The Gallery at UTA Celebrates 25 Years of Art, Teaching

To celebrate The Gallery at UTA’s silver anniversary, officials organized a five-week exhibition in the fall of 2011, showcasing the work of 25 artists and highlighting the legacy of former instructors and gallery directors.

The show, “Silver: 25th Anniversary Exhibition,” ran from September to mid-October. Artists in the exhibition included many leading national and international figures such as Tre Arenz, Connie Arismendi, Frances Bagley, Julie Bozzi, Mel Chin, James Drake, Vernon Fisher, Linnea Glatt, John Hernandez, Annette Lawrence, Hung Liu, César Augusto Martínez, David McGee, Vicki Meek, Celia Alvarez Muñoz, Robyn O’Neil, Tom Orr, Philipp Scholz Rittermann, Ann Stautberg and Vincent Valdez.

“We examined the list of artists who had exhibited here and selected ones who were included in multiple exhibitions under different directors,” said Benito Huerta, exhibit curator and gallery director since 1997. “Others were selected because they were fairly new on the art scene when they were originally shown here, but are now making an impact on a national level.”

For multimedia installation artist Celia Alvarez Muñoz (a part-time adjunct instructor in the Department of Art & Art History from 1985-1989), the milestone was a reminder of how her own career blossomed when the gallery, then called the Center for Research of Contemporary Art, first opened.

“It was a very experimental space and it was just right for me,” she said. “They were bringing in some top artists to show and introduce what a gallery or a research center could do. I responded a lot to the nature of the exhibitions, which were more installations than an ordinary hung show.”

During the closing celebration of the 25th anniversary show, former director Al Harris-Fernandez looked around the room and reminisced on his contribution to creating a unique home for the work of prominent artists from across the nation.

“[The Gallery at UTA] went beyond being a teaching gallery,” he said. “It’s an exhibition space that has national and regional impact. It’s not only providing a service to students, but it is engaging the contemporary art community.”

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