Installation view, The Canvas Can Do Miracles, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2025. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
The Canvas Can Do Miracles brings together an intergenerational group of artists who complicate legacies of painterly abstraction. These artists engage their canvases as coded, networked spaces for communication, transformation, and metaphysical inquiry, thus offering a counter-narrative to the language of formal abstraction.
Installation view, Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2025. Artwork © Teddy Sandoval. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein. Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art is a traveling exhibition curated by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI). Learn more @curatorsintl @ondinechavoya @davidevansfrantz
Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art is the first museum retrospective dedicated to the inventive though overlooked artist Teddy Sandoval (1949–1995). A central figure in Los Angeles’s queer and Chicanx artistic circles, Sandoval was an active participant in both U.S. and international avant-garde movements.
Installation view, HOST: Raul De Lara, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2025. Commissioned by The Contemporary Austin. Artwork © Raul De Lara. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
Merging woodworking, craft, and design, Raul De Lara reimagines everyday objects—chairs, ladders, plants, and tools—as surreal anthropomorphic forms that reflect his experience as a Mexican-born artist living in the United States. Blending technical fluency with material play, humor, and poetic sensibility, De Lara’s sculptures challenge fixed notions of form and identity.
The Contemporary Austin will showcase a mural by artist Manik Raj Nakra on the Jones Center’s downtown building on 7th and Congress.
Jim Hodges, With Liberty and Justice for All (A Work in Progress), 2014–2016. Stainless steel, Dichrolam, acrylic, enamel paint, and LED lights. Installed, 84 x 1,737 x 10 inches. Installation view, The Contemporary Austin – The Moody Rooftop at the Jones Center, Austin, Texas, 2017. Artwork © Jim Hodges. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.
The Contemporary Austin unveils a new outdoor installation by artist Jim Hodges for The Moody Rooftop at the Jones Center.
Installation view, Perry Art Park, Austin, Texas, 2017, with (from left) Peter Reginato, Blue Float, 1978; Jim Huntington, Dayton, 1977; and Betty Gold, Alas #IV, 1994. Artwork and image courtesy The Contemporary Austin – Museum Without Walls Program. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.
The Contemporary Austin’s Museum Without Walls program brings art beyond the walls of the museum and out into the community in new ways and in diverse venues.
David Deming, Mystic Raven, 1983. Painted steel. 264 x 192 x 72 inches. Collection of The Contemporary Austin. Gift of TRST Congress, Inc., 1992.10. Installation view, Pease Park at Shoal Creek Greenbelt, Austin, Texas, 2017. Artwork and image courtesy The Contemporary Austin – Museum Without Walls Program. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.
Wangechi Mutu, Water Woman, 2017. Bronze. 36 x 65 x 70 inches. Edition 2 of 3, with 2 AP. Collection of The Contemporary Austin. Purchased with funds provided by the Edward and Betty Marcus Foundation, 2017.5. Installation view, The Contemporary Austin – Laguna Gloria, Austin, Texas, 2017. Artwork © Wangechi Mutu. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.
The Contemporary Austin’s Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria is named in honor of a founding grant by the Edward and Betty Marcus Foundation. This contemporary art destination presents exhibitions and permanent outdoor art installations on a site of great natural beauty on Lake Austin.
Installation view, Jiab Prachakul: Sweet Solitude, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2025. Artwork © Jiab Prachakul. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
Jiab Prachakul: Sweet Solitude comprises a selection of paintings from the past five years, presented in a sequence that loosely mirrors Prachakul’s own journey as an artist. Having lived in Europe for much of her adult life, her paintings are often inflected with her desire for connection amidst a feeling of displacement, a sense of romantic longing pervading throughout.
Installation view, Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2025. Artwork © Raven Halfmoon. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
Raven Halfmoon’s (b. 1991, Caddo Nation; lives and works in Norman, Oklahoma) touring solo exhibition will span both of The Contemporary Austin’s sites with an indoor exhibition at the Jones Center and an outdoor sculpture, Flagbearer, which will be installed at the museum’s Laguna Gloria location in mid-February.
Installation view, HOST: Tenant of Culture, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2025. Artwork © Tenant of Culture. Artworks commissioned by The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy the artist; Soft Opening, London; and Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
HOST: Tenant of Culture presents newly commissioned works by Hendrickje Schimmel alongside a selection of recent works in an installation that explores the tension between seductive, consumer-facing displays and spaces less visible in the fashion industry, such as production factories and fulfillment centers.