Last week, Ballroom Marfa donors, board members, art dealers and artists met in Los Angeles to ramp up for our upcoming benefit in New York City. Barclays co-hosted the event with Ballroom Marfa board member Suzanne Deal Booth, and featured Casa Dragones sipping tequila, decor by Sean Daly, music by Zach Cowie, and of course, a woman in a bubble. All photos by Amy Graves.

For more information about the Ballroom Marfa Benefit Gala, please contact Alisha Litman at MF Productions at alisha@mfproductions or 212-243-7300.

Photo courtesy the Menil Collection, Houston

MARFA, TX – Ballroom Marfa’s board of directors is pleased to announce the appointment of Susan Sutton as its new executive director. Sutton comes to Marfa after a four-year tenure at Houston’s Menil Collection, where, as assistant curator, she most recently organized A Thin Wall of Air: Charles James (2014), an exhibition exploring the work of the celebrated designer in relation to John and Dominique de Menil, two of his most committed patrons.

Fairfax Dorn, Ballroom Marfa’s co-founder and outgoing executive director, will transition to the role of artistic director, where she will work with Sutton in conceiving and implementing the creative and strategic vision for the Marfa-based non-profit. Dorn has served as executive director of Ballroom Marfa since she founded the organization with Virginia Lebermann in 2003. Lebermann is currently president of Ballroom Marfa’s board of directors.

“Ballroom Marfa has an extraordinary history,” says Sutton. “I am awed by the inspired risk the founders took to build it. I come from an institution where the founders believed in Texas, saw its potential, and wanted to create a world class place for the arts, on par with New York or Paris, and with intense loyalty to Houston. I see this same inspiration and loyalty guiding Ballroom Marfa. Ballroom is a nimble space that seeks out experimentation, supports emerging artists, and bridges different disciplines in the arts through its holistic point of view, which is extremely exciting to me.”

“Susan’s background includes scholarship, curation and the management of exhibitions at one of North America’s most significant museum collections,” says Dorn. “The diverse experience she brings from the Menil make her an ideal person to guide Ballroom Marfa as we continue with our ambitious plans for the future.”

Sutton joined the Menil Collection’s curatorial department in 2010, and was promoted to assistant curator in 2014. Sutton curated The Menil’s recent exhibition, A Thin Wall of Air: Charles James (2014), with interviews and features appearing in System magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Magazine and on Houston PBS. Sutton managed the exhibition Byzantine Things in the World (2013), contributing a major essay, “Resistant Surfaces,” to its catalogue. In 2012, Sutton led the management of The Progress of Love, an international simultaneous three-venue exhibition with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos. In conjunction with The Progress of Love, she launched the Menil’s first exhibition related website. She was also a contributor to African Art from the Menil Collection (2008).

After a series of productive negotiations with the Texas Department of Transportation, Prada Marfa is officially saved. The official statement from TxDOT’s Veronica Beyer is below. More details coming from Art Production Fund,Ballroom Marfa and Elmgreen & Dragset next week!

 

As of February 1, 2014, the Ballroom Marfa Foundation, a domestic nonprofit corporation, has leased the property on which the building stands. The site is now an art museum site and the building is their single art exhibit. As such, associated signage on the building is now considered to be an “on-premise” sign under state rules and does not require a state permit under the Highway Beautification Act.

The lease is currently being reviewed, but with the execution of the lease,

the complaint file will be closed.

 

Ballroom Marfa is immensely grateful for the outpouring of support that we’ve received for Prada Marfa. To read more about Elmgreen & Dragset’s iconic sculptural installation, please visit our official Prada Marfa Explainer.

For more background on the TxDOT decision, see Juan Carlos Llorca’s story for the Associated Press.

If you’d like to support Ballroom Marfa as we continue to maintain the Prada Marfa site, and as we embark on even more inspiring and provocative public art projects, please become a member today! Click here to learn more.

Ballroom Marfa, along with several Marfa friends, recently partnered with Strolby, an online marketplace, to provide a bunch of local products all in one place. Strolby’s editorial director, Sarah Stodola, made some recommendations for future Marfa pilgrims to check out over at Almanac of Style. She writes,”This is a town with the artistic sophistication of a New York City, the pace of a muddy river, and an utterly singular atmosphere, where large-scale isolation fosters a hive of creative activity,” and we’d have to agree.

 

Read all of Sarah’s suggestions here and be sure to shop Marfa on Strolby!

Our friends at Chinati Foundation will host Josh Chalmers and Abi Daniel of Bearded Lady, an Austin-based screen print studio, who have printed a few of Ballroom’s posters (including the Fundred Dollar Bill Project, Mexican Institute of Sound, Every Revolution Is a Roll of the Dice, and Green Mountain Energy Solar Dedication). They will be in town for a two-day workshop for adults on Saturday and Sunday, September 13 and 14, 2014. It looks like the class is already closed (!), but you could try and sweet talk Michael Roch, Chinati Education Coordinator, for a last-minute cancellation.

Also, if you dig Cass McCombs (check) and the Meat Puppets (check), you’ll be excited to hear that they’re collaborating on a limited-edition 7″, featuring two new songs by McCombs and two new covers by the Meat Puppets, The Texas Tornados’ “(Hey Baby), Que Paso,” and The Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown.” Out October 28 on Domino.

