, Jillian Conrad, Lily Cox-Richard, Steffani Jemison, Julie Ann Nagle, Kelly Sears, and James Sham II. Published in conjunction with the exhibition, the 2010 Core Yearbook includes essays by this year´s critical studies residents Regan Golden-McNerney, Kurt Mueller, and Wendy Vogel.

The opening reception Friday, March 5, 6:30pm-8:30pm;The exhibition is on view through April 16, 2010.

In the fall of 1982 the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, launched the Core Program. An artists´ residency, created to address a void both within the school and in the larger art community, the Core Program was conceived as a laboratory for young artists, offering studio space in which residents could spend up to two years devoting themselves to research and development.

Under the leadership of Allan Hacklin, the program was designed to be an open, critical environment, without academic structures, where visiting artists, curators, and critics would have access to the studios, while at the same time offering the artists in residence access to the larger art world. Key to the success of the program, however, was the interaction among the resident artists themselves.

For many of these residents, the Core Program was an important step toward recognition and independence, or as former Core Fellow Santiago Cucullu has stated: "It was here that my studio practice and the nuts and bolts of working as an artist developed. . . . I learned that it was I myself who had the last word."

Within a decade of its founding, the Core Program had become an internationally recognized platform, drawing artists from around the world to Houston. Joseph Havel took over the administration of the program in 1991 and direction of the Glassell School of Art in 1995; as the program matured, it evolved in response to the growing globalization of the contemporary scene.

In 1998 new fellowships were created to promote critical writing, drawing to Houston writers whose talents and ambitions matched those of the resident artists. Today artists, writers, and visitors to the program come together for a free exchange of ideas and to create what Havel has called "a community of thinkers," generating dialogues through their visual and written works that speak to the aesthetic, social, and political concerns of our times.

Pictured:  Julie Ann Nagle, Viola La Philosophe (detail of skull), 2009, shovel spade, oak, poplar, tennis balls, plastic barrel, steel, rubber belt, salt water and sand.