Arts Rescue Mission -Aid For Aging Artists
P u b l i s h e d W e e k l y, N e w s, A r t s, & S t o r i e s F r o m T e x a s
Vol. 1, Issue 1,
Oct. 14, 2025
page 2
After The Last Sky: The Texas Biennial at a Crossroads
Dan M. Allison, MissionNews, Vol. 1, Issue 1, Oct.14, 2025
A Homegrown Experiment
The Texas Biennial began in 2005 as a stubborn act of independence. A small circle of Austin artists, Rachel Koper, Jon Lawrence, Shea Little, Arturo Palacios, Joseph Phillips, and Jana Swec, wanted to create a statewide platform without waiting for large museums to make room. They built it from the ground up: ad-hoc venues, borrowed walls, volunteer energy, and an open call that cast a wide net across Texas.
In those early years, the Biennial felt scrappy but electric. It was less about prestige and more about possibility: could Texas artists be seen together, not as isolated city scenes but as a shared conversation? The answer, as it turned out, was yes. By 2011, the project merged with the Austin nonprofit Big Medium, giving the Biennial institutional support and a broader reach. A “Participating Organizations” model was introduced, inviting museums, artist-run spaces, and collectives across Texas to align exhibitions under the Biennial banner. The event was no longer just an Austin project, it became a statewide platform.
The 2013 edition proved the concept’s power. Curators Bill Arning, René Paul Barilleaux, K8 Hardy, Teresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler, Annette Lawrence, Christina Rees, Dario Robleto, Noah Simblist, Jeremy Strick, Clint Willour, and others helped mount exhibitions in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, and Marfa. It was ambitious, messy, and alive, a Texas-sized experiment in shared visibility. Over time, the rhythm wavered. Some editions scaled back (notably 2017, centered again in Austin); others disappeared entirely (2019). The 2020 edition was postponed by the pandemic until 2021. Yet every cycle, when it resurfaced, it carried the same conviction: that Texas deserved its own survey, defined by its artists rather than outside institutions.
2021: A Distributed Biennial
The 2021 Texas Biennial, curated by Ryan N. Dennis and Evan Garza, marked a structural shift. Instead of a single venue, it spanned major institutions: Artpace, Ruby City, the McNay Art Museum, and the San Antonio Museum of Art, along with FotoFest in Houston. The scope widened further through a bold eligibility expansion, not just artists living and working in Texas, but also “Texpats” (Texas natives working elsewhere) and artists whose projects engaged Texas themes from afar. The Biennial had grown from a regional showcase into a platform for Texas in dialogue with the world. It was both a survey and an invitation: how far can “Texas art” reach before it stops being Texan?
The Last Sky
The most recent edition, 2024’s The Last Sky, pushed the model further. Curated collaboratively by Erika Mei Chua Holum, Ashley DeHoyos Sauder, and Coka Treviño, it rejected hierarchy in favor of collective curatorship and thematic depth. The title, poetic and ominous, suggested both fragility and renewal, a meditation on thresholds and shared futures. The curators broadened participation to include performance, cultural preservation, time-based media, and socially engaged practice. Venues stretched across Houston and the Gulf Coast: Blaffer Art Museum, DiverseWorks, Sawyer Yards, The Journey HTX, Lanecia Rouse Tinsley Gallery, and the Houston Climate Justice Museum, among others. In Corpus Christi, K Space Contemporary joined the network, reinforcing the Biennial’s growing reach beyond Austin.
For visitors, The Last Sky read less like a single show and more like a constellation, a set of overlapping practices, voices, and geographies. That diffusion was both its strength and its challenge.
The Biennial’s Enduring Questions
Nearly twenty years on, the Texas Biennial carries both weight and wear. It has elevated hundreds of artists, brought curators and critics into conversation with Texas art, and created moments of recognition for communities often overlooked by larger institutions.
But it also raises difficult questions:
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Scale vs. focus: Does statewide scope strengthen or dilute impact?
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Consistency vs. flexibility: Can a Biennial that sometimes skips years sustain credibility?
