The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) announces recent art acquisitions
“The ongoing expansion and enrichment of the Museum’s contemporary art collection reflects our deep commitment to bringing diversity, inclusivity, and new narratives to the contemporary art collection.”
The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) announced today its summer and fall contemporary art acquisitions, which include works by Christina Fernandez, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jeffrey Gibson, Edgar Heap of Birds, Kirk Hayes, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Marcelyn McNeil, and Liz Trosper. The artworks, which are wide-ranging in their formal approach, media, and vision, expand SAMA’s growing photography collection and fulfill important mission-driven goals to enhance its holdings of works by women, artists of color, and those living in Texas. The group includes the first two works by contemporary Native American artists to enter SAMA’s collection, furthering its vision to more fully represent the spectrum of voices and perspectives within contemporary art practices. These objects join a group of works purchased earlier in the year by contemporary Latin American artists, including Jose Dávila, Sonia Gomes, Pedro Reyes, and Analia Saban.
“The effort to grow and diversify SAMA’s contemporary art collection is strategically and thoughtfully led by Suzanne Weaver, the Museum’s Interim Chief Curator and The Brown Foundation Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, whose understanding of contemporary artistic practices and long-standing relationships in the art world continue to benefit the Museum exponentially,” said Emily Sano, Co-Interim Director.
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LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982)
Shea’s Aunt Denise and Uncle Rodney in their home on Foster Street watching President Barack Obama take a sip of Flint water, 2016–2017
Gelatin silver print; Edition 2/5
30 x 40 inches
© LaToya Ruby Frazier
Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
Flint is Family, 2016
Video (color, sound)
Edition 3/5
11 minutes, 50 seconds
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work examines the confluences of social justice and cultural changes, offering astute commentary on the American experience. Her incisive work, which is informed by documentary practices from the turn of the last century, includes photographs, videos, and written texts that explore the complicated nature of family, the American healthcare system, industrial pollution, income inequality, race, and many other subjects critical to our national dialogues. The photograph and video entering the Museum’s collection are part of Frazier’s series Flint is Family (2016–2017), which she developed over the course of a five-month period and captures the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and its effects on that community’s residents through intimate and lush imagery. Frazier’s works add an important voice to the Museum’s documentary photography holdings, which include significant works by such artists as Walker Evans, Leonard Freed, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Danny Lyon, and W. Eugene Smith, among others. The work was purchased with funds from the Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund.
Courtesy of: San Antonio Museum of Art
