In the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation\u2019s latest exhibition, portraiture escapes the traditional gilded frame to fill every corner of their Cedar Springs headquarters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The foundation was launched in 2014 by impassioned art collectors from Oklahoma and focuses on arts education throughout the Southwest, with scholarships and philanthropic initiatives. Having relocated from their Chicago headquarters to Dallas in 2023 (they also have a free public exhibition space in Santa Fe, New Mexico), the couple have quickly immersed themselves in the local arts scene, loaning work from their vast collection to museums such as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the\u00a0Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Meadows Museum and the Crow Museum of Asian Art.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it is “Presence of Absence: Embodied Portraiture,” their yearly show at their HQ, that perhaps deserves the most attention. As the foundation collects such disparate genres as Spanish American art, post-War painting and sculpture, Japanese bamboo, and high-tech media work, the 65 works selected by collections manager Meagan\u00a0Robson and New York-based digital arts curator Kathleen Forde run the gamut \u2014 from classical saints from the 18th century to stage director Robert Wilson\u2019s digital video portrait of Lady Gaga dressed in elegant Empire style.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The jumping-off point for the show was R. Luke DuBois\u2019 Hindsight is Always 20\/20, a series of compelling letterpress prints highlighting the rhetoric of State of the Union speeches delivered by 41 U.S. presidents. Their oft-repeated words give a shorthand for our country, in the style of an eye exam chart.<\/p>\n
“Presence” is the second exhibition mounted since the foundation made its new home in Texas. The concept of portraiture came from the curators working with the Telfair Museums in Savannah, which will mount a show devoted to the subject in 2027. Troubleshooting digital works and mixing genres allowed Robson and Forde to refine such a vast and eclectic collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Every piece has an interesting and diverse story,” Robson says, “and part of the fun is being able to go deep in their collection and find works that have never been displayed by artists like Rauschenberg and Henry Moore and have an excuse to bring them out of storage.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
“Presence of Absence: Embodied Portraiture” is open through Feb. 19 on the first Friday of every month from noon to 3 p.m. at the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation, 1925 Cedar Springs Road #205.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation\u2019s latest exhibition, portraiture escapes the traditional gilded frame to fill every…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":998517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,325797,290169,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-998516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-america","tag-dallas","tag-texas","tag-tp-visual-arts","tag-tp-dallas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117089320647112779","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/998517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}