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A Daughter's Quest for a Core Residency at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Glassell School of Art — part of the early Core Fellows crop who stayed on to become part of the cultural ecosystem of their adopted hometown. Since 1997, Fuchs has taught at her Glassell alma mater, where she is known for her inspiring and popular classes. She was appointed to her current position as department head of 2-D art in 2006. That same year, the good fortune of winning the inaugural $50,000 Hunting Art Prize in Texas propelled the understated Fuchs to further recognition. The award made possible the acquisition of her current studio, located in a historic retail center in the Houston Heights. In 2018, Art League Houston bestowed Texas Artist of the Year honors on her, and she is currently in the Houston stable of power dealer Inman Gallery and represented in Dallas by the respected Talley Dunn Gallery. Fuchs is known primarily as a painter who can work on any scale. Domestic life is often her focus. Subjects range from mammoth canvases of a mother breast-feeding her child to more modestly sized works depicting trees of Christmas past or intimate paintings showing a child's clumsy sculpture. Her palette has a subdued hue, and some works often seem to fade away, a metaphor perhaps for memory. All these qualities — from Fuchs' aesthetics, respect in the community, and international and Texas exhibition history to her gift for sensitive and deep looking — made her a natural for this Menil exhibition, which unfolded in a unique and talismanic way. An Ancient Torso, Three Elusive Photos, a Time-Traveling Letter These images of the artist in studio illuminate her practice, which parallels the ethos of The Menil Collection and its founders, Dominique and John de Menil: quiet, contemplative, scholarly, and filled with reverence for artists of the day and from civilizations across time. The catalyst for this exhibition was the discovery, when she was going through her late archaeologist father's effects, of three black-and-white photographs of a Roman male torso taken by the late collaborators Blaine Hickey and Ogden Robertson. The back of each photo bore the photographers' names, as well as an inscription reading "the Menil Foundation Collection on extended loan to the Institute for the Arts, Rice University." Celebrated Houston-based photographers of art and architecture, Hickey-Robertson were the preferred lensmen of the de Menils, who also enlisted the pair to document artworks for the series "The Image of the Black in Western Art." The artist in her studio, May 3, 2025 Francesca Fuchs' Mysterious Date with the Past at The Menil Collection By Catherine D. Anspon. Photography Antonio Chicaia. O ne of the shows of this summer doesn't have the clout of a blockbuster attached to it. Nor is it a crowd-pleaser highlighting art-historic stars or those dramatically rediscovered. The enigmatically titled "The Space Between Looking and Loving: Francesca Fuchs and the de Menil House" is installed in a small gallery at The Menil Collection near spaces devoted to ancient and African art. Discreet and profoundly moving, the exhibition demands close examination — like many of the works in the museum's collection. "The Space Between Looking and Loving" also requires the viewer's ability to follow an intuitive narrative that unfolds across five decades and two continents, as time and space collide in the personage of one of the most private artists in Texas. A Unique CV British-born Fuch's bio belies her modest demeanor and soft-spoken vibe. This is especially true when one knows her history and accolades. She was raised in Tübingen and Münster, Germany; her academic cred includes a BA, Bristol University; BFA, London's Wimbledon School of Art; and postgraduate study with renowned sculptor Tony Cragg at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She arrived in Houston in 1996 (Continued)