Current Exhibitions
January 23 through April 11, 2010
Hans Molzberger: Return/Rückkehr
The Art Museum of Southeast Texas proudly presents an exhibition of works by internationally-renowned and distinguished German artist Hans Molzberger from January 23 through April 11, 2010.
On view in the McFaddin-Ward gallery, Return, or Rückkehr in German, includes four large-scale sculpture installations, as well as a recent body of mixed media works that explore current political events. Collectively, the works in this exhibition address various historical, political, and social situations that shape our contemporary world. Pleasure Island is a sculpture installation consisting of a large, handmade wooden boat filled with fused-glass birds. This new work addresses the local Pleasure Island where Molzberger visited last year. Upon visiting this locale, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Ike in September 2008, the artist was inspired to create a work that explores not only the aftermath of this particular storm, but also the life and death associated with all major storms. Other works in the exhibition express ideas regarding terrorism and the fall of Communism in Europe. In assessing Molzberger’s sculptures, one scholar notes “Timelessness is obtained observing these works. In his choreography of stillness, Molzberger achieves great meditative depth in works that are testimonials to hidden truths.”
Molzberger, a self-taught artist, was born in 1953 in Höhr-Grenzhausen in Germany’s Rhineland region where his family has lived for many generations working in industrial ceramic factories. In 1982, as a result of mounting personal crises and a fervent need to reassess his life, Molzberger started a studio in Wendland, Germany and by 1991 mounted his first museum exhibition. Working mainly with assemblages and Raku-ceramic objects, the artist recently turned to printmaking. He now creates woodcuts and large-scale silkscreens that contain political subject matter. Molzberger has worked in Israel, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Russia and lectured at several major universities. He currently divides his time between Germany and Houston where he is an Artist Affiliate at Houston Baptist University. He is also director of an artist residency program in Hilmsen, Germany, which began in 1996.
This exhibition is funded in part by the Helen Caldwell Locke and Curtis Blakely Locke Charitable Foundation, C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, Dorothy Anne Conn, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and the City of Beaumont.
African-American Art:
Highlights from the Dr. Hervy Hiner Collection
African-American Art: Highlights from the Dr. Hervy Hiner Collection continues Southeast Texas Collects undefined a series of exhibitions organized over the last 20 years that spotlight significant artwork from private collections in Southeast Texas. The Art Museum of Southeast Texas recognizes the many benefits associated with featuring exhibitions of artwork from local private collections. Not only do museum visitors get an opportunity to experience important artwork rarely exposed in a public venue, but, in addition, the museum is able to cultivate strong relationships with collectors and thus promote collecting and donating.
This year’s Southeast Texas Collects exhibit is the extraordinary and diverse African-American art collection of local nephrologist and entrepreneur, Dr. Hervy Hiner. African-American Art: Highlights from the Dr. Hervy Hiner Collection will feature 30 works in a variety of mediums by some of the most distinguished and influential African-American artists of the 19th through 21st centuries. Among the artists whose works will be featured are: Robert Duncanson, John Biggers, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Hughie Lee-Smith, Benny Andrews, Norman Lewis, and Dean Mitchell.
Dr. Hervy Hiner, who is an East Texas native, relocated to Port Arthur from Houston in the late 1980s and during this time began amassing the exquisite works that grace the walls of his home and popular local restaurant, Suga’s Deep South Cuisine and Jazz Bar. Dr. Hiner has been collecting art since the early 1990s, and his collection is vastly rich with highlights of the development of African-American art. Chronologically, his collection begins with one of the earliest known African-American portrait painters in the late 18th century and progresses to popular contemporary artists thriving in the art market today.
One of this collector’s first purchases at the Royal Gallery in New Orleans was a painting by a self-taught Mississippi artist named William Tolliver. This early experience sparked a fascination with following the personal journeys of artists, especially African-American artists “not so much for their ethnicity, but for unconventional pieces.” Dr. Hiner remarks, “You collect what appeals to you, and that becomes a learning process. Every artist has a particular connection that grabs you, hits you and reveals a mythology.” Sarah Hamilton, curator of exhibitions and collections, comments, “Organizing an exhibition of Dr. Hiner’s collection has been a highly rewarding experience not only for the generosity of this patron in loaning artwork to the museum but in sharing his passion with the community.”
This exhibition is funded in part by the Beaumont Foundation of America, Helen Caldwell Locke and Curtis Blakey Locke Charitable Foundation, C. Homer and Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable Foundation, Dorothy Anne Conn, Texas Commission on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and the City of Beaumont.