The McKinney Avenue Contemporary will present Texas Critters, a group exhibition featuring Texas art icons from the 1930s to the present.

Texas Critters will showcase paintings of birds, fish, reptiles, insects, and other animals created by members of the famous Dallas Nine, a group of painters, printmakers and sculptors active in the 1930s and early 1940s in Dallas. Seminal members of the group included Otis M. Dozier, William Lester and Everett Spruce, and artists still working in the Dallas area today such as David Bates and Billy Hassell. The exhibition will be presented in the Large Gallery.

Texas Critters will also feature a solo exhibition of work by Janet Turner, one of Texas' most distinguished painters, educators and printmakers. A former professor at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Turner won the Guggenheim Award in 1952, allowing her to travel the Gulf Coast. There she studied flora and fauna, and experimented with combining serigraphy with linoleum block printing. Janet Turner: Expressive Symbolism will be on view in the Square Gallery.

On display in the New Works Space will be an exhibition of Beyond the Surface: Land Stewardship of Texas. This photographic exhibit will convey the captivating story of land stewardship of Texas in front and behind the lenses of John Bunker Sands and David Keith Sands. This exhibit will help to raise awareness of water and wildlife conservation of the most beautiful and unique Wetland in Texas through the Sands’ artful lenses.

Following the opening reception, the exhibits will be on display through October 25.