Bright Outsider Light Shining onto Art in 2024
Ellsworth Kelly’s (1923-2015) Austin (conceived in the 1980s and realized in 2018), a secular chapel and the only architectural project completed by the artist, in the permanent collection of the Blanton Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.
Happy New Year from Miami! I’m proud to announce that 2024 will be the first full year of Charting Transcendence’s operating as a full-service contemporary fine art advisory.
What differentiates Charting Transcendence from others providing similar services is a deep and intuitive appreciation for the process of mapping one’s own way towards outstanding art experiences and acquisitions.
The term I use for this is the “outsider’s insider” approach, which reflects the circuitous and nonstandard path that I have taken to arrive at my calling.
In today’s newsletter, I’d like to share a little bit more about myself, how I got here, and how spending several months in Texas last year convinced me to take further steps towards sharing my passion with a broader audience in 2024.
Coming full-circle:
Charting Transcendence’s 2023 origin story
Installation of fluorescent light bulb tubes by Dan Flavin, Richmond Hall, Menil Collection, Houston.
Although Charting Transcendence was incorporated in May 2023, my desire to work in fine art advisory began five or six years earlier when I was pursuing my second master’s degree (my first is a Master of Business Administration) in contemporary art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York City.
I had come from a much different background than most art advisors (with previous careers in foreign service, government relations, and international business development), but nonetheless had spent over 20 years exploring a vast amount of culture and art globally. Therefore I’ve never felt like an art-world “insider” despite the fact that I have considerably art market skills, experience, and insider’s knowledge.
I made a conscious choice to to follow my instinct, rather than strictly the market (or what others expected of me). And as I shared in my commencement speech from Sotheby’s Institute, I definitely struggled to feel like I fit in to the broader art world.
Although I have always heeded the counsel of experienced art-world colleagues, I neither apprenticed in an art advisory, nor did I climb the typical ladder of art world jobs (gallery assistant, studio manager, auction house specialist), for despite attempting to fit into such roles, most people regarded me as too much of an “outsider,” either overqualified or unmalleable, based my formidable previous work experience that they could not relate to.
Ironically this judgment made it difficult for art businesses to understand the unique insight and skills that I wanted to apply to art. Therefore it took several years after completing my master’s — a global pandemic interceding — to integrate what I had learned about the art world with my own professional motivation and define the structure for my independent art advisory.
This also involved forging diverse connections throughout the country, as well as doing a lot of challenging, introspective work on myself. Meanwhile, the flow of outstanding art that I’ve been communing with for years has never stopped.
Because art touches on themes so complex and so broad as to encompass the entirely of human experience, it is an endless font of inspiration for me that I’m excited to share. And I’m not bragging when I say that I have seen a lot of art in a lot of atypical places.
Marfa, Presidio County, Texas, January 2023
Ostensibly an unlikely place for contemporary art, Marfa now attracts visitors from around the world, thanks in great part to the work of legendary contemporary artist, writer, and critic Donald Judd (1928-1994)
And one thing I’m proud of (even though I do come back to visit the city regularly) is the fact that Charting Transcendence, unlike perhaps 90% of art advisory firms, is not based in New York.
Although this poses some challenges, it provides some key advantages too, for I am convinced that one can grow too complacent (or too overwhelmed) at the very center of the industry, thereby overlooking a lot of terrific art that is being made and shown all over the country.
This sentiment aligns with how I’ve always explored the world, including looking as much as possible outside of capital cities at the context for a society’s spectrum of cultural and artistic manifestations. Not to mention that, because I am such an explorer at heart, it’s simply a lot more fun and stimulating than sitting at home or sticking to one region.
At the beginning of 2023, after much reflection and hard work, I was on the verge of acquiescing to a new direction in life, so I opted to drive nearly 2000 miles from South Florida to Texas, making it as far as the Chinati Mountains and the Rio Grande.
I ended up staying in the Lone Star State for over two months, rendering the first quarter of 2023 so formative in the conception of Charting Transcendence that I decided to return for the final week of the year to celebrate (and see some fantastic art as well).
All my best art picks in Texas
Allora y Calzadilla, Graft (2019), recycled polyvinyl chloride and paint, installation view at the Menil Collection, Houston, arguably the finest collection of modern and contemporary art in Texas (though half a dozen other institutions across the state could feasibly lay claim to the same.)
There is too much to say about the art scene in Texas for me to give anything more than an broad overview in this missive, but I’ll attempt to cover the highlights.
Last week I visited 3 out of the 5 major cities of the Texas Triangle, taking in an interesting studio visit (about which I will share in a future newsletter) and a dozen or so galleries and museums in Houston, Austin and San Antonio — all repeat visits for 2023.
Earlier in the year, I had made it up to Fort Worth and Dallas, where the Matthew Wong retrospective “The Realm of Appearances” struck a very deep chord with me — see my presentation on my reaction to Wong’s work on YouTube.
And last January, I spent nearly a week in the tiny West Texas town of Marfa (pop. 1,750), by now a world-famous art aficionado’s dream destination, home to several important contemporary art foundations, a small but thriving gallery scene, enhanced by majestic impressions of the considerable effects of light, space, and time.