Thomas, the all male Catholic military academy of 700 students in Mendota Heights where familiarity and dress are uniform A record 1,826 individuals made the list in 2015, up from 1,645 in 2014, with an average net worth of $3. Many of these men endured some of the worst fighting of the Civil War in Grant’s to Richmond One might wonder how so many men could give their precise dates of service 25 years after the conclusion of the Civil War. Multiple World Elite travel benefits provided by MasterCard Travel Services may be booked, but such benefits may not be combinable with a travel service provider’s other offers. Cette estimation demeure relativement ev,

In April 2014, we were honored to be part of the “I [art] Marfa” series for Arte Creative in France. Conceived and filmed by Sébastien Carayol and Katie Callan, the pair spent a week in Marfa, interviewing five locals: the Chinati Foundation’s Rob Weiner; artist Julie Speed; Ballroom Marfa Executive Director Fairfax Dorn; Food Shark owner Adam Bork; and artist Sam Schonzeit. The series is finished, and excellent. Watch Dorn’s episode here; or view the entire series here.

You put in what you get out,”

While we’re catching our breath after this past weekend’s Marfa Dialogues/St. Louis, we thought we’d share photos from the stunning performances of Vidas Perfectas, Alex Waterman’s Spanish-language production of Robert Ashley’s groundbreaking work Perfect Lives (1983). Thanks to everyone who helped make Vidas Perfectas happen. See the full list of thanks and acknowledgements here.

All photos by Alex Marks,
July 18 and 19,2014.

 

In bringing back our feature, “Who’s At Ballroom Marfa This Week?”, I got to speak to Brooke Hampshire, Rebecca Carroll, Lizzy Méndez and Melissa Repko on a busy Saturday afternoon this Memorial Day weekend. The four friends from Dallas were on a tour of Far West Texas, and stopped by Ballroom to check out Sound Speed Marker on their way to Prada Marfa, Big Bend National Park, and beyond. Despite spending only two nights in town, these gals were able to regale me with a bunch of “only-in-Marfa” stories.

Ballroom Marfa: Why did you want to come to Marfa?
Brooke Hampshire: I’ve wanted to come for the last decade…I’ve actually always wanted to visit Big Bend, and…friends of mine in the past have come for the art scene so it just worked out.
Lizzy Méndez: I only knew about the Prada thing and I was like, yes! I mean, when else am I going to be able to see that?
Rebecca Carroll: I’ve always just heard about the art… how unique the town was and that it was very eclectic and everybody had their own thing going on… I thought it was kind of like a cool little reclusive area where it was off the grid so that’s pretty cool.

BM: How did you feel about the work that you saw here?
RC: I really liked Movie Mountain (Méliés). I wish we had more time to sort of sit down and watch the whole thing. The two-screen experience…I’m more of a video art person, it’s a lot of what I did in college. I like the exhibit, it’s movie-oriented, and I like that it’s dedicated to all these separate parts, dedicated to one idea.
LM: It’s also just Texas art, which is cool. You can’t get that in, like, New York City.

BM: What’s been the highlight of your trip so far?
RC: We’ve had many. [laughter]
LM: We had like a 16 hour day yesterday, and we did…we walked to like the edge of town, which is just kind of nuts, because it’s four blocks, and it turns into just like a ranch, and you can see [everything], which was awesome… We did the star party, which was amazing.
BH: Yeah, it was amazing.
LM: We very randomly ended up at [Marfa Public Radio], they were so friendly.
RC: Yeah, we’d gone to the NPR studio, and they took us around and gave us advice and directions on what we should do.
LM: They gave us stickers and we bought t-shirts.
RC: …You asked for a highlight, I don’t know which one of those was the highlight.
LM: It was just a great day.
RC: Yeah, overall, it was sort of a package deal. All of Marfa was a highlight.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the free Slasher Flicks/Party With Death show on Monday! All photos by Alex Marks.

Rosy Keyser in her Brooklyn studio. Photo by Britt Winterer.

In an article for ARTnews, Barbara A. MacAdam discusses the evolution of Immaterial artist Rosy Keyser’s work. MacAdam also explores the artist’s various inspirations including living in rural Maryland, while attending school in Baltimore city; her time in upstate New York; and her experience at Ballroom Marfa, noting:

Other recent activities include her participation last May in an exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection in London as well as the show at Halsey McKay Gallery. But it was a 2010–11 exhibition at Ballroom Marfa in remote West Texas that Keyser says really had a big impact on the way she thinks about “the reflexive qualities of matter and atmosphere where familiar landmarks are scarce.”

According to the Repubs, you should let a mother that has TWO kids dieHer hubby is 41st in line to the throne, thanks to his dad being Queen Elizabeth cousin. The 2015 NFL salary cap is confirmed at $143. Wack worked as a technician at Marlborough Ford in Calgary and was set to start studies at SAIT as an apprentice on Monday, according to the dealership’s service manager David McWilliam. Stephensen also suggested all the injuries sustained by Meika could have been caused by a fall down stairs. Read: NIGER: Le Sahel Quotidien reported on 10 March that during the commemoration of the International Women’s Day, the UNFPA Country Office in Niger received, from the Minister of Population, Women’s Promotion and Children’s Protection, Sanady Tchimaden Hadattan,