Austin's newest downtown mural is 'mythic' and 'apocalyptic' and has an unusual backstory

It might be the most conspicuous spot for art in Austin.

The south wall of The Contemporary Austin at the Jones Center rises smack in the middle of downtown at Congress Avenue and West Seventh Street.

The leaders of the museum started using it for enormous murals during the pandemic, at a time of uncertainty about whether to open their doors to the public.

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Now the fourth iteration of the mural series, "Man Who Fell to Earth" by Manik Raj Nakra, can be seen through spring 2025 by almost anyone who ventures downtown, thanks to a singular partnership between the art-loving owner of the Loren Hotel at Lady Bird Lake, who gave a large gift to support the project, and leaders of the innovative museum.

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The partnership promises to grow. And this is not a one-time-only deal for Austin arts.

It is one of several recent examples of unforeseen teamwork between nonprofit and for-profit Austin entities, which formerly might have stayed in their own cultural lanes.

Recently, for instance, the Paramount and State theater complex enlarged its years-long partnership with the Hyatt Centric Congress Avenue, located next door, which will make possible a total renovation of the State. Meanwhile, the Austin Symphony is working closely with the developers of the multi-use Symphony Square towers to provide a new office building for the classical music group.

To be clear, hotel owner Stephen King — a former real estate investment banker who has established a second career in travel, art and architecture — did not write a check to the museum to underwrite a personally preferred work of art. The choice of art and artist were not his.

"We are trying things to bring art to new and different audiences," says museum director and CEO sharon maidenberg, who does not capitalize her name. "We bring to the mix an established name, credibility, standards and practices, content expertise. Groups like ours have become trusted partners, with both sides getting creative and bringing new things to the table.

"It's a funding model that's authentic to the integrity of our values."

'Mythic,' 'apocalyptic' art in downtown Austin

Unlike the three previous murals at the Jones Center, Nakra's arresting image takes up almost all of the exterior wall.

Because of the painting's size, the first things the viewer will likely absorb are the vivid, almost otherworldly colors.

The flattened figures — taken from partly ancient, partly imagined spheres — curl around delicate organic forms against a vast background of ocean and sky. A perched leopard dominates the scene; three serpents engulf avian victims. In the upper-right corner is Greek mythological striver Icarus, who has fallen to earth after flying too close to the sun.

Words like "mythic," "iconographic" and "apocalyptic" come to mind right away.

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Born in Olympia, Wash., Nakra, 41, has lived in Houston, Seattle and Noida, India. He studied economics at the University of Texas.

"I've been making art my whole life," Austin-based Nakra says. "I just didn't know I was an artist."

Although he has spent considerable time around theater people, he is a confirmed introvert.

"I'll know that I am truly successful when I don't have to attend my own openings," he jokes. "I have a deep fear of public speaking and eyeballs on me."

After working in the field of geographic information systems, Nakra started pursuing art full-time in 2019.

"I had all kinds of shows lined up for 2020," he says. "Then the pandemic hit. Everything was canceled or postponed. Luckily, it worked out. I met amazing collectors — art-collecting angels — who sustained me."

His studio occupies a two-story garage in East Austin.

"My blessed wife gave me the garage," he says. "Prior to that, my studio was in a bedroom. A shoebox, really."

More:See this art: new mural at Contemporary Austin downtown

The imagery in "Man Who Fell to Earth" is not entirely new for Nakra.

"I was always interested in old ruins, Greek mythology, pottery painted in the style of Hercules," he says. "A professor in college asked to purchase three canvases that were in my kitchen. I sold them for $25 each, losing money."

Even then, Nakra haunted openings at Austin's multiplying art spaces — OK Mountain, the Art Palace, etc.

"I was not talking to anybody, just looking, examining everything," he says. "My art was all over the place at that time. I did not know how to make art that looks like it came from one artist."

By the time he turned 28 or 29 years old, he was ready to reveal to people that he was an artist.

"I was not seeing art that I was doing at art openings," he says about an encouraging turning point in any artist's career. "I was at Cheer Up Charlies (the club on Red River Street) and saw this big wall space near the bathroom. I talked to the manager, who was born in the year of the tiger, so I made this huge tiger painting. A film producer bought it. He came by my house and brought along another movie person, who turned out to be Terrence Malick!"

In 2019, Nakra joined the Crit Group Program at The Contemporary Austin, which brings together mid-career artists to discuss one another's work. The program ended with a reunion show at the museum.

