“A New Way to Consider Art”: UT Landmarks Collection Celebrates “Summer of KUTX”

Landmarks, UT’s public art collection, features dozens of outdoor sculptures and other works, essentially transforming the university campus into an enormous outdoor museum. And when she became deputy director of the project several years ago, Kathleen Brady Stimpert wanted to create a new way for visitors to interact with the works.

“When I arrived, I was thinking about ways to better engage the community and access new audiences,” she says. “And obviously with Austin’s love of music, I felt like some sort of music program or music-adjacent program would be very helpful to us. And I had the idea for this playlist program and we launched it five years ago. And the response was really fantastic from the start. We’ve invited people like John Aielli, Walker Lukens, Graham Reynolds, Peter Bay, Jackie Venson… You know, the list goes on and on.

The program, called Listening with Cueshas been in place since 2019 and now includes dozens of playlists inspired by various Landmarks works.

“It’s really interesting to see the works selected by our playlist contributors,” Stimpert says, “because I think it says a lot, in some ways, about who they are and what their preferences are. And the playlists they contributed to were even more interesting. Because you would imagine that, you know, someone like Bob Schneider would choose a very rock and roll focused playlist. And actually, what we found is that all types of music genres are reflected in the playlists.

For the next few months, Listening with Cues I will focus on some of my colleagues. “We’re excited to roll out what we’re calling ‘The Summer of KUTX,’” says Stimpert. “And we invited Taylor Wallace, Art Levy, Marnie Castor (and) Trina Quinn to all contribute to the playlists. Taylor Wallace’s playlist, released June 3^rdresponds to a video art piece by artist David Ellis and Art Levy’s playlist, out June 17^thwas created in response to Clock knot, which is the big sculpture by Mark di Suvero, (the) big red sculpture in front of an engineering building here on Dean Keeton. And then after that, we’ll post a playlist by Marnie Castor, and she responded to a piece by artist Michael Ray Charles who is also here on campus. And finally, on August 1 Trina Quinn’s playlist will be released, created in response to a work by an artist named Magdalena Abakanowicz, and it’s in front of the Texas Performing Arts and Bass Concert Hall.

Stimpert says the program has been more successful than expected. “The response from the community has really exceeded our expectations,” she said. “People are clearly downloading these playlists (and) saving them to Spotify. And we don’t know if they listen to them right in front of the works, here on campus or elsewhere.”

When I spoke with Levy about his playlist, he told me he hoped people would listen to it while relaxing on the lawn around it. Clock knot (which is just down the street from KUT/KUTX Studios).

“You can definitely do it,” says Stimpert. “We think this offers a new and unique way to experience the works. But you can also just listen to it outside of your art viewing experience. You can just listen to it while running around Ladybird Lake or in your car. The idea was just to… give our audience a new way of considering the works in our collection, of thinking about them, perhaps in connection with another artistic discipline and quite simply of increasing the visibility of the program as a whole .

Listening with Cues isn’t the only music-focused program associated with Landmarks. “Landmarks has another music program and it’s called Songs in the sky and it’s housed inside the crown jewel of our collection, which is an installation by artist James Turrell,” says Stimpert. “We have a Skyspace here on campus (Turrell’s Color inside) located on the roof of the Student Activities Center. And the space is such that it can accommodate 25 (or) 30 people for what we call “light viewing”, a viewing of light sequences. James Turrell is truly a famous master of light – it’s his medium – and he’s a genius in color theory. This is how it creates these immersive experiences for visitors. They enter a Skyspace and for an hour the space is filled with different, vibrant and very dramatic lights. And the light sequence itself is simply an incredible experience. But when you pair it with music, it’s even more engaging. So, for several years, we have been inviting different musicians – again, from all musical genres – to come and perform in the space. We’ve had Tejano singers, we’ve had Liz Cass and other opera singers. We had electronic musicians, classical guitarists. And again, like Listen with monuments, Songs in the sky provides another entry point for interacting with the Landmarks collection.

Listen with Landmarks “Summer of KUTX” playlists are available on the Monuments website Or on Spotify.