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Geography vs. cohesion: How do you connect an exhibition stretched across multiple cities?
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Curatorial voice vs. collective chorus: Should the Biennial present one unified vision, or remain a platform for many?
These are not unique to Texas. From Venice to New Orleans, every biennial wrestles with similar tensions. But in Texas, vast, diverse, and contradictory, the stakes feel uniquely local. The Biennial’s challenge has always been to balance independence with identity, ambition with accessibility.
Artists’ and Institutions’ Perspectives
For artists, the Biennial has long represented both opportunity and uncertainty. Inclusion brings exposure, catalog presence, and the possibility of national attention. But with irregular scheduling and shifting leadership, many artists struggle to plan around it. The question “When is the next one?” has no reliable answer.
For institutions, participation brings collaboration and shared audiences. Museums and nonprofits benefit from statewide promotion and cross-pollination. Yet participation also demands resources, curatorial hours, staff, and budgets. For smaller organizations, those costs can be prohibitive. Sustaining the “Participating Organizations” model requires a stable financial foundation, something increasingly rare in the state’s arts ecosystem.
The Crossroads: 2026 and Beyond
After The Last Sky, the Texas Biennial stands at a genuine crossroads. The next open call, expected for 2026, has not been announced. Behind the uncertainty lies a larger development that could reshape the Biennial’s future entirely.
Big Medium’s Closure
On February 21, 2025, Big Medium’s Board of Directors announced the organization’s permanent closure after more than two decades of service to the Austin arts community. In its public statement, the board cited years of financial hardship and the inability to sustain operations under current conditions.
“After more than 20 years of proudly serving the Austin arts community,” the statement read, “Big Medium’s Board of Directors has made the incredibly difficult decision to shut down operations. This has not been an easy choice, but it comes after many years of financial hardships and tireless efforts to renew and rebuild with limited resources.”
The statement continued:
“Major sponsors, including the City of Austin, have redirected their funding priorities, leaving significant gaps in our budget. Despite best efforts to secure alternative funding, the hurdles have become insurmountable. Retaining staff and raising the necessary funds to sustain Big Medium in a healthy way has proven untenable. As a result, we have decided to cease all programming and close our current location.”
Big Medium’s closure leaves the Texas Biennial without its founding organizational home. As of October 2025, neither the Biennial’s website nor its partner institutions have announced new leadership or future plans. The absence of an administrative anchor raises the question: Can the Texas Biennial survive without Big Medium, and if so, under whose stewardship?
Biennial or Triennial?
This uncertainty reignites a question already circulating among artists and curators: Should the Texas Biennial remain biennial, or evolve into a triennial?
Supporters of the biennial model argue that a two-year rhythm maintains momentum and visibility. It keeps Texas artists in the public eye and the conversation fresh. Detractors counter that the pace is unsustainable, financially, curatorially, and institutionally, especially without a host organization. A triennial model, they argue, could allow deeper research, better funding, and stronger artist support. Some propose a hybrid solution: a major triennial survey alternating with smaller biennial programs, residencies, or traveling exhibitions in the intervening years. Such a model could preserve continuity while allowing time to rebuild infrastructure.
A Broader Reflection
The Texas Biennial’s story mirrors that of Texas art itself: independent, resilient, and perpetually in flux. What began as a grassroots experiment has evolved into a touchstone of statewide identity, an effort to define what “Texas art” can mean in a century shaped by migration, climate, and cultural hybridity.
Its fate now depends less on geography than on imagination. Whether resurrected by another nonprofit, adopted by a museum consortium, or reinvented as a digital-first model, the Texas Biennial’s next form will inevitably reflect the same impulse that sparked it in 2005, artists creating space where none existed.
Two decades after its founding, the Texas Biennial remains an idea worth fighting for, even as its structure falters. If The Last Sky marked the end of one era, it also opened the horizon for another. Texas has never waited for permission to make art. And perhaps that’s the enduring lesson of the Biennial: that even in the absence of an institution, the creative spirit of a place can still find its own way to gather, to show, and to be seen.