Ruby City, the red concrete contemporary art space located along the San Pedro Creek in Southtown, began as a dream image in the mind of art collector and philanthropist Linda Pace.
Only after Pace died of cancer in 2007 did plans to realize an actual building to house her art collection formalize, and the 14,000-square-foot space designed by architect David Adjaye formally opened on Oct. 13, 2019.
This Saturday, Ruby City celebrates its fifth anniversary with a public event in keeping with several of Pace’s main interests. The celebration begins with a dream interpretation workshop with local author Leigh Baldwin in Chris Park, the outdoor garden adjacent to Ruby City on Camp Street, followed by celebratory cake by local pastry artist Geranium Club and a champagne toast.
Los Angeles artist Jeffrey Vallance will conduct a seance to contact the spirits of women artists Pace admired, Niki de Saint-Phalle and Joan Mitchell, and Pace herself.
In keeping with Pace’s desire for accessibility at Ruby City, the event is free.
A place for everyone
“We always want everyone to feel like Ruby City is their art center, is a place for them,” Director Elyse Gonzales said of members of the public who enjoy free admission to exhibitions and events.
Asked to reflect on the impact the contemporary art-focused space has had on San Antonio, Gonzales referenced Pace’s focus on dream visions. “Ruby City was built because of the literal dream of one person who believed in the value of art and artists to our society, and had the wherewithal and resolve to bring her vision to fruition.”
Gonzales said the institution now carries on Pace’s mission: “We have an institutional belief in art and artists leading us to a better, dynamic society … but also simply to a better way of engaging with each other and with oneself.”
Board President Katheryn Kanjo, who also serves as director and CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, said Pace created Ruby City to make her art collection of nearly 800 works accessible to anyone who wanted to experience them.
“We’re connecting with the audience through … Linda’s sensibility, and the artworks that reflected Linda’s sensibility,” she said.
Kanjo praised exhibitions curated by Gonzales as built upon “both provocative and user-friendly themes,” including Tangible/Nothing that opened in September 2022 and Water Ways, which closed in July and considered San Antonio’s relationship to its namesake river as well as the Rio Grande that defines the southern border of Texas and a roiling issue in regional and national politics.
Kanjo also noted Pace’s pride in her hometown, evident in consistently acquiring artworks by San Antonians including Jesse Amado, Joey Fauerso, Cruz Ortiz, Katie Pell, Ethel Shipton and many more.
Several are portrayed in the exhibition Celia Álvarez Muñoz: Los Brillantes, currently on view in the Studio gallery across the street from Ruby City. Kanjo collectively called the show, consisting of eccentrically stylized portraits of San Antonio artists prominent in the early 2000s, “a portrait of our artist community,” which Pace adored.
© Celia Álvarez Muñoz. Credit: Courtesy Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio, TX
Calling forth her spirit
Gonzales and Kanjo are now charged with carrying on Pace’s collecting sensibilities by acquiring new artworks and continuing to engage with contemporary artists.
In addition to showing the ongoing sequence of breathtakingly vivid multi-channel video installations by London artist Isaac Julien — a Ruby City board member along with Kanjo — recent acquisitions have included the large scale installation Riverbank by Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum.
“The acquisitions have continued, like Linda, to be very proud of place and … sensitive and relevant at the international, global art world level,” Kanjo said.
Gonzales said Pace “relied on her knowledge of art and art history and she trusted herself, buying works that spoke to her” and which touch on subjects “which perhaps were less celebrated at the time such as feminism, identity, gender, spirituality, and beauty.”
And Kanjo mentioned that Pace was devoted to dream tending, a Jungian concept of using one’s dreams as therapy and inspiration, as well as other forms of self-knowledge.
To that end, Gonzales invited Vallance to help celebrate the institution’s anniversary.
“Linda was willing to embrace more alternative means of accessing personal knowledge through her dreams, and so I wanted to honor that tradition of embracing the unknown,” she said.
Vallance lived in Boerne while a visiting artist at UTSA in 2002. He said he’ll participate as an artist along with three psychic mediums in a “panel discussion” — a popular art world educational practice — and has some questions for the medium who will make contact with Pace.
“I’ve been told that she was into all kinds of paranormal psychic things, seances and so forth,” he said, so it makes sense “to ask [her] spirit, what’s it like during a seance from the other side?”
Gonzales, who will return from Venice the day prior to the celebration, said that she has no particular expectations from the seance, “but if we call forth her spirit I’d just want to say, ‘Look at what you did and thank you, thank you, thank you for doing it.’”