Based on the foundation that art acts as a vehicle for open discussion, TAG In-Gallery Programs bring together ACC students, faculty, staff, and members of the Austin community to explore topics surrounding art-making, art history, museum studies, and more.

Topics of TAG’s programming differ, and each session will take place in either Gallery 4000 or 2000.  

View our calendar below for more information on upcoming programs.

Stay Tuned for Fall 2024 Talks!

Art + Political Engagement: TAG In-Gallery Programming Recap

Written by Adelaide Roueche-Beard, TAG Curatorial Intern In conjunction with the Narrated Memories exhibition running from September 5 to December 7, The Art Galleries at ACC are hosting three gallery talks. These talks explore the themes of the works of ACC alumni...

Art + Music: TAG In-Gallery Programming Recap

Written by Adelaide Roueche-Beard, TAG Curatorial Intern In conjunction with the Narrated Memories exhibition running from September 5 to December 7, The Art Galleries at ACC are hosting three gallery talks. These talks explore the themes in the works of ACC alumni...

TAG In Gallery Talks: Food Shelter Water

Written by Cathy Centeno Navarro The Art Galleries at Austin Community College hosted two TAG Tuesday sessions in March 2023, in which ACC Photography Professors and exhibition co-curators Maja Buck and Bret Brookshire lead discussions about the works displayed in...

TAG In-Gallery Talks: The Contemporary Print 2023

Written by Cathy Centeno Navarro, TAG Intern In conjunction with the exhibition The Contemporary Print 2023  (January 23 - March 9) , The Art Galleries at Austin Community College hosted two TAG Tuesday sessions, which invited local printmakers and Austin art...

An evening with the artist: Rashaun Rucker

Written by Maddie George The Art Galleries (TAG) at Austin Community College and Print Austin hosted Rashaun Rucker for an artist talk about his creative process and experience being a juror for the current exhibition in Gallery 2000, The Contemporary Print. Close to...

A Behind-the-Scenes Talk About Curating “Cultivating Community through Art” with Peter Bonfitto and Bernardo Diaz

Written by Soleil Parks, TAG Intern Fall 2022 To curate an exhibition, a great deal of attention to narrative is required. In the words of TAG Gallery Director Peter Bonfitto, a curator “uses objects to create a pathway into new ways of thinking about art, art...

Discussing the Stories Behind La Llorona Desperately Seeking Coyolxauhqui With Professors Dr. Lydia CdeBaca-Cruz and Dr. Gary Moreno

Written by Soleil Parks, TAG Intern Fall 2022   In Gallery 2000, a hanging wall in the back of the Cultivating Community Through Art exhibition supports La Llorona Desperately Seeking Coyolxauhqui, a bright pink screenprint by Alma Lopez. The print was created in...
Past Programming Calendar:
February 28, 2024 - Art + Gender

Meeting Place: Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450) at ACC Highland Campus

Artists Sarah Hirneisen (faculty, Texas State University) and Erin Cunningham (faculty, University of Texas at Austin) will give tandem artists talks in Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450). Both Hirneisen and Cunningham focus on gender roles and expectations through their artworks, which are included in the spring exhibition Material Evolution: Selected Works from the Texas Sculpture Group.

February 22, 2024 - Art + Scale

Meeting Place: Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450) at ACC Highland Campus

Artists Matthew Isaacson (faculty, ACC) and Valérie Chaussonnet will give tandem artists talks in Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450) in conjunction with Material Evolution: Selected Works from Texas Sculpture Group. Isaacson and Chaussonnet will focus on their use of scale in their works, which utilize ceramic and metal materials.

February 7, 2024 - Art + Social Issues

Meeting Place: Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450) at ACC Highland Campus

Artists Yousif Del Valle (faculty, ACC) and Hollis Hammonds (faculty, St. Edward’s University) will give tandem artists talks in Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450) in conjunction with Material Evolution: Selected Works from Texas Sculpture Group. Del Valle and Hammonds will discuss their artistic practice and works, which explore themes such as: gun violence, pollution, and memory.

October 31, 2023 - Art + Literature

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm 

In this session, Creative Writing Department Chair Prudence Arceneaux and Professor Katie McClendon will be reading poems and excerpts that correspond with the themes found with the artworks in Narrated Memories

 

October 13, 2023 - Art + Political Engagement

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

Time: 3:00pm

This in-gallery talk will focus on Heather Parrish’s Double Down (more information below) and the ways in which art can be a catalyst for political discourse and engagement. This roundtable discussion is held in conjunction with the Community College Humanities Association 2023 National Conference and will include the following speakers: Bernardo Diaz (Art Department, Chair), Yousif Del Valle, (Art Department, Associate Professor), and Madeline Kinkel (Humanities & Religion, Assistant Professor). 

About Double Down:

Heather Parrish’s Double Down, featured in Narrated Memories, is a collaboration with Katherine Leah Pace, an urban environmental historian whose research examines these lesser-known layers of history surrounding Waller Creek. 

Waller Creek is a central waterway that runs through the heart of downtown Austin. This stream has been used to create the city’s well-known east-west geographic divide, which has become a marker of racial segregation through the city’s history. During the post-Civil-War period, formerly-enslaved people were settled along the banks of Waller Creek–an area prone to natural flooding cycles. In the Jim Crow era, a 1928 city plan included racial boundaries east of Waller Creek, delineating where Black, Mexican-American, and immigrant populations could live. Starting in the 1950s, construction of I-35 reinforced this color line, while causing neighborhood disruptions and heavy pollution. On-going beautification initiatives, aimed to attract investment, such as the creation of parks, trails, and underground tunnels along Waller Creek have exacerbated population displacement with environmental consequences.

