East Texas Historical Association October 2022

L to R. Scott Sosebee, Light Cummins, Bill O'Neal, and Monte Monroe

Vicki Cummins and I attended the annual fall meeting of the East Texas Historical Association held at the Fredonia Hotel from October 13 to 15. A highlight of this meeting was the appearance of three State Historians of Texas together as members of the same panel, Bill O'Neal and me as former occupants of that post along with the current State Historian Monte Monroe. We talked about our respective experiences in that post. The panel was the Georgiana and Max Lale Lecture, a series which is a hallmark event at each year's meeting. 

Vicki Cummins presented a paper entitled "Texas Artists Join the “Soil Soldiers:” Three East Texas Artists in CCC Camps During the New Deal." This presentation was based on her research in early Texas art, part of which deals with the Federal support for artists during the New Deal. Her paper dealt with the experiences of William Lester, Douthitt Wilson, and Don Brown as artists working in CCC campus in East Texas. 

Vicki Cummins is made a Fellow of the Association

Each of us received honors at the meeting. Vicki Cummins was made a fellow of the Association while I received the Director's Award for lifetime achievement. 

I receive the Director's Lifetime Achievement Award

Passion for Art: 25 Years of the Texas Art Collectors Organization (TACO)

 

The Texas Art Collectors Organization, popularly known as TACO, is a lively association whose members are mostly centered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with additional ones found at other locations in the larger North Texas Area. Most of the individuals active in the group are collectors of early Texas art, meaning works chronologically ranging from the nineteenth century to ones produced prior to the last forty years or so. TACO sponsors regularly meetings for its members, with many of these taking place at their homes so that individuals can showcase their personal collections to the membership.  At other times, members engage in making group visits to museums, art galleries, and art auction previews. As well, guest speakers drawn from specialists in the academic and art history communities make presentations at many of the meetings. 

TACO celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, 2022. As part of celebrating this milestone, the organization mounted a special art exhibition composed of examples of early Texas art drawn from their respective personal collections. It is entitled Passion for Art: 25 Years of the Texas Art Collectors Organization and is located in the J. Wayne Stark Galleries of Memorial Student Center, at Texas A&M University in College Station Texas, running from Sept. 8 to Dec. 17, 2022.

Vicki Cummins and I attended the opening reception for this exhibition on Saturday, October 1st along with a considerable number of other TACO members. Dr. Tianna Helena Uchacz, assistant professor in the Department of Visualization and Melbern G. Glasscock Center Faculty Research Fellow at Texas A&M University gave a presentation discussing the role and value of the art collector to the world of art.

Lee Jamison, Vicki Cummins, and "Ruth"

We were very happy to see that an oil painting by Don Brown was featured in the exhibit as we are currently writing his biography. Titled "Ruth," this work was done by Brown in the early 1950s. We were also pleased that noted present-day Texas artist Lee Jamison was also attending the opening reception. Brown taught at Centenary College prior to his passing in 1958. Lee Jameson later graduated from Centenary. Although Brown's career there was earlier, Jameson considers him to be an important influence on his current work.  It is easy, even for a lay person, to see this influence on Jameson's work today, examples of which are published in his new book Ode to East Texas: The Art of Lee Jamison. 

"Texas Modernism[s]: Houston/Dallas in the 1930s"

 

Light and Vicki Cummins with the organizers of the exhibit Tam Kiehnhoff and Randolph Tibbets

Vicki Cummins and I attended a special reception held in the Art Gallery of the Julia Ideson Building of the Houston Public Library on September 29th to mark the opening of this exhibit, entitled "Texas Modernism[s]: Houston/Dallas in the 1930s." Sponsored by the Houston Early Texas Art Group, the exhibit compared the various similarities and differences between regional artists in Houston and Dallas during the 1930s. 

Some of the Houston Artists in the Exhibit

As Glasstire has noted of this exhibit:  "By showing side-by-side the work of Cherry-McNeill Group and Dallas Nine artists, all working seriously as Modernists in Texas in the 1930s, the exhibition intends to explore the looks and philosophical underpinnings of two seminal aspects of the art history of Texas, which have strongly influenced later developments in their two cities, as well as the state in general. At the same time, the exhibition will serve as a demonstration that Modernism, when it came to America, was not limited exclusively to the art centers of the East and that it was not a single thing, even in a relatively contained region such as Texas. It was, rather a liberating force that could take its disciples along markedly different routes toward the shared ideal of creating a modern art for America.”