Art in the Metroplex sprang from a collaboration between an organization of art activists and the Texas Christian University art department. At its root, the exhibit was the brainchild of two people who wanted to work together. Beth Lea Clardy was an established Fort Worth artist, a 1940 graduate of the TCU art program and one of a quartet of concerned citizens who in 1978 founded the non-profit Committee for an Artists’ Center. Ronald Watson was an artist and educator on the faculty of the TCU Department of Art and Art History. He assumed the chairmanship of the TCU art department in 1982 with a goal of “seeking greater collaboration between the university and Fort Worth artists and organizations.” After meeting face-to-face in 1983, Clardy and Watson found their common goal and began to marshal the resources necessary to organize and fund a large undertaking like Art in the Metroplex.

In 2014, after a brief hiatus, Art in the Metroplex is now in the capable hands of the dedicated staff at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center (FWCAC). The FWCAC, managed by the Arts Council of Fort Worth, is housed in a former Fort Worth art museum where Texas art was first shown in 1954. It’s a building that Beth Lea Clardy knew well and a home for Art in the Metroplex that she would approve of. The amazing artists of Dallas and Fort Worth and the many communities that make up our great Metroplex are the reason for all of this. – Scott Grant Barker

October 3, 2014, 6:30pm Art in the Metroplex Juror’s Talk and Artists Awards

Juror Sara-Jayne Parsons of TCU Art Galleries will give a talk on the selections made for AIM; awards will be presented to artists. In the Scott Theatre.

NEW IN THE GALLERIES