 

October 3, 2023 - Art + Music

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

Time: 4:30pm – 5:30pm 

This in-gallery talk will focus on the composition behind Laurie Frick’s mural A Mood (more information below). Elizabeth Vary, composer and ACC alumni, will join us for a discussion about her musical composition, alongside ACC Music Professor Steven Sodders. This session will also include a live, in-gallery performance of the piece by ACC Music students Julia Watkins-Davis (voice), Julie Linder (clarinet), and Valeria Diaz-Navarro (piano).

About A Mood: 

Data artist Laurie Frick has created a unique process for merging the mathematical principles of music with the visual arts by mapping the inherent rhythms and patterns from musical scores. For this project, Frick selected ACC Music Composition student Elizabeth Vary’s melodic composition entitled “A Mood.”  Drawing inspiration from the piece’s musical flow and repetitive elements, Frick’s artwork is a vibrant system of patterns that emerged from her study of the musical score. Each line, shape, or color correlates to a rest or letter notation, building a pattern that reflects the mathematical roots of music composition. This mural project is a collaboration between Frick, The Art Galleries (TAG) at Austin Community College, and the ACC Music Department. A Mood was hand painted by TAG staff and ACC Studio Art students. 

 

September 28, 2023 - Curator Talk with Peter Bonfitto and Norma Bickmore

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

Time: 4:30pm – 5:30pm 

This in-gallery talk will feature Gallery Director Peter Bonfitto and Curatorial Assistant Norma Bickmore, as they walk participants through the newest exhibition Narrated Memories: Artworks by ACC Alumni Laurie Frick, Heather Parrish, and Michael Villarreal. 

March 28, 2023 - Exploring the Exhibition (Part Two) with Photography Professor Bret Brookshire

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 4000 (HLC 4.2150)

This session focuses on Food, Shelter, Water – a collaboration between TAG and the Department of Professional Photography (The.DPP). In this session, Professor Bret Brookshire will dive into Vero Cardenas’ and ACC Alumni Cindy Elizabeth’s artworks in Food, Shelter, Water: Projects by Four Texas Photographers.

March 7, 2023 - Exploring the Exhibition (Part One) with Photography Professor Maja Buck

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 4000 (HLC 4.2150)

This session focuses on Food, Shelter, Water – a collaboration between TAG and the Department of Professional Photography (The.DPP). In this session, Professor Maja Buck will dive into Stephanie Duprie Routh and Jamie Robertson’s artworks in Food, Shelter, Water: Projects by Four Texas Photographers.

February 21, 2023 - Discussing Artist Collectives with Print Austin Co-Founder Cathy Savage and Artist Peter Nickel

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

This session focuses on The Contemporary Print 2023. Print Austin co-founder Cathy Savage and Austin-area artist Peter Nickel will talk about the importance of artist collectives. Nickel will also discuss his artwork Free Fall in The Contemporary Print exhibition. 

February 7, 2023 - What is Contemporary Print? with Annalise Gratovich

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

This session focuses on The Contemporary Print 2023 and the printmaking techniques used in the exhibition artworks. Austin-based printmaker Annalise Gratovich will talk about her perspective on the traditional and innovative techniques used in the exhibition.

November 8, 2022 - Exploring Myth and Lore through Art with Dr. Gary Moreno and Dr. Lydia CdeBaca-Cruz

Meeting Place: Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

This session focuses on the use of myth and lore seen in the artworks in our Fall exhibition – Cultivating Community thorugh Art: Sam Coronado’s Serie Project and its Continuing Legacy. During this session, Gary Moreno, Professor of History and Director of Latino/Latin American Studies Center “El Centro”, and Lydia CdeBaca Cruz, Professor of History at ACC and UT Austin, will dive into the mythological stories that some of the artists referenced in their prints

October 25, 2022 - Deep Dive into Screen printing with Brian Johnson and Jonathan Rebolloso

Meeting Place: Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

This particular session invites visitors to learn more about the process of screen printing from master printers Brian Johnson and Jonathan Rebolloso – two Coronado Studio printers for the Serie Project featured in our Fall 2022 exhibition Cultivating Community through Art: Sam Coronado’s Serie Project and its Continuing Legacy

October 11, 2022 - Melanie Hickerson and David Thornberry

Meeting Place: Highland Campus, Gallery 4000 (HLC 4.2105)

This session features artist in our Faculty Exhibition who will speak about their artistic practice and inspirations surrounding the works on display. This particular session focuses on “capturing little moments through art” 

September 27, 2022 - Behind the Exhibition with Bernardo Diaz and Peter Bonfitto

Meeting Place: Gallery 2000 (HLC 2.2450)

This particular session invites visitors to learn more about the curatorial work behind our Fall exhibition – Cultivating Community through Art: Sam Coronado’s Serie Project and its Continuing Legacy. During this session, Peter Bonfitto, Gallery Director at The Art Galleries, and Bernardo Diaz, Assistant Dean of Assessment & Planning for Arts & Digital Media, will discuss their curatorial process.

September 13, 2022 - Brian Johnson and Haydeé Victoria Suescum

Meeting Place: Gallery 4000 

This session features artist in our Faculty Exhibition who will speak about their artistic practice and inspirations surrounding the works on display. This particular session focuses on “popular culture in art”

August 30, 2022 - Jill Bedgood, Jonas Criscoe, and Gary Webernick

Meeting Place: Gallery 4000

This session features artist in our Faculty Exhibition who will speak about their artistic practice and inspirations surrounding the works on display. This particular session will focus on “found objects in art”