Louis Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum of Art in Austin
From Louis Grachos's superlative floor office, within the Driscoll Villa at Laguna Gloria, you tin hear school groups assembling to explore the grounds. Students and teachers gather around Tom Friedman'south "Looking Upwards," a giant stainless-steel figurative sculpture gazing skyward, and as they walk toward the lagoon, they'll encounter Ai Weiwei'southward recently acquired "Iron Tree Torso." Grachos, the Ernest and Sarah Butler executive director and CEO of The Contemporary Austin, explains it this mode: "In that location'due south an accessibility to art that'due south placed outdoors that makes information technology so much more easy to approach and understand."
Grachos's understanding of making fine art accessible is function of how he ended upward in Austin.
" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_170713_5145-edit.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_170713_5145-edit.jpg?fit=400%2C400&ssl=1" class="size-full wp-image-28002" src="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_170713_5145-edit.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1" alt="contemporary austin louis grachos jones laguna gloria austin atx arts" width="600" height="400" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_170713_5145-edit.jpg?w=600&ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_170713_5145-edit.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" data-recalc-dims="1">
The Contemporary Austin's recently renovated Jones Center. The building's rooftop is distinguished by Jim Hodges' "With Liberty and Justice for All."
"Louis, I remember, understood that this is a city that lives outdoors," Melba Whatley, a trustee of the Gimmicky and the founder and president of the Waller Creek Conservancy, says.
Later on spending seven years as the manager of SITE Santa Fe and more than a decade every bit the executive director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, Grachos turned his centre toward Austin. In 2012, he accepted the role of executive director of the Contemporary and establish himself leading the then newly combined AMOA-Arthouse, which in 2013 was reborn every bit the Gimmicky Austin. With ii unique venues — the over seven,000-square-pes Jones Heart downtown and Laguna Gloria, nestled almost Mount Bonnell — role of Grachos's accuse became developing a relationship and synergy between the sites.
For someone who trades in multi-meg-dollar works of art, Grachos is affable and unpretentious, with an inviting way of speaking. "Louis is almost unique in that he is such an accurate person. He treats everyone the same," Whatley says, "and he's one of the few people in the earth who tin pick up the phone and get not i only two Ai Weiwei sculptures here." (Weiwei'southward "Forever Bicycles" is installed at the Waller Delta.)
" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_5127791695-15.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_5127791695-15.jpg?fit=400%2C400&ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-28000" src="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_5127791695-15.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1" alt="contemporary austin louis grachos jones laguna gloria austin atx arts" width="600" height="400" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_5127791695-15.jpg?w=600&ssl=1 600w, https://i0.wp.com/tribeza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/leonid_furmansky_5127791695-15.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" data-recalc-dims="1">
Carol Bove's "From the Sun to Zürich."
Growing up in Toronto, Grachos was exposed to the fine art world early, in form schoolhouse. On his showtime museum visit, to the Art Gallery of Ontario, in commencement form, an oval still life of an apricot jar past Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin caught his eye. "Equally a kid it just inspired me and I marveled at it, and I however go back and see that painting every time I visit," Grachos says.
Later, at 13, on a school field trip to the Albright-Knox, a Jackson Pollock painting raised his interest in American abstract expressionists. The feel would prove peculiarly fortuitous, as Grachos would afterwards spend a portion of his career as the executive director of the gallery.
After graduating from the University of Toronto, Grachos went to New York and interned at the Whitney Museum of American Art. "There'south when I actually understood I wanted to piece of work with gimmicky artists, artists that were alive and kicking," Grachos says.
While at the Whitney, Grachos walked through an installation with the artist Ellsworth Kelly and a curator. "I just stood behind and followed and listened, and it was simply so inspiring to hear the artist talk about why things needed to be together in terms of how they installed the exhibition of his work," Grachos says. "Some of the discussion really excited me, and I said, 'That's what I desire to do.' That was a turning indicate. It was a existent eye-opener."
Work by Carol Bove installed on the grounds of
The Contemporary'south sculpture park.
Grachos'south Laguna Gloria function boasts a few totems from places he'southward lived — photographer Jennifer Esperanza'due south blackness-and-white photos of Kim Gordon and Patti Smith, from his time as the manager of SITE Santa Atomic number 26; a collection of framed hockey pucks, hinting at his youth playing hockey in Canada; a print of a Deborah Roberts collage; a colorful Jim Hodges print reading, "Give more than you lot accept." "I've always tried to acquire work from artists who are living and working from wherever I am. That'south something I really think is important," Grachos says.
Grachos'southward breadth of experience puts him in a unique position to guide the Contemporary. In the downtown space, information technology means utilizing artist relationships, as he did with Hodges to erect his colorful "With Liberty and Justice for All (A Work in Progress)" piece atop the Jones Center. Unveiled in December 2016, the piece helped mark the facility's reopening after renovation, and in the aftermath of the divisive 2016 election, with its prominent placement on Congress Avenue, four blocks from the Capitol, information technology raised the edifice's profile. While the piece of work had been in development for a while, information technology felt especially timely. "It's a phrase from the pledge, that in many means means everything to everyone. It tin be a political thing, but it doesn't take to be," Grachos says. While the Hodges piece is part of a three-twelvemonth loan, Grachos is working to arrive permanent.
He'southward besides putting his power behind transforming the Laguna Gloria space, shaping the vision for the site as a sculpture park — a place to experience art in nature. Phase one of the plan broke ground in March 2018, with $half dozen.4 million, raised through individual donations, allocated for restoring the shoreline, cultivating native plants, removing invasive species and constructing two welcome pavilions for visitors. The pavilions will be continued by covered walkways and surrounded by landscaped gardens. Artist Jessica Stockholder is at piece of work on a slice that will be visible on approach to the grounds, inviting visitors in.
The Contemporary Austin'south Jones Centre is a prominent structure on downtown'due south Congress Avenue.
Over the longer term, the aim is for Laguna Gloria to be an exciting space for unique artist-driven works, a destination for visitors to Austin, and a place where the community tin appoint. And if this by September's Museum Day is any indication, word is spreading.
"Museum Day drew nearly 1,000 people hither, and i,100 people downtown, and then nosotros're starting to feel the community's discovering who nosotros are," Grachos says. "I remember part of that is people's interest in global contemporary fine art, simply also the uniqueness of experiencing art in the outdoors, in the natural setting."
Source: https://tribeza.com/contemporary-vision-community-profile/