Home Events Arts

This exhibition brings together the work of seven ACC Studio Art faculty members – Jill Bedgood, Jonas Criscoe, Melanie Hickerson, Brian Johnson, Haydeé Victoria Suescum, David Thornberry, and Gary Webernick – who work in a range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, assemblage art, and sculpture.

The local powerhouse of figurative painting, the art school that's the smart school for artists of all kinds, they've got a painting-along-at-home series going to help you keep your skills honed in these socially restrictive times, featuring live costumed models posing on camera and a thriving community of creatives rendering that lovely human biotecture from their separate studios. "Join us for a three-hour costumed-model drawing session. Use any supplies you wish, listen to music, share your work, chat with others. It’s a great way to stay connected with your art community!"

Austin Public Library and BookPeople present a series of free events for citizens to "engage with books that have been banned or challenged, and be part of the conversation around the freedom to read."

This multimedia, multivalent, multifantastic exhibition features five women artists – Melissa Aguirre, Alexa Capareda, Paloma Mayorga, Virginia Lee Montgomery (VLM), and Alejandra Regalado – who explore movement and place in relation to landscape, geological bodies, and other nonhuman intelligences. Using their own bodies as medium, the artists share ecofeminist sensibilities through video, installation, sculpture, photography, and performance works.

Collected and respected for her experimental approach to painting, Charlotte Smith is well established as royalty in Texas contemporary abstract art; this is an exhibition of her most recent paintings.

The photographer, humanitarian, and educator Jamel Shabazz presents a career retrospective spanning four decades of work, featuring candid portraits of women of color – as curated by Ja’nell Ajani. "At a moment when Black and Brown women are more visibly leading the charge around movements for racial and economic justice, this exhibition has materialized and aligned at a critical moment in American history and Shabazz’s career."

Chain-smoking trans woman comic about town Clara Blackstone headlines the Fallout, bringing along opening sets from her funniest friends: Angelina Martin; Elizabeth Spears; Jose DaHype; and Andrew Wagner.

This is a two-woman exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Carly Weaver and Mariel Wilmoth.

ColdTowne's new brick-and-mortar place is totally open, and who knows what they'll shake this city with next? But one truth remains: ColdTowne is a designated den of gold, baby, sweet comedy gold.

Artist couple Felice House and Dana Younger present painting and sculpture that studies, observes, processes, and transmutes the wild spaces and creatures of Texas, their work deeply resonant with that of painter Thomas Cole, father of the Hudson River School. Natural beauty, in other words, captured with consummate skill by two longtime locals.

Founded by comedians Raza Jafri and Andre Ricks, this club that operates out of Tiger Den on the Eastside is the city's only BIPOC-owned comedy venue.

This is a new exhibition by documentarian photographer Cindy Elizabeth, featuring an outdoor installation that is immersed within the museum’s native landscape. There are large-scale photographs inside the building, too, interwoven amongst Elisabet Ney's own neoclassical sculptures.

This hotbed of local performance is carrying on even more than usual, with an eclectic mix of live, mind-rocking comedy from some of Austin's best, all week long. Hey! The place is our cover story, as reported by Valerie Lopez! And, srsly, who would ever disagree with the sentiment of Monday night's Fuck This Week show? Check the website for details.

Here's the first annual exhibition to showcase Austin’s new and upcoming printmakers, featuring work from students who are receiving their BFA, BA, BS, or MFA with a major or minor concentration in printmaking from an Austin area college or university.

John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's kickass genderbending musical is a glamorous spectacle of life and longing, here starring Buddy Novak as Hedwig and Susannah Crowell as Yitzhak. Directed by Jeff Hinkle, with musical direction by Audrey Barrett, for The Stage Austin. And – look! – here's our full review of the show.

The walls of this popular neighborhood restaurant showcases works from three series by Juliet Whitsett.

Here's the continuation of, the sequel to, Matt Rebholz and Jana Swec's exhibition from September 2021, the artists vividly manifesting their personal histories into emotionally charged landscapes steeped in narrative and individual mythology.

This is a group show displaying sketches, maquettes, and digital renderings of the projects and ideas that the participating artists would pursue if money, time, knowledge, and space weren't in the way: twelve-foot-tall bronze and stained-glass outdoor sculpture, a playground in the shape of giant animal bust, and skyscrapers wrapped in custom vinyl designs. See the creatively imagined in proposal form; see parts of this world as they could be. Bonus: Accompanying show "Review" features six video artworks by seven artists: Andie Flores, Michael Anthony García, Ariel René Jackson, Renee Lai, Katy McCarthy, Natalia Rocafuerte, and VLM.

