"Passing Storm Over the Sierra Nevadas," an 1870 oil on canvas by
Albert Bierstadt, is part of the American collection at the San Antonio
Museum
of Art.
UTSA ID = free admission to San Antonio Museum of Art
(June 27, 2002)--UTSA students and staff with UTSA ID will receive free admission to the San Antonio Museum of Art from July 1, 2002 to June 30, 2003. Since opening in 1981, the museum has become home to the region's finest display of Greek and Roman antiquities, Asian art, Latin American and folk art, and American paintings.
The blend of glass elevators, skylights and skywalk in the former Lone Star Brewery's castle-like building is a sight no one can afford to miss. Built in 1884, the 104,000-square-foot facility houses art collections ranging from ancient to contemporary and also includes decorative, European, Near Eastern, Islamic and Oceanic art.
The Latin American Collection, which features pre-Columbian, folk, Spanish Colonia/Republican, and modern/contemporary art, is housed in its own wing, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art. The museum, located at 200 West Jones Avenue, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
A selection of drawings from the museum's permanent collection is now showing for the first time through Oct. 20 in "Flight or Fancy? The Secret Life of Charles A.A. Dellschau." The Focus Gallery exhibition features more than 40 drawings and an historically important notebook Dellschau created for his drawings. A highlight of the exhibit, the notebook is on loan from the Menil Collection in Houston.
In 1899, Charles A.A. Dellschau was nearly 70 years old and, like thousands of Americans, was fascinated with flight. He spent his last 23 years creating more than 5,000 intricate drawings -- an average of one every day and a half -- of airships and collages of news clippings about aviation. In all, the long-time butcher drafted designs for more than eighty different aircraft, from all different angles.
Complete with retractable landing gear, detailed motors and sleeping quarters, Dellschau's fantastical flying machines were drawn in flight as well as on the ground, and were often centered in a circus-like frame. They were all numbered and dated, sometimes with lengthy inscriptions referring back to the years he spent in California after emigrating from his native Germany. The drawings were bound into 12 large notebooks and nearly lost forever.
After Dellschau's death in 1923 at age 93, the notebooks remained in his family's Houston home. A fire in the 1960s led fire department officials to order the house cleared of excess debris -- a category into which Dellschau's notebooks fell. An anonymous garbage collector salvaged the notebooks from a curbside heap and sold them to a second-hand shop,where they were found by an employee of art patron Dominique de Menil.
Since then, the drawings have been included in numerous exhibitions of self-taught artists and acquired by such museums as the Menil Collection in Houston, the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Witte Museum in San Antonio and the San Antonio Museum of Art. The Dellschau exhibit is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joan and Herb Kelleher Foundation.
In addition to unique exhibits, the San Antonio Museum of Art offers poetry readings, concerts, storytelling dance performances, lectures, family days and art workshops. The mission of the museum is to educate by collecting, presenting and preserving the significant artistic achievements of the world's cultures from ancient times to the present and, through aesthetic and educational experiences, develop a deeper understanding of human cultures, values and traditions for visitors of all ages.
For more information, call (210) 978-8100 or go to San
Antonio Museum of Art Web site.
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TODAY'S HEADLINES:
Lecture
discusses Mexican American middle-class identity
UTSA
Archives to collect flood photographs and stories
One
city, two cultures, much to learn
Institute
of Texan Cultures presents "Tornadoes: Into the Storm"
July
19 selected as make-up day for class hours lost due to weather
UTSA ID = free admission to San Antonio Museum of Art
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2002