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Arthouse at the Jones
Center Centrally located in downtown Austin. FREE Established in 1911, Arthouse, formerly the Texas Fine Arts Association is the oldest statewide visual arts organization in Texas and the only one devoted solely to contemporary art. In 1998, Arthouse opened The Jones Center for Contemporary Art at 700 Congress Avenue. From The Jones Center, Arthouse promotes the growth and appreciation of contemporary art and artists in Texas. Through its exhibitions and programs in Austin and statewide, Arthouse helps nurture artists' careers and deepen public understanding of contemporary art. A fresh and innovative renovation that will add a new layer to a many-layered historical downtown building will be unveiled at a news conference today announcing Arthouse's $6 million renovation plans for its 14,000-square-foot building at 700 Congress Ave., known as the Jones Center. The current plans call for renovations to the building's facade and interior spaces. The majority of the building's exterior will be perforated by more than 160 laminated glass blocks designed to let light into windowless interior areas such as offices. At street level, the current floor-to-ceiling glass windows and awning -- both added when the building was converted to a department store -- will be enlarged, and a dramatic new lobby and entrance will be located on Congress Avenue. The new awning will be able to suspend artwork and will contain audio speakers. And that phase is quite stunning, with an inventive design that is playful and elegant, that acknowledges the building's past as Hegman's Queen Theater and Lerner Shops department store while completely embracing its present and future identity as a home for contemporary art. The entry into the building shifts to the north, closer to the Congress Avenue sidewalk, and what had been exhibition space facing the street becomes a new glassed-in lobby dominated by a suspended staircase that leads to a spacious new gallery on the second floor. (The first floor will retain exhibition space in the form of two galleries behind the lobby, and Arthouse staff will also keep their first-floor offices.) An integral part of the second-story Main Gallery is a panel 13 feet high and 70 feet long suspended on steel tracks so that it can be moved across the gallery, subdividing the space in various ways and exposing the bare brick wall, where vestiges of the building's earlier incarnations may be seen: the Queen Theater balcony and plaster work, the Lerner Shops paint. go to Arthouse at Jones Center home page Contemporary Art for
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