Meadows Museum names second Spotlight Artist

By Becky Mayad

The Meadows Museum, in collaboration with Fundación ARCO, announced today that Teresa Lanceta will be the second artist to participate in the MAS: Meadows/ARCO Artist Spotlight program. This six-year initiative, announced in 2019, focuses on highlighting exceptional contemporary Spanish artists who have limited recognition in the U.S., and gives them a platform to present their work through an installation at the Meadows Museum. The MAS program formally launched in 2021 with an exhibition of work by conceptual artist Ignasi Aballí. The current artist, Teresa Lanceta, is known for her intricate, often colorful, textile-based works, recent examples of which will be featured in spring 2024 in the Virginia Meadows Galleries at the Meadows Museum. Lanceta will also travel to Dallas to participate in educational programming about her work that will engage both the SMU students and area arts advocates.

“The MAS: Meadows/ARCO Artist Spotlight program is a key way that the Meadows Museum fosters meaningful dialogue and connections between Spain and America through the arts. I am excited to be able to introduce SMU and north Texas to Teresa Lanceta,” said Amanda W. Dotseth, the Linda P. and William A. Custard director of the Meadows Museum. “Her commitment to the art of weaving, and to exploring its universality and impact on world culture is a revelatory visual experience. We are grateful to Fundación ARCO for their continued collaboration with us to make these international exchanges possible.”

Teresa Lanceta (born 1951, Barcelona) is celebrated for her imaginative, tapestry-based artworks that aim to transcend assumptions about the materials themselves by inspiring the viewer’s imagination. Her work brings together an array of formal approaches: it is sometimes figurative and sometimes abstract; sometimes a piece will combine textiles, while others feature single textiles that have been drawn on, painted or otherwise embellished. Having earned a PhD in Art History at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Lanceta taught at the Escola Massana in Barcelona. She adopted weaving as her preferred form of artistic expression in the early 1970s, seeing it as a medium ideally suited to bridging the divide between art and craft. Through her travels, she has met with and drawn inspiration from many different people and cultures — and was particularly influenced by Romani and Moroccan nomadic weavers. Nowadays she lives and works in Mutxamel (Alicante).

“Weaving is a (hypnotic) technique based on the repetition of the same movement, the results of which are not immediately perceived, the artist said. “Weaving captivated me in a way that is radical and absolute — beyond results and consequences. In exchange, it has helped me delve into unitary time, into that which survives in measured time.” She added: “I thank the Meadows Museum and the ARCO Foundation for selecting me for the MAS: Meadows/ARCO Artist Spotlight program. I am delighted to be able to exhibit at the Meadows, with its impressive art collection. I look forward to meeting the people linked to it, the university and the Dallas art world. It’s going to be very interesting for my work and for me because it will be exciting to get to know this legendary city.”