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Life & Arts

Blaffer a vital piece of UH, Houston

Director says gallery's place on university campus gives it more freedom to exhibit up-and-coming artists

by ASHLEY HESS
The Daily Cougar

Not only does the Blaffer Gallery serve as a provider of the arts for the University, it also serves as an example of the University's diverse environment.

"We have a very balanced audience, and … we try to have ethnic diversity in the mediums that we show so that in any three-year period, you'll have seen a painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture show, and it will have some kind of balance between groups that are dedicated to a certain theme or a single-person show," gallery director Terri Sultan said. "Those are all the ingredients that go into this recipe for what our exhibition schedule will look like over a three-year period."

Sultan, who spent 12 years serving as curator for contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., said the gallery is as an integral piece for Houston and the UH community. 

"The fact that we're on the campus of a university makes us different than the other museums in the city," Sultan said. "We more or less fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is created by the traditional museums. You have (the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), The Contemporary Art Museum, and then you have us," Sultan said. "We are the third angle of that triangle for how to create a vibrant visual arts scene in the city. We have permission to be more experimental, and a much bigger percentage is dedicated to emerging artists."

The Gallery has held more than 250 exhibitions since its opening in 1973, most of which were organized by the gallery's curators. 

"Occasionally we will present a show that was organized by a colleague if we feel that it is an important theme and concept that would be relevant to our audience. But most of the time we're generating the original research ourselves, and I think that's largely what sets us apart," Sultan said. 

Each of the gallery's exhibition runs an average of two weeks, with the exception of popular shows such as the current Masters Thesis Exhibition. After they end, about 80 percent of the exhibitions that run in the gallery travel to different museums across the nation. 

Sultan said much effort is put into raising the gallery's visibility on campus. 

"We have something called the Committee on Visual Culture, which is a group of faculty and staff that are interested in the art museum," she said. "We do a presentation twice a year to let them know what the upcoming exhibitions are going to be, so if we have something that's topical for a class they're teaching, they know and can bring their students. 

"We have something called the Blaffer Student Association, which is a new program that everyone is welcome to join. Every year the Blaffer association does a party as a ‘welcome to campus, come see your museum' event."

The Blaffer also does collaborative programs with some of the other institutions on campus.

"One of the key aspects of this institution is our dedication to interdisciplinary collaborative programs, which is obviously influenced by the new (Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts) that's been established here on campus," Sultan said. "That is being developed expressly to present and develop cross-genre projects between the museum, schools of art, music, theater, dance and creative writing. We've always been interested in that and we're definitely taking that as a cue to be even more aggressive about integrating visual arts into other media."

Sultan said the gallery is a vital part of UH's image.

"We're important and we're generating new research, and it very much helps the University demonstrate itself as a world-class institution," she said.

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