Exhibitions

2015 Exhibitions

​Museum collections like the McNay’s are built very carefully by their curators to draw connections between objects, to show the evolution of a particular style or movement, or to give fascinating historical context to individual objects....

Collecting in Context

December 16, 2015 to April 17, 2016

Artists Tom Burckhardt, Ernesto Pujol, and Sandy Skoglund use the stuff of ordinary life to create extraordinary environments.

The Extraordinary Ordinary: Three Installations

October 21, 2015 to April 10, 2016

​The McNay has a very fine collection of Cubist prints and drawings, including a particularly fine group of etchings and drypoints by Georges Braque. The museum has made a concerted effort in the last few years to add to this strength of the...

Picasso, Braque, and the Cubist Legacy: Prints and Drawings from the Collection

October 21, 2015 to January 24, 2016

Featuring more than 50 remarkable paintings, drawings, and sculptures created by Joan Miro between 1963 and 1981, Miró: The Experience of Seeing is drawn entirely from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain

Miró: The Experience of Seeing

September 30, 2015 to January 10, 2016

Alice C. Simkins’s aunt, the Houston collector and philanthropist Alice N. Hanszen, introduced her to the McNay when she was quite young. However, it was during a museum trip in 1969 to London, Paris, and Madrid, led by founding McNay director...

American Modern: Works from the Collection of Alice C. Simkins

September 30, 2015 to December 6, 2015

Giotto, El Greco, Veronese, Degas, Monet, Seurat, Klimt, Kirchner, Delaunay, Mondrian, Ernst, O’Keefe, Nevelson, Stella. The names of these, and other, visual artists may not appear in playbills. As this exhibition demonstrates, however, their...

Art History Goes to the Theatre: Research Secrets of Great Designers

September 23, 2015 to January 31, 2016

How did such famous works as Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1878–81) and George Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte–1884 (1884–86) come into being? The subject of art historical studies, these questions...

Studio to Stage: Degas’s Little Dancer/ Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon

September 23, 2015 to January 31, 2016

​Martín Gutierrez’s music videos, four of which are shown together here, explore self-transformation and the intersection of fantasy and reality. His videos subvert typical gender tropes, thereby forcing viewers to come to their own...

Martín Gutierrez: Transcending Rhythm

September 8, 2015 to January 10, 2016

​The fourth installation presented in the annual AT&T Lobby series, Stephen Westfall’s The Holy Forest is painted entirely by McNay staff according to the artist’s instructions. Westfall is a painter, writer, and educator based in New York,...

Stephen Westfall: The Holy Forest

August 6, 2015 to July 31, 2016

Often called the “West Coast Warhol,” Duardo has been a mover and shaker in the LA art scene for decades.

Richard Duardo: Maestro of Pop

July 1, 2015 to September 6, 2015

Literature and poetry are constant sources of inspiration for New York-based artist Lesley Dill, who has degrees in English and philosophy.

Lesley Dill: Performance as Art

June 10, 2015 to September 6, 2015

Organized as a collaboration between the McNay’s four curators, this exhibition focuses on collages on paper, panel, and canvas, as well as wall-hung and free-standing assemblage sculptures and hybrids of the collage and assemblage aesthetic.

Recycled, Repurposed, Reborn

June 10, 2015 to September 6, 2015

This exhibition features three complete print portfolios by Carlos Mérida (1891- 1984) from the McNay’s collection.

Merida’s Mexico

June 3, 2015 to September 6, 2015

Zapata has been a favorite subject of Mexican artists since the days of the Mexican Revolution.

Viva Zapata!

May 20, 2015 to August 16, 2015

Drawn from the McNay’s renowned print collection, this exhibition brings together a selection of rarely-seen prints by Käthe Kollwitz and Jose Clemente Orozco.

Voices of Suffering

May 20, 2015 to August 16, 2015

Featuring Pochoir: a hand stenciling technique that produces vibrant colors and bold patterns, and which flourished in the period of the Ballets Russes.

Design, Fashion, Theatre

February 18, 2015 to June 21, 2015

All the Rage in Paris focuses on Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the company that brought theatre to the center of artistic life in Europe from 1909 to 1929.

All the Rage in Paris

February 18, 2015 to June 21, 2015

Focusing on acquisitions celebrating the McNay’s 60th anniversary and other recent acquisitions.

Rodin to Warhol: 60th Anniversary Gifts and Recent Acquisitions

February 18, 2015 to May 17, 2015

"Six Artists Celebrate the McNay’s 60th Anniversary" brings together the work of a half-dozen individuals from San Antonio and the surrounding region for a pop-up exhibition on January 24 and 25, 2015

Six Artists Celebrate the McNay’s 60th Anniversary

January 24, 2015 to January 25, 2015

Includes works on paper by contemporary San Antonio artists.

Regarding Ruscha

January 21, 2015 to May 17, 2015

World War II in Photographs: Looking Back commemorates the 70th anniversary of the war’s end and honors San Antonio’s great military heritage with an exhibition of iconic images by some of the great photojournalists of the time.

World War II in Photographs

January 13, 2015 to May 10, 2015

Organized to coincide with Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art, this exhibition, featuring approximately 30 works, focuses on one of the great strengths of the McNay’s graphics collection, 19th century French prints. The...

Manet to Gauguin

September 3, 2014 to January 4, 2015

Organized by the National Gallery of Art from the personal collections formed by Ailsa Mellon Bruce and her brother, Paul Mellon, and other donors to the National Gallery, Intimate Impressionism is the most extensive exhibition of French...

Intimate Impressionism

September 3, 2014 to January 4, 2015

During World War II, the San Antonio Art Institute was threatened with impending closure due to financial limitations. In turn, Marion Koogler McNay invited the Institute to move to the grounds of her Sunset Hills mansion. From 1943 to...

School at Sunset Hills

August 20, 2014 to February 15, 2015

Focuses on painters and sculptors who also used their talents in the theatre, transforming scene and costume design in the 20th century.

Artists Take the Stage

August 20, 2014 to January 25, 2015

Third in a series of temporary wall works for the McNay, Burst was adapted by New York artist Paul Villinski for the museum’s AT&T Lobby

Paul Villinski: Burst

August 7, 2014 to July 26, 2015