In fact, Marfa is such a special place that explaining how it came to be a gem of the contemporary art world requires a bit more explanation than I have space for this week. Nor is Marfa a place I would necessarily recommend that just anyone visit, in part due to its remoteness (a minimum of three full days is necessary to even begin to explore it), and in part due to the somewhat erudite context required to understand why Donald Judd dedicated so much effort to creating his vision for an American art vernacular there.
So besides Marfa — an exceptional destination in and of its own — my preferred choices for art spectating in Texas are its five largest cities. Each has more than one institution worthy of the title of “best in town,” but I’ll list my top picks in generally descending order.
Houston: a world-class city whose Menil Collection is nearly unique among American collections, boasts outstanding curation of modern and contemporary art with a good amount of ancient (i.e. Greco-Roman) and indigenous world art thrown in. Affiliated gallery spaces on the campus (in one of the greenest and most charming neighborhoods in town) include galleries dedicated to Dan Flavin, Cy Twombly, an outstanding collection of drawings, and the world-famous Rothko Chapel. The fact that the Menil prohibits photography indoors (with guards enforcing this rather unusual caveat for an American museum these days) creates an almost sacred, temple-like aura around its many treasures.
Perhaps just as impressive for sheer size and impact, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (which according to Wikipedia has overtaken the Art Institute of Chicago for second-largest art museum in the country by gallery space) can easily occupy my attention for 4 to 5 hours. Its collection of modern and contemporary Latin American art is probably the best I’ve ever seen in one institution, curated intelligently and integrally alongside that of American and European counterparts for powerful effect.
Like its counterparts in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and a number of other major American cities, the MFA Houston it is a truly encyclopedic art museum with depth in nearly every era of history and global culture.
James Turrell, The Light Inside (1999), installed in an underground walkway connecting three buildings comprising the massive, encyclopedic MFA Houston.
Dallas: The Dallas Museum of Art — already one of the top ten largest in the country — announced a major expansion last year (a case of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses in regards to Houston for gallery space, in my opinion). It is conveniently located downtown, just a short distance from the Nasher Sculpture Center, likely the all-around top institution dedicated solely to that medium in the United States. Both of these are at the top of their game in terms of strength of collection and ambition to put on the best programming possible (this despite the DMA’s recent decision to cut back on its hours and staff.) I see great things coming for Dallas’s art scene in the future, and I’m excited to attend the much talked-about Dallas Art Fair in early April of this year for the first time.
Nevertheless, I find museum-going in Dallas, a suburban metroplex of 8 million people with numerous popular entertainment options like home-grown Topgolf, to be quite different from more established art cities like New York or Chicago, where crowds are larger and awareness of art spectating as a popular sport is much broader.
Case in point: I once remember flying in from New York City about six years ago, where lines to see the the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room at David Zwirner Gallery were nearly 2 hours long, shocked to find no line at all for the DMA’s edition of her brand-new mirrored Instagram-trap All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016).
Fort Worth: Most non-Texan readers would be surprised, but I swear that this city of just over half a million, 40 miles west of Dallas, has three unique independent art museums of superlative caliber.
Although I love each of them, my top pick would have to be The Modern, designed by celebrity Japanese architect Tadao Ando, with starkly impressive, concrete-reinforced gallery space and outstanding curation of contemporary art (i.e. primarily from the last 50-75 years). It hosts exhibitions that travel around the world and has a terrific indoor/outdoor sculpture collection, including a massive Companion sculpture by KAWS.
A close second would be the Kimbell Art Museum, with eye-popping works covering the medieval to modern period. Among these is an easel painting by a 13-year-old Michelangelo, The Kimbell is situated in two gorgeous pavilions, designed by Louis Kahn and Renzo Piano, that allow the gorgeous Texas sunlight to pour into its galleries without harmfully falling directly onto artworks.
Lastly, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art has an exceptionally strong collection that is mostly 20th century, although I will admit this collection is a tad heavy on the work of 19th century Western-genre artist Frederic Remington (I can name several Western art museums that are so heavy on “cowboys and Indians” that I would describe them as “death-by-Frederic Remington," Indianapolis’s Eiteljorg Museum of Western Art being a notable exception in my book.) The Amon Carter also features great paintings by some of my favorite Texas artists, several of whom were affiliated with an interesting group from the 1940s and '50s called the Fort Worth Circle.
Because they are clustered together just a short stroll from a park along the South Fork Trinity River, all these museums can be easily visited in one day. Doing so always leaves me feeling stimulated and exhilarated, making Fort Worth’s special “trinity” of art museums like none other I know of in the United States.
Richard Serra, Vortex (2002), outside The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, arguably my favorite art museum in the Metroplex.
San Antonio: Easily displaying the best overall curation in town is the relatively small and intimate McNay Art Museum, which is why I never miss it when visiting this city.
