I, for one, was a little intimidated by Dan. He was a wonderful painter, philosopher, Renaissance man (it was rumored he built his own computers, and wrote a book on design, for instance), and sometime oracle. Sporting a Cheshire cat grin, he would expound thoughtfully about our work, art history, and whatever else might be…Continue Reading What to say about Dan Wingren
What does Jerry Bywaters and John Lomax, and John’s son, Alan, have in common…SMU and the Southwest Review! Alan Lomax’s music archive is now online! http://www.openculture.com/2019/04/alan-lomaxs-massive-music-archive-is-online.html “First litho made Jan. 1, 1935” appears in Jerry Bywaters’s handwriting on the first page of his print notebook for the print Gargantua. This was a decisive date for…Continue Reading Jerry Bywaters and the history of the Lomax House
Elizabeth Moran’s investigation into the origin of fact-checked news in the company archives at TIME magazine, Against the Best Possible Sources, concerns the (im)possibility of truth in both method and content. Henry Luce and Briton Hadden founded TIME magazine in 1923, we learn from Moran, as an “exhaustively scrutinized” alternative to the sensationalized, rapid-fire news media of…Continue Reading Archival Precedent: Walid Raad | The Atlas Group
While watching Tom and Jerry (or Beavis and Butthead, or Ren and Stimpy), I sometimes wondered if the animated mayhem turned truly physical, if the anvils dropped from upper floors landed with the effect those anvils would have on the unfortunates below in reality, what would be the shift in tone in the cartoon? What…Continue Reading Film review: Parasite
The Jerry Bywaters Special Collections at SMU has a good archive of Wingren’s materials, which is so appropriate considering that he graduated from SMU, taught at SMU, and he was greatly admired by Bywaters. However, Wingren’s SMU connections are a small part of his distinguished career as an excellent painter and as a highly respected…Continue Reading Dan Wingren as professor at SMU
In some ways one could argue that every artwork is an archive in the sense that the accumulated knowledge of the artist is inherently embedded within the material of the work itself, both tangible or intangible. Another way to think about it might be in terms of the idea of a trace: some artists prefer…Continue Reading A deeper dive into archival practice and art
I met Dan Wingren in 1980. That’s when I began modeling for his and other classes at the Meadows School of the Arts. I was also attending a Dallas community college, knocking off prerequisites for some sort of humanities degree. In 1986, I realized I wanted to teach studio art. So I quit modeling and attended UTD, got a…Continue Reading Remembering Dan Wingren
In the Media There was no summer break for the Jones Collection, as we continued our preservation efforts far below the Greer Garson Theatre. During these dog days of summer, keeping a cool 50 degrees in our temperature-controlled vault, we mined away into the deepest recesses of our archive and uncovered some truly…Continue Reading Jones Collection Summer 2019 Updates
Mary Vernon, professor emerita of art, SMU, was a colleague of Dan Wingren. As such, she contributes this blog piece on the artist and further commentary in the exhibition, Dan Wingren: The Image and Magic, on view at the Hamon Arts Library, 2nd floor, until May 31, 2021. “My head is somewhere near the…Continue Reading Dan Wingren: The Wizard
Guided by a preoccupation with the subjectivity of facts, Elizabeth Moran uses photography, text, sound, and other forms of recorded documentation to examine the reliability of information and how evidence is often far from evident. Against the Best Possible Sources is part of an ongoing project including extensive research of the TIME, Inc. corporate archive…Continue Reading Hawn Gallery presents Elizabeth Moran: Against the Best Possible Sources opening Sept. 6