March 1, 2023

Behind The Lines:

 The Art of Texas Monthly

Wittliff Collections, exhibit dates:

 Now through Dec. 8th, 2023

Reception: Sunday, April 2, 2023 - Event details and RSVP link

The first issue of Texas Monthly hit newsstands in February 1973 with the aim of elevating Texas culture and politics to the level of places like New York and California. Few people expected it to last a year — much less fifty. Yet, with its acclaimed longform articles, insightful deep dives into the nuances of Texas politics, and the celebration of what makes Texas unique, the magazine became an overwhelming success.  

Texas Monthly is often – and rightfully, called a writer’s magazine, yet its Art Department has been equally groundbreaking, shaping the way that we see Texas. Through editorial cartoons that lampoon politics, to photographic essays that highlight the unhoused population of downtown Houston, along with striking portraits of people who make Texas what it is, Texas Monthly art editors, illustrators, and photographers gave the world a look into the “real Texas.” 

This exhibition title, Behind the Lines, is a nod to the editor’s column that told the stories behind the stories and allowed readers a glimpse of the editorial process. Our intent is to do the same with the magazine’s art production, highlighting original artwork and archival photographs found in Texas Monthly’s archive, and also featuring portrait photography published over the fifty-year run of Texas Monthly. 

February 28, 2023

CCVI Fronteriza Sisters in the Borderlands: Accompanying our Texas Mexican Communities, 1871 - present

A new online exhibit from the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word Congregational Archives

This exhibit is a celebration, documentation, and one of the first acknowledgements of the Mexican American Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word (San Antonio) who have served in Texas in what is frequently called 'greater Mexico' - the region North of the natural waterway border that Texans call the Rio Grande, and that Mexicans call the Río Bravo del Norte. Dr. Américo Paredes, a Mexican American folklorist, is credited with the use of the term 'greater Mexico' as a tool to understand the flow of mexicanidad in the US-Mexico borderlands, and also in diaspora areas.

We see a transnational fluidity reflected in the Sisters’ assignments to the various Texas missions in the congregation. It was sensible to have at least one ethnic