The McNay claims to be the first true modern art museum in Texas, inheriting its original collection (and the Spanish colonial-style mansion it is located in) from prominent local ranchers and industrialists. This befits San Antonio’s status as both the oldest major settlement and second largest city in Texas by population, often overlooked because its metro area is less than half the size of that of the far younger metropolises of Houston or Dallas.
Thanks to another wealthy patron of the late 20th and early 21st century, the late Linda Pace, heiress to the food fortune that bears her surname (think: grocery store salsa), San Antonio has hosted a prestigious art residency known as Artpace since the early 1990s. Its list of alumni include prominent contemporary artists from around the world. Xu Bing, Julie Mehretu, Mark Bradford, Wangechi Mutu, and Tala Madani are just a few of my favorite artists who were invited to create and exhibit their art here. Artpace’s studios and galleries are located downtown just steps from the world-famous San Antonio Riverwalk.
Also affiliated with the Linda Pace Foundation is a new (opened in 2019) contemporary art museum called Ruby City, which, although small, puts on work by cutting-edge artists that I rarely see elsewhere, including many lesser-known Artpace graduates whose work I think would make excellent acquisitions.
From here barely a half mile down Alamo Street is the excellent Contemporary at Blue Star, a hybrid museum and gallery space that has never disappointed me either on multiple trips to San Antonio. In fact I might try to pitch one of my readers on a commissioned glass / acrylic wooden light-box by Cathy Cunningham-Little, whose work I was introduced to there just a week ago.
Plexiglas and light sculpture by Cathy Cunningham-Little (b. 1953), honoree of the 33rd annual Red Dot Show sponsored by The Contemporary at Blue Star, San Antonio, Texas; December, 2023.
Austin: As trendy and friendly as its reputation is, having sprouted in just a few decades from a provincial state capital of 400,000 to a over a million (with the soon-to-be tallest building in Texas), the city’s art scene lags somewhat behind those of the state’s other three major urban agglomerations. Broadly speaking, I find this is often the case with purpose-built capitals that historically have not been treated as their state’s primary centers of economic growth.
However, things are changing rapidly in Austin, so I wouldn’t be surprised to upgrade this assessment significantly within the next few years, given all the hype and the untapped potential of newer, affluent residents attracted by the technology sector.
Nevertheless, at present one can certainly see a day or more worth of fine art here, starting with the Blanton Museum of Art on the flagship campus of the extremely well-funded University of Texas. Boasting a core collection of American art from the 1940s through 1970s donated by novelist James MIchener and his Japanese-born wife, the Blanton’s galleries were recently renovated and expanded, and the 2018 installation of Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin (pictured at the top of this email) certainly gives Houston’s Rothko Chapel (a bit dated by comparison) a run for its money.
The other top art public art institution in town is The Contemporary Austin, split between two locations: a big-box gallery downtown on Congress Avenue and a former mansion and estate called Laguna Gloria in a posh suburban neighborhood along the Colorado River. Try not to miss the latter, for in my book, Laguna Gloria’s sculpture garden ranks, along with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and New Orleans’ Besthoff Sculpture Garden, as one of the most pleasant and interesting in the United States.
YOUR INVITATION to be part of Charting Transcendence’s Plans for 2024
Broadly speaking, Charting Transcendence is setting some ambitious goals and is committed to long-term development of relationships with collectors, artists, and art institutions not only in the artworld epicenter of New York or our hometown of Miami, but all across the country and worldwide.
Lead time in the art business can be long, for it often takes months of working with collectors to gain their full trust in order to guide them intuitively towards art they will value and cherish. That challenge being stated, at some point in the next 6-12 months, I do expect to reach a critical mass of activity to allow the business to scale more rapidly.
To facilitate this, Charting Transcendence has established itself as a Florida C-Corporation, allowing the flexibility to solicit strategic investment and lay the foundation for considerable future growth. I have several ideas of how to do this, considering that, next to the human capital of yours truly, the federally-trademarked Charting Transcendence brand itself, represented by our logo designed by Latvian-born artist Maria Dimanshtein, is currently our most valuable asset and one that I believe is worth leveraging (more on this to come in future newsletters.)
I would welcome a handful of additional investors who believe in my vision and who ideally would like to work with me at the most preferable rates and/or promote my work within their own networks. There would be significant upsides to doing so given the company’s nascent base of opportunity and the strength of the brand that I’ve invested years of my life towards defining. Please reach out to me directly for details including a copy of our investor deck.
Furthermore, although there is still plenty to see and do art-wise in South Florida, I will be flying out-of-state for artists’ studio visits, gallery openings, and art fairs.
Please contact me if you’d like to enjoy the opportunity to explore art with me in any of the following places:
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NYC: Jan. 25-28 — studio, gallery and museum visits
Mexico City: Feb. 6-11. ZonaMaco Contempoary Art Fair
Los Angeles: Feb. 27-Mar. 2. Frieze Art Fair
NYC: Mar. (dates TBD) — studio, gallery and museum visits
Dallas/Ft. Worth: Apr. 4-7. Dallas Art Fair
Chicago: Apr. 9-14. EXPO Chicago Art Fair
NYC: late Apr. - early May. NADA Art Fair & Frieze New York
