The Austin Museum of Popular Culture (AusPop) is a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation dedicated to collecting, preserving, and exhibiting art and memorabilia that reflect Austin's eclectic contributions to popular culture worldwide.
Auspop, formerly known as SouthPop, champions Austin artists who were mainly responsible for "weird" Austin.
SouthPop was formally established in 2005 to collect and display concert posters by a group of artist known as the Armadillo Art Squad who came together around the Armadillo World Headquarters. [1] It was born from a community art collective known as the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture which had coalesced in 2004 around the private files of Henry Gonzalez. [2] The collections expanded to include other live music venues of the 1970s including Threadgills, the Vulcan Gas Company, the Austin Opry House, and Antone's. Eventually the purpose of SouthPop was to preserve the legacy of Austin's counterculture and popular arts through exhibitions, collection, and scholarship. The center has evolved to become a collecting and exhibiting center for photography, prints, and non-traditional art and has widened the visibility of the Austin cultural scene. [3] The South Austin Museum of Popular Culture is an independent resource available to those who want to learn more about the Austin's cultural history and is not supported by any government institution.
An extensive 1997 review of the Armadillo Art Squad named many of its artists and cartoonists (often one and the same), including Gilbert Shelton, Jim Franklin, Guy Juke, Kerry Awn, Michael E. Arth , Ken Featherston, Henry Gonzales, Danny Garrett, Sam Yeates, Micael Priest, Gary McIlhenny, and Jack Jaxon. [4] This group of local Austin artists designed posters and handbills for Eddie Wilson's Armadillo World Headquarters at a time when the Austin music scene was fueled by the Cosmic Cowboy movement.
Southpop's outdoor memorial, 'Wall of Fame', as Austin humorist John Kelso calls it, has photos of over 150 people. It honors them for their contribution to Austin's creative scene. The outdoor wall includes both the famous and the obscure, from Bill Hicks, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Janis Joplin to Bill Livingood, Bud Shrake, and Poodie Locke, Willie Nelson's stage manager. [5]
Originally named the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture and was referred to as SAMOPC. In 2010 it was renamed the South Austin Popular Culture Center, and has since become known locally as SouthPop. Subsequently the name has been changed back to South Austin Museum of Popular Culture. [6] In September 2019 Leea Mechling, the executive director announced that the name is changing to Austin Museum of Popular Culture (AusPop) and that the museum will relocate to a new space on North Lamar behind Threadgill’s restaurant. [7]
The museum is the subject of many articles in the Austin Chronicle, who in 2004 distinguished the museum as the "Best Place to Art Trip." [8] The New York Times included SAMOPC in a Frugal Traveler video. [9]
Austin's official motto is the "Live Music Capital of the World" due to the high volume of live music venues in the city. Austin is known internationally for the South by Southwest (SXSW) and the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festivals which feature eclectic international lineups. The greatest concentrations of music venues in Austin are around 6th Street, Central East Austin, the Red River Cultural District, the Warehouse District, the University of Texas, South Congress, and South Lamar.
Albert Leslie Cochran was an American homeless man, peace activist, cross-dresser, urban outdoorsman, and outspoken critic of police treatment of the homeless. Cochran was known in Austin as Leslie.
Armadillo World Headquarters was an influential Texas music hall and beer garden in Austin at 5251⁄2 Barton Springs Road – at South First Street – just south of the Colorado River and downtown Austin. The 'Dillo flourished from 1970 to 1980. The structure that housed it, an old National Guard Armory, was demolished in 1981 and replaced by a 13-story office building.
William De White, better known as Guy Juke, is a Austin, Texas–based graphic artist and musician. As a poster artist he created memorable imagery for nightclubs such as Armadillo World Headquarters and was one of the 'Armadillo Art Squad'. His work is recognized for its blocky, sharp-edged figures on angular, geometric settings. Often darkly detailed, his work include shadowy and angular figures inspired by horror films, haunting western landscapes, and loopy cartoon characters.
Keep Austin Weird is the slogan adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote small businesses in Austin, Texas. It is intended to promote local businesses and is inspired by comments made by Red Wassenich in 2000 while giving a pledge to a Austin radio station KOOP Radio. He later began printing bumper stickers and operated the website keepaustinweird.com until his death in 2020 and published Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town.
Jagmo, born Nels Jacobson, is a US artist and poster art historian born in Chicago in 1949. He moved to Austin, Texas in 1978 and began creating rock posters in 1981. For three years during the early 1980s Jacobson served as bar manager and promotional director for Austin's Club Foot. He has designed posters for live-music venues such as Liberty Lunch, Cain's Ballroom and The Fillmore, and for performers such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Ramones, Divine, Roky Erickson, Etta James, Dead Kennedys, the B-52's, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Ely, Los Lobos, the Pixies, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, Fela Kuti, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Jerry Jeff Walker. In 1987, Jacobson helped organize the Texas-U.S.S.R. Musicians' Exchange tour of the Soviet Union and accompanied the performers to Leningrad, Moscow and Kyiv. He was art director for South by Southwest (SXSW) during its first six years, designing the original logo, and in 1998 founded the SXSW Continuing Legal Education program, which he continues to oversee in 2019. Jacobson has served on the packaging Grammy Award committees for the Texas and San Francisco chapters of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and is a founding Director of the American Poster Institute and the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, and a board member of The Rock Poster Society (TRPS).
