Kunmara (Mumu Mike) Williams, Pitjantjajara language group. “We Don’t Need a Map (Mapa Wiya), 2017. Ink and acrylic on found map. Image courtesy of Fondation Opale, Lens, Switzerland.
The Menil Collection is hosting “Mapa Wiya (Your Map’s Not Needed): Australian Aboriginal Art from the Fondation Opale” through Feb. 2.
Meaning “no map” in the Pitjantjatjara language of the Central Australian desert region, the exhibition title is drawn from a recent drawing by artist Kunmanara (Mumu Mike) Williams (1952–2019), the first showing of his work in an American art museum. His recuperation of official government maps and postal bags is a pointed response to the foreign cartographies of the country that Australian Aboriginal peoples embody.
Country is the foundation for the autonomous ways of the Aboriginal peoples. Vast deserts and rainforests with their distinctive rock formations and water holes, and other meaningful spaces, including the land on which cities have been built — these are the diverse terrains of their lives. They are places in which the laws and primordial creations of ancestors are always present, where painfully violent colonial histories are memorialized, and potential futures are reclaimed in song and dance. Knowing the land, moving through it, and living with its deeply embedded song lines animate the rich visual expression of Aboriginal artists.
Reflecting on the long history of art making and different ways of Aboriginal peoples, “Mapa Wiya” highlights work created after the 1950s and includes more than 100 contemporary paintings, shields, hollow log coffins (larrakitj or lorrkkon), and engraved mother of pearl (lonka lonka or riji) held by the Fondation Opale in Lens, Switzerland, one of the most significant collections of Aboriginal art.
The exhibition showcases large, vibrant, and at times collaboratively painted works by internationally recognized artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (1932–2002), Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford (1922–2007), Emily Kame Kngwarreye (ca. 1910–1996), Gulumbu Yunupingu (1945–2012), John Mawurndjul (b. 1952), and Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri (b. 1950).
“Mapa Wiya (Your Map’s Not Needed): Australian Aboriginal Art from the Fondation Opale” is curated by Paul R. Davis, Curator of Collections.
The Menil Collection is located at 1533 Sul Ross St. in Houston.
For more information, visit menil.org.
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Paul Klee, Marjamshausen, 1928, watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper, on artist’s paper board mount, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Miss Ima Hogg.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is hosting “Miss Ima Hogg & Modernism” through Nov. 3.
Ima Hogg is widely known for donating her home — Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens — and her collection of early American decorative arts and paintings to the MFAH in 1957. Nearly two decades before that, she also made a significant gift to the museum of early 20th-century prints and drawings.
This exhibition marks the 80th anniversary of Hogg’s first major gift of modern European and North American works in 1939, a donation that would continue throughout the next decade.
“Miss Ima Hogg & Modernism” showcases a selection of these works on paper. Hogg (1882–1975) was one of the first American collectors of modern art in Texas at a time when avant-garde art was still generally misunderstood. Over the course of her travels in Europe and North America, she amassed an important collection of more than 100 prints and drawings by artists including George Bellows, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, José Clemente Orozco and Pablo Picasso.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is located at 1001 Bissonnet in Houston.
For more information, visit mfah.org.