"It is meant to refine what we were already doing," he says. "It is an intense reckoning. They bring in a firing squad of curators, professors, arts writers, colleagues and collectors. They get into the intense minutiae."

For the 2021 group show, he asked for a week to install a "palace wall" that would be isolated from the other works of art.

"We were coming out of the shutdown, so I just kept adding drawings," he says. "Those 51 drawings helped me stand out."

When he received an email from the museum inviting him to produce a large outdoor mural that would take weeks to complete, cost of tens of thousands of dollars, and require the use of all sorts of equipment, Nakra thought it was some kind of scam.

"I'm still humbled," he says. "The three artists who came before me are certified legends. I feel very grateful and honored."

Nakra: "Art is what you get away with, right?"

New ways of doing a museum

In the summer of 2020, sharon maidenberg arrived at The Contemporary Austin from a prominent arts post in Northern California. Open, unassuming, charismatic, and inclusive, she set a fresh tone for one of the city's oldest arts groups, which traces its origins back to the first decade of the 20th century.

Her central goal was to make this group and its art accessible to all Austinites. Achieving that aim was made immediately more difficult when the pandemic shuttered its downtown space and art school, and its Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria, although outdoors, required a good deal of planning in order to reopen.

Luckily, maidenberg seemed to be the right person for the time, place and task.

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Among her most startling additions to the museum's programs was the mural project, which complemented the Jones Center's existing rooftop art, which is made of large, mirrored lettering by Jim Hodges, "With Liberty and Justice For All (A Work in Progress) …"

The first mural, in 2021, featured the fractured art of Deborah Roberts, a longtime favorite of Austin critics and artists, who had only recently been discovered by the museum and the major collector communities, along with the national press. The second mural, in 2022, applied images from the late, beloved Austin musician and artist Daniel Johnston, and a third expanded on the text-based art of internationally acclaimed Jenny Holzer.

Although The Contemporary retained a strong backing among followers of recent art —including nationally recognized arts backer Suzanne Deal Booth, founder of the generous Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize — maidenberg remained on the lookout for new partners for the museum.

In early 2023, she met British-born, New York-based Stephen King. He was head of C12 Capital Management, Sardis Developments and the art-focused Loren Hotels, whose collection was put together with the help of art advisors and curators Penny Liebman Aaron and Kathleen Landy. (They also assembled the handsome hardback guide to the collection, "Art at the Loren.")

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"We're both idea people," maidenberg says of King. "We met at the Loren for coffee and kept buzzing, bumping ideas off each other. We had a good personal fit and a perfect mission fit."

As part of his Loren Roots Initiative, King has been investing in environmental causes, including biodiversity projects and a hardwood forest. The museum's current downtown show, "This Land," which runs through Jan. 28, covers a parallel subject.

"Stephen's brain works so quickly," maidenberg says. "His attention to detail is just so amazing. He's got a great collection of art and a great book that documents it. Ours is a good alignment."

She brought King along with the idea that museum's mural showcase was a silver lining from the dark time of the pandemic.

"I think of it as another canvas for the museum," she says. "We can put Austin artists right up there next to someone like Jenny Holzer, who is as big as it gets."

As a leader who thinks constantly about all manner of inclusion, she likes the inherent availability of the murals.

"I don't want anything to be celebrated only by those who can afford it."

New ways of doing a hotel

Looking fit and tan, dressed in crisp casual wear, Stephen King slips easily into the part of a former financier — he retired from that role in 2016 — who appreciates the good things in life and wants to share them with others.

He sees maidenberg as an ideal project partner.

"She's very genuine, very gregarious, very stubborn," King says. "She seems determined to do the right thing."

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As for the Nakra mural, King not only paid for almost all the cost of labor and materials, but also threw an opening reception at the Loren.

His first endeavor in the hospitality field, the Loren Hotel at Pink Beach, opened in Bermuda in 2018. He followed with the Austin hotel at Lady Bird Lake in 2022, and work is underway on a resort at Turtle Cove in the Turks and Caicos Islands. He is eyeing other spots for more hotels.

Giving a tour of his hotel at Riverside Drive and South Lamar Boulevard, King talks hurriedly about art, but also about nature and the environment. The building's omnipresent windows — a signature feature in other Loren Hotel projects — open onto the Butler Hike and Bike Trail, and the top-floor Nido restaurant feels as if it is hovering over the park and lake while peeking at the downtown skyline. Even the courtyard and lobbies come with a garden look.

Just inside the sold-out residences at the hotel, he pauses by a humorous sculpture by Austin's