Only a few short weeks ago, it was looking grim for the longstanding art pieces in the Austin Convention Center. The city shed its ownership over the pieces in January, leaving their fate up to the artists. If the artists couldn’t find a way to de-install the pieces, then they would be destroyed with the Convention Center in May. Now it looks like the pieces will all be preserved, with some help from a new city office.
One of the pieces slated for demolition was the late Damian Priour’s Waller Creek Shelves. The piece is made of 21 hand-blown glass sculptures hanging from the ceiling, each containing different items collected by homeless people along Waller Creek.
Once the city washed its hands of the piece in January, Paula Priour, the deceased artist’s wife, thought that was the end of her efforts to keep the work with the city. But Angela Means, the director of the newly created Office of Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment, says the city still technically owns the pieces until they come off the walls, buying Priour time to convince the city to keep her husband’s work in its collection.
“That seems like splitting hairs to me, but I don’t care,” Priour says. “I’m thrilled.”
Now Waller Creek Shelves, rather than sitting in Damian Priour’s studio, will be displayed in the Austin Central Library.
“Everybody goes to the library, and nobody goes to the Convention Center but conventioneers,” Priour says. “So to me, this is a step up.”
Artist John Yancey’s piece Riffs and Rhythms, a broken-ceramic mosaic showcasing Austin’s vibrant music history, was at the highest risk of destruction. Due to how the piece is built into the wall, de-installing the piece would cost thousands of dollars, which Yancey, who is retired, simply can’t afford.
Yancey worked for months to get the city to pay for the de-installation, and until mid-March, it seemed like he wasn’t making any headway and that Riffs and Rhythms would be demolished. That was until he met with Means from the ACME office, who informed him that a third-party donor, Austin developer Anmol Mehra, had offered to supply the funds.
Unlike Priour’s piece, Yancey will not keep Riffs and Rhythms in the city’s collection. Mehra will pay for it to be stored and then re-installed in the African American Cultural Heritage District in East Austin in the coming years.
The piece was de-installed last week, coming off the walls after nearly 30 years there.
“It’s a mix of feelings because this was the one piece that I thought would be here forever.” – Artist John Yancey
“It’s a mix of feelings because this was the one piece that I thought would be here forever,” Yancey says. “This piece would have been as beautiful forever as it was the day I put it up. That part is sad because I know that there’s going to be a long process to bring it back to that level of beauty.”
ACME is also working with Margo Sawyer to preserve her piece Index for Contemplation, a 40-foot-high sculptural arrangement that lines the walls of the convention center – but it’s a little more complicated for her.
Sawyer originally thought it would cost around $15,000 to de-install her work, but she ended up paying over $57,000, dipping into her retirement money for the piece to come down. Sawyer now wants the city to reimburse her, especially since the piece will remain in the city’s collection after all.
“For this past week, [the city has] benefited from my debts and my money to take down the work, so we’re currently in negotiations for that bill to be paid,” Sawyer says.
Part of Index for Contemplation will be in the new convention center once it’s built, but Sawyer is still looking for a home for the rest of the piece.
While Sawyer’s situation is not ideal, she says she’s grateful to ACME for simply bringing her and her fellow artists into the conversation about what to do with their artwork at the convention center. She says the city didn’t do its due diligence in communicating with them before deciding to deaccession these artworks in January.
“I think that the ACME office is really trying to do good by us all,” Sawyer says. “They’re doing miracles really.”
This article appears in April 18 • 2025.