January 26, 2004

By Leticia Vasquez
Editor

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, has won an Oscar, of sorts.

The museum, headed by director Terrie Sultan, was the recipient of the International Association of Art Critics/USA award for Best Show of an Emerging/Under-known Artist for the exhibition Bob Knox:
Non-Fiction Paintings.

“It’s very prestigious to be recognized by an organization of international art critics,” Sultan said. “For them to say, in a very public way, that we’ve done something that stands out among all other museums that are organizing other shows, it’s very special for us.”

The winning exhibition was co-organized by the University Art Museum at the University of Southern California, Long Beach, and included large-scale, acrylic on canvas works. The paintings, which were based on old photographs, included nighttime scenes of New York City and interior views of living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens and balconies.

Sultan received the award at a ceremony in New York earlier this month.

“Getting these kinds of national awards really brings attention to Blaffer Gallery and the entire University of Houston campus,” she said.

Sultan credited the museum’s win to a combination of high-quality work, a catalogue that included interpretive essays about the artwork and the museum’s success in bringing the material to the attention of the public.

Also while in New York, Sultan was on hand for the opening of Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition opened at Blaffer last fall and will be on display at several other museums around the United States through December 2007.

“Chuck Close Prints was the dream project of a lifetime,” Sultan said. “For the Metropolitan Museum of Art to recognize the value of our ideas and our scholarship and say to us, ‘we want to present your exhibit,’ that’s huge. That was an enormous thrill.”

Sultan said she was pleased to have Blaffer Gallery in the limelight and prides herself on the success the museum has had in representing such diverse works.

“We want the Blaffer to be a world-class museum. We want to represent our campus because we are very proud to be a part of this community, and we try to reflect that. We have a very strong community of people here, and we try to reflect that diversity.”