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Mexico City Exchange Part Of March Contemporary Art Month Festivities

Contemporary Art Month San Antonio

March is Contemporary Art Month so to find out more, I talked to CAM Co-Director Chris Sauter.

“The kickoff party for the Contemporary Art Month is Thursday at the Blue Star (Contemporary Art Museum). And the Contemporary Art Month’s closing party takes place at Chris Park on March 28,” Sauter said.

Chris Park is Southtown’s beautiful little private/public art-themed park. Between the kickoff and the closing party is a month’s worth of events designed to get contemporary art on our collective radar. Sauter explained one of the ways they do it:

“We invite a curator from outside of San Antonio to come and visit artists' studios and then choose artists for that exhibition,” he said.

That objective outside curator chooses works from San Antonio contemporary artists to exhibit.

“Our second exhibition is called Cam Ex or Cam Exchange," Sauter said. "We choose an artist-run space in San Antonio and we pair them with an artist-run space in another city. And they each come up with an exhibition, and they exchange exhibitions.”

This year the exchange is in Mexico City, so a San Antonio art exhibit goes to Mexico City and vice versa.

Sauter makes an interesting point about those of us not open to contemporary art.

“If they are not open to the art of our age, they’re only looking back and not looking at the present," he said.

And there’s a decidedly less serious aspect to their celebration: Miss CAM Antonio.

“Miss CAM Antonio is an online competition that we sponsor," Sauter said. "They go to events and represent Contemporary Art Month.”

“Do they have to master the art of high heels?” I asked him.

"No, they have to master the art of wearing a ridiculously huge crown that I built out of plywood,” Sauter said with a laugh.

The tongue-in-cheek nature of Miss CAM Antonio is quite obvious.

Jack Morgan can be reached at jack@tpr.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii