Neither Model nor Muse
Women as Artists

 Learn more about artists in this exhibition

In 1971, renowned art historian Linda Nochlin pioneered feminist art theory in her ARTnews essay entitled “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Over the past 56 years, with art collector, educator, and watercolorist Marion Koogler McNay as inspiration, the McNay has demonstrated the absurdity of Nochlin’s question by acquiring countless works by women artists. Neither Model nor Muse: Women as Artists brings together for the first time works by women artists, integrating paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, and designs for the theatre.

Boasting large and varied holdings in all media, the collection now includes several artists in depth. Of particular interest in Neither Model nor Muse are multiple examples by American constructivist sculptor Sue Fuller, Russian painter and theatre artist Natalia Gontcharova, British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, Texas abstractionist Dorothy Hood, abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell, assemblage sculptor Louise Nevelson, and iconic American modernist Georgia O’Keeffe. More recently, works by contemporary artists Chakaia Booker, Lesley Dill, Danielle Frankenthal, Margo Sawyer, Sandy Skoglund, and Kiki Smith have joined their colleagues at the McNay. Art by lesser-known yet equally dynamic artists, including Edna Andrade, Florence Miller Pierce, and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, augment the group, as do designs for theatre settings and costumes by Sonia Delaunay, Jean Eckart, Alexandra Exter, Adrianne Lobel, and others. Works on paper complete the selection with prints by Helen Frankenthaler, April Gornik, and Agnes Martin, as well as drawings by Leonora Carrington and Yvonne Jacquette.

This exhibition was organized by the McNay Art Museum.

Funding is generously provided by the Elizabeth Huth Coates Exhibition Endowment,

the Endowment Fund for Exhibitions, the Director’s Circle, and the Host Committee.

Media sponsorship is provided by the San Antonio Express-News.

Jeanne and Irving Mathews

Collection of Art Glass

May 26 | August 29, 2010

This summer the McNay proudly places on view an important part of the recent bequest of Jeanne Lang Mathews, long a major benefactor of the museum and trustee emeritus who died in March 2009.

The first group of works shown is the Jeanne and Irving Mathews Collection of Art Glass, lovingly assembled by Mrs. Mathews with her husband, Irving, who passed away in 1993. Focused on the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods in France, one of the most creative chapters in the history of glass, the Mathews collection superbly complements the McNay’s strengths in French painting and sculpture of this same period. The great glass producers of the time are included, from Daum Frères and Emile Gallé to René Lalique, as well as rare works by Gabriel Argy-Rousseau, François Decorchement, and Jacques Gruber.

This first showing of art glass from the Mathews Collection appears in specially designed cases, ideal for small sculpture and decorative arts, on the Garden Level of the Stieren Center for Exhibitions. Planning is underway for installation of the Mathews glass in the museum’s Main Collection Galleries.

This exhibition was organized by the McNay Art Museum.

Terra Incognita

Dulac’s Suite de Paysages

May 26 | August 29, 2010

A brilliant French lithographer at the end of the 19th century, Charles Dulac (1865–1898) lived an isolated life, but was well known to many of his contemporaries. Around 1890 he developed the fatal disease of lead poisoning, which precipitated his joining the Third Order of St. Francis toward the end of his short life. Most often associated with the Symbolist movement, Dulac saw divinity—the hand of God—in nature, and created prints that celebrated the mystical rather than the actual appearance of landscapes.

In 1892–93, Dulac created his Suite de Paysages (Suite of Landscapes), a rare masterpiece of French color lithography. A deluxe edition, the McNay’s version includes working proofs showing Dulac’s experiments with color and tonal variations. Subtle changes in color can dramatically change the emotive quality of an image. Terra Incognita is the first exhibition of Dulac’s Suite at the McNay.

This exhibition was organized by the McNay Art Museum.

Funding is provided by the Elizabeth Huth Coates Exhibition Endowment and the Endowment Fund.

West Coast painter Gary Lang employs a vocabulary of circles, lines, and grids to create brightly colored abstract paintings. Drawing on Modernist traditions including Geometric Abstraction, Pop art, Op art, and Color Field painting, Lang’s paintings are created from pigments that he grinds and mixes in his studio and are rendered freehand with a distinctively handmade appearance. 

Lang’s 2006 single channel video Dividing Time (Profiles #1) transforms his static paintings into moving images, based on the process of painting and using the grid format. As the imagery of the video unfolds, color is layered upon color in the same way that the artist paints on canvas. Lang said of his video: “The format of this piece is like being inside of one of my paintings. The piece is about color, speed, light, space, and time.” Silence and a meditative quality draw in the viewer through “a process of extending the moment, luxuriating in the passage of time, while advancing contemplation.”  

Gary Lang was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1950. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1972, and his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1974. Since the early 1980s, Lang has produced and exhibited paintings using his signature linear imagery. He resides in Ojai, California.

Image: Dividing Time (Profiles #1), 2006. Still from single chanel video.