Blog, Exhibition, News |

February 1, 2019

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Josh T Franco: March 2019 Contemporary Art Month Exhibition Guest Curator

Josh T Franco wears, “a black Bauhaus t-shirt, a cowboy hat inherited from a REAL Tejano outlaw wrapped in a purple fur collar; a scarf from a Los Angeles popup by fashion students; a cheetah print angora blue and black cardigan; one pair of rad wool leggings hip to toe and woven booties.” Photo courtesy Franco.

The Spare Parts Mini Art Museum has selected Josh T Franco as its March 2019 Contemporary Art Month exhibition guest curator. “Franco has a disciplined, curious, active and engaged mind towards artists around the globe. He is a leader with diverse skills, including holding his own art practice,” explains Board Member Chris Castillo. Interim Museum Director Mary Elizabeth Cantu continues, “Franco is already familiar with Mini Art Museum (MAM) as he was an invited artist for the award-winning 2014 “Short Stories” exhibition by Lady Base Gallery’s Sarah Castillo. We are thrilled to have him participating in this role for our Contemporary Art month show.

“I am primarily an artist and art historian, and do not have curatorial aspirations. However, I make an exception for MAM, because it is such a unique institution whose impact, especially on San Anto area school children, far outsizes its physical scale. I also enjoy challenging my artist peers to experiment outside the typical premises of their practice. Thanks to MAM, I get to invite artists whose work I find comforting, provocative, and rigorous to try something new by working in a scale not typical for them. As a past MAM artist myself, I know how this challenge can open up new pathways to explore. This is what makes MAM such a rich opportunity, for both the artists and this probably one-time curator,” guest curator Josh T Franco explains. 

Franco is an artist with an art history PhD. His dissertation, “Marfa, Marfa: Minimalism, rasquachismo, and Questioning ‘Decolonial Aesthetics’ in Far West Texas” was completed in the Art History department at Binghamton University in 2016. The Clifford D. Clark Fellowship, the Ithaca College Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship and the Imagining America PAGE (Publicly Active Graduate Education) Fellowship supported his graduate work. Franco served as a 2014 – 2015 PAGE National Co-Director. He was an Artist-Guide at JUDD Foundation, the New York home and studio of Donald Judd, commonly known by its address, 101 Spring Street (2013 – 2015).

Franco has presented scholarly and critical work in the following venues: Marfa Book Co., Stanford University, College Art Association, Association of Art Historians, Utrecht University, American Comparative Literature Association, Dartmouth College, HEMI Graduate Student Initiative (Hemispheric Institute), zingmagazine, The Frick Collection, …mightbegood, Latino Art Now!, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Independent Curators International, The Journal of Feminist Scholarship, DePauw University and Ford Foundation.

As an artist, Franco has produced and exhibited one artwork annually since 2009. In addition to fulfilling a creative need, this practice ensures that his scholarship is constantly informed by the intimate processes of making work and participating directly in the exhibition process. These works have been hosted by Co-Lab (Austin), Society for the Study of Gloria E. Anzaldúa (San Antonio / Austin), Community School of Music and Art (Ithaca, NY), Esperanza Peace and Justice Center (San Antonio), Lady Base Gallery (San Antonio), WorkSpaceBrussels (Belgium), NurtureArt Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), DePauw University (Greencastle, IN) and Studio SoHy (Hyattsville, MD).

He is a native West Texan and currently resides in Hyattsville, Maryland.

ABOUT MINI ART MUSEUM

In 2013 Spare Parts under the leadership of Mary Elizabeth Cantu and Gabriela Santiago founded the MINI ART MUSEUM (MAM). MAM takes contemporary art exhibitions to communities around the world making it possible for everyone to engage and learn in an inclusive, accessible fine arts experience.


Exhibition |

June 19, 2018

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Anjali Gupta to be Spare Parts MINI ART MUSEUM’s 2018 – 2019 Featured Curator!

Anjali Gupta, Age 3. Photo Courtesy of Ms. Gupta, a.k.a. Mom.

We are excited to announce that Anjali Gupta, who many of you know as the Director of Sala Diaz and residency program Casa Chuck, will be the Spare Parts MINI ART MUSEUM’s 2018 – 2019 Featured Curator!

Anjali Gupta is a critic, curator, editor and video producer based in San Antonio. Gupta became Director/Curator of Sala Diaz in January 2015, and continues to run the organization’s residency program Casa Chuck (2011- ). Prior to this, she was Executive Director (2008-2010) and Editor-in-Chief (2003-2010) of Art Lies, a contemporary art quarterly published in Houston. Her writing has appeared in numerous print periodicals such as Art Asia Pacific, Art Papers, artUS, Punk Planet and tema celeste, in online publications Glasstire, …might be good and uber.com, as well as in catalogues including Blanton Museum of Art: American Art Since 1900 (2007), Beers, Steers & Queers: The Texas Biennial (2007), Chuck Ramirez: Minimally Baroque (2011), America’s Finest: Recent Works by Vincent Valdez (David Shelton Gallery, 2013) and Sara Frantz: In Search of the Vernacular (Women & Their Work, 2015). Book editing projects include the AMA award-winning monograph Thomas Glassford: CADÁVER EXQUISITO (UNAM, 2007), Silvia Gruner: Un Chant d’Amour (Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, 2008), Colin de Land/American Fine Arts Co. (co-edited with Dennis Balk, powerHouse Books, 2008), Unpacking the Collection (Museum of Contemporary Craft, 2008), Chuck Ramirez: Minimally Baroque and Manuel Espinosa (Colección Espinosa, 2013).  

Gupta’s video credits include producing and/or editing projects for Edgar Arceneaux, Candice Breitz, Kendell Geers, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Christian Jankowski, Jorge Macchi, Susan Philipsz, Paul Pfeiffer, Shahzia Sikander, Yutaka Sone, Andre Stitt, Survival Research Labs and Jeremy Deller’s Turner Prize-winning Memory Bucket (2004). She has curated many exhibitions and interdisciplinary events in her own art spaces (The Wong Spot 1 & 2, Ellis Bean, 811 Lounge, The Honey Factory and the Wiggle Room) as well as in other venues including Jason Singleton (test site, Austin, TX, 2004), Roy Stanfield: Armacell (The Lab, NYC, 2004), Critics Select (The Shore Institute of Contemporary Art (Long Branch, NJ, 2005), Michele Monseau: Gone Again (Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio, TX, 2007) and Ballad of the Non-specific Object (David Shelton Gallery, San Antonio, TX, 2011).

In 2004 & 2005, she was Assistant Director of Contemporary Art Month San Antonio, an annual, month-long, citywide celebration of contemporary art. Additionally, she has worked as a Lecturer in the Graduate Studio Art Department at the University of Texas at Austin, was a panelist and final round juror for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Creative Capital Arts Writers Program (2008/2010) and served on the planning committee for the 2011 Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers Convening. She has also served on multiple panels at College Art Association, public art panels in Houston and San Antonio and nominee committees for Artpace San Antonio, Art in General, Blue Star Contemporary’s Berlin Residency and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.