Scholz Garten is a beer garden and restaurant in downtown Austin, Texas and one of the oldest operating businesses in Texas. Among the Texas businesses that predate Scholz Garten are the Daily News in Galveston (1842), the Excelsior Hotel in Jefferson (1858), the Menger Hotel in San Antonio (1859), and Imperial Sugar in Sugar Land (1842).
Gary P. Nunn is an American country music singer-songwriter. He is best known for writing "London Homesick Blues", which was the theme song for Austin City Limits from 1977 to 2004. Nunn is also considered the father of the progressive country scene that started in Austin in the early 1970s.
Jim Franklin is an artist, illustrator, and underground cartoonist best known for his poster art created for the Armadillo World Headquarters, a former Austin, Texas, music hall. He is also known for his detailed, surrealistic illustrations of armadillos, making them an emblem of underground music.
Beto y Los Fairlanes, now more commonly known as Beto and the Fairlanes, is a worldbeat, latin pop, jazz and salsa band from Austin, Texas, founded in the late 1970s by Robert "Beto" Skiles. The band came out of the prolific 1970s Austin music scene. Early in their career, the band played at Austin venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters, Liberty Lunch, and Soap Creek Saloon. The band released their first album, Midnight Lunch in 1978.
Spamarama (SPAMARAMA) is a long-time annual festival and competitive cookoff held in Austin, Texas, during 1978–2007 and in 2019 and 2022 to celebrate Spam, the branded canned pork product. The festival includes a Spam cook-off, Spam themed competitive activities, and live music.
Bob "Daddy-O" Wade was an American artist, based in Austin, Texas, who helped shape the 1970s Texas Cosmic Cowboy counterculture. He is best known for creating whimsical out-sized sculptures of Texas symbols. He was known for his uninhibited style and received attention as a serious artist in some art circles. He hand-tinting large photo-emulsion canvases of vintage photographs, some of which were exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His 40-foot-long (12 m) giant, 2,600 pound iguana, known as "Iggy", sat on top of the Lone Star Cafe in New York City from 1978 to 1989. "Iggy" changed owners a few times after the Lone Star Cafe closed and now resides atop the Fort Worth Zoo's Burnett Animal Health Science Center and greets visitors driving into the zoo grounds.
Bill Narum was an artist, illustrator, and Texas counter-culture icon known for his work in popular entertainment, and for being one of the few non-natives to have lived with the Tarahumara tribe of northern Mexico in Copper Canyon.
Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas is a non-fiction scholarly text by Joshua Long published in 2010 by University of Texas Press. The book uses the "Keep Austin Weird" movement as a central focus to discuss the social, cultural and economic changes occurring in Austin, Texas, at the beginning of the 21st century. Largely written from a human geography perspective, Weird City is intended to show the relationship between sense of place and urban economies, the environment, and the urban cultural landscape.
Edwin Osbourne Wilson is a former concert promoter and co-founder and owner of the Armadillo World Headquarters (1973–1980). The music venue led a music movement in Austin to national prominence from 1973 to 1980 as the birthplace of Texas progressive country, aka "redneck rock" – a fusion of country music and rock – later, more blues than rock. It was a popular venue for Willie Nelson. Wilson is the owner of two Threadgill's restaurants in Austin. The original, which he purchased in the mid–1970s from John Kenneth Threadgill (1909–1987), was where Janis Joplin got her start.
The Folk Music Club was an organization founded in 1963 at the University of North Texas that attracted student musicians, several of whom went on with other performing artist to define a Texas music and cultural movement in Austin that grew to national prominence and left a legacy that endures today. Its student members included Spencer Perskin, Steven Fromholz, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Michael Martin Murphey, and Eddie Wilson.
Kerry Fitzgerald, better known as Kerry Awn, is an American cartoonist, actor, muralist, comedian, musician, iconographer and poster artist. He is best known for his comedy and the iconic 'Austintatious' mural near the University of Texas campus, a landmark he created with two other artists. Born in Houston as Kerry Fitzgerald, Awn became prominent on the Austin countercultural scene in the 1970s as a concert poster artist and as a member of the Uranium Savages.
Kenneth Threadgill was an American country singer and tavern owner, who mentored the early Austin folk music scene that included Janis Joplin. He also lent his name to two nationally famous restaurant/bar venues.
Margaret Moser, or Margaret Moser Malone, was an American journalist, music enthusiast, critic and historian, groupie, and backup singer. She was best known for her work as the director of the Austin Music Awards (AMA) in the South by Southwest festival and for her career in music journalism and criticism, which lasted more than thirty years. Moser also supported young artists, helping them get started and finding appropriate venues where they could play. She has been called the "patron saint of Austin music" by the Paramount Theatre.
Micael Priest was an American artist and raconteur. Due to Priest's color-blindness, his primary medium was pen and ink, which he put to great use in inexpensively printed, highly graphic, rock posters. Often printed in single color or split-fountain reliefs, the posters were done mostly for Armadillo World Headquarters, a music hall in Austin, Texas that operated from August 7, 1970 to December 31, 1980.
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