In Katie Bender's "delightfully off-kilter" new play, Judith, dressed as a man, moves to London to stand trial in her absent brother's place, and – when the trial goes badly – begins to write plays to please the Queen and restore her brother's good name. This solo show about ambition, artistry, love, and Shakespeare features Taylor Flanagan as Judith and is directed by Madge Darlington.

This local treasure of a venue, run by those Contemporary Austin folks who also bring us the Jones Center shows Downtown, is all about the outdoors – which is perfect for these trickily navigated times of ours, n'est-ce pas? Recommended: Stop by and breathe in the air, enjoy the lawns and gardens and the many examples of world-class sculpture arrayed across the property, and (as Frankie used to say) r-e-l-a-x.

Use your smartphone to access self-guided tours of the outdoor public art sited by UT's award-winning Landmarks program any time you feel like it. BONUS: There's also a free, docent-led tour starting at Marc Quinn's "Spiral of the Galaxy" (1501 Red River) on Sun., Jan. 8, 11am.

Link & Pin presents a summer show featuring some of their favorite Austin artists; each artist (the amazing Leslie Kell among them) will have a work on display in the gallery, with additional pieces available online.

Bing Wright's new pictures are enlargements of uncommonly tight crops from images of children at play on a seashore — an outstretched hand splashing water or carrying a beach bucket, liberal smears of sunscreen, fluorescent plastic hair clips, a foot dragging through burbling waves.

This new exhibit includes paintings from the past two years, vibrant artworks by Blas E. Lopez only now revealed to the public.

Here's a two-person exhibition that features painting, installation, videography, and sculpture by Moll Brau and Wes Thompson. It's a deep dive into a pool of loneliness, triumph, and rebirth. It's a forest of mazes where fireflies provide the light. It's a show of creations from a pair of terrific, hardworking local artists and you don't want to miss it.

This new exhibition reveals a collection of rare, previously unseen, and vintage photographs from The Rolling Stones’ 1972 session with legendary photographer Norman Seeff. Photos from the late-night shoot were ultimately used to produce the set of postcards included with the original pressing of the band’s masterpiece, Exile on Main St.

Mark Smith’s The Hope Suite is a series of forty-four collages inspired by the theme of global unity. Each 24-by-18-inch work on paper consists of a background monoprint or a digital photoprint, overlaid with collage, calligraphy, and mixed media. Note: The originals are part of the permanent collection of the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago; the works on display here are limited-edition prints of those originals.

The colorful creations of Drew Liverman supercharge this intimate powerhouse of a gallery Downtown, with paintings of "hot doom, the joys of love, bike rides, Olaf from Frozen, Goya's covens, and scraps of what could be something for a place to live, for a time."

Wait, is this even theatre? Should it be listed somewhere else? The facts are: It's a professional audio performance accessed through the internet; it's dramatically funny (or funnily dramatic); it's from theatre powerhouse Jarrott Productions. Especially because of that last thing, here is where we're pimping this Carlo Lorenzo Garcia-scripted work about how "in 1969, in rural Illinois, private investigator Labinowicz documented on micro-cassette tapes his investigations into a series of unexplained pet deaths over the course of 20 years."

This is a weekly stand-up comedy showcase to help you pregame your Friday night on the town. (Snail Haven also features music shows, film screenings, and general hangs. Best bet: Follow @SnailHavenShows on Instagram and DM them for event details.)

This re-envisioning of E.M. Forster’s masterpiece Howards End – now set in 21st-century New York – asks "how much we owe those who lived and loved before us, questions the role we must play for future generations, and dares us to fearlessly hold on to the wild ride called life." Directed by Dave Steakley for Zach Theatre.

Julie Maren expands upon her use of negative space for this show, exploring boundaries and ideas of infinity, her paintings and installations heavily layered and simultaneously heavily redacted, with actual pieces of the canvas cut away. Gorgeous, yes, and unforgettable.

Rachel Wolfson Smith focuses our attention on the essential and grounding effect of beauty in nature, portraying constructed, intricate, and imagined landscapes, creating "an antidote to the imbalance many of us experience as we lurch from impulse to impulse in our tech-laden, consumer-driven, modern existence." Yes – an antidote to that, and a paean to the possibilities of graphite wielded by a brilliant hand and mind.

This is Ray Donley's gallery of art by Native Americans, located in that company of artistic glory called Canopy and resplendent with creations from the original people of our struggling country.

Chicago artist Margie Criner makes organic-shaped sculptures that house tiny dioramas, viewable through a peephole. These "sculptures in sculpture," meticulously handcrafted, are miniature narratives hidden inside abstract sculpture, exploring the notion of vacancy in everyday places. Highly recommended.