Even though we balked at spending yet more time online, we ended up taking part in at least 43 art events, both in-person and virtually, in 2021. Here are the numbers
- Art – 8
- Concert – 2
- Festival/Event – 3
- Film/Video – 7
- Lecture/Author Talk – 11
- Museum/History – 2
- Music – 1
- Performance – 3
- Theater – 6
In no particular order, here are my Top Events for 2021:
I will always hold dear the second year of this global pandemic because it was when I finally saw Ron Athey perform live. His Acephalous Monster in Los Angeles coincided with the lull before the omicron variant took off, when it was easier to pretend that the pandemic was (almost) over. Coupled with the stellar Amelia Jones-curated retrospective Queer Communion at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the entire day was spent basking in Athey’s artistic brilliance.
As usual, though, Ron Athey was involved in so much more throughout the year, which began with a collaboration with Elliot Reed entitled FAR & Away Conversations, followed by a series of performances in New York called Performance at Participant in 3 Acts, the Virtual 40th Anniversary Gala for Performance Space New York, and We Are Kept in Chaos: Hallelujah!, a discussion with Catherine Gund and Kendall Thomas.
The year was also filled with Laurie Anderson‘s 6-episode Spending the War Without You series of lectures-cum-performances-cum-manifestoes as part of the Norton Lecture Series at the Mahindra Humanities Center. Each one followed a specific theme: The Forest, The Rocks, The River, The Road, The City, and Birds. Part greatest hits retrospective, part live cultural criticism.
Saw two outstanding plays: one of my favorite local actors (Shawn Gann) was in an outside performance of the rarely-performed (at least in this part of the world) Fernando Arrabals’ The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. The other was the equally rarely-performed The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neill, produced by The Classics Theatre Project, which I reviewed.
Todd Stephens’ Swan Song starred Udo Kier as part of the Oak Cliff Film Festival at the Texas Theatre. We should’ve left after the perfectly poignant film, though, because the Q&A suffered from a much-too-drunk Kier holding the audience and hosts hostage to his ramblings.
Dallas-based artist (and friend) Sara Cardona participated in several events and exhibits we were happy to catch, from her Nasher Public Artist Talk about her work Seeding the Path on the Katy Trail to her exhibition Vas a ver at the Erin Cluley Gallery. If you ever come visit us at our home in Dallas, you’ll get to see one of Sara’s “seeds” in the backyard.
Shows that I really regret missing this past year: the Donald Judd Retrospective at MoMA, the Nam June Paik retrospective SFMOMA, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, in Paris, and Kronos Quartet’s A Thousand Thoughts, a show I had tickets to at least twice over the past couple of years but was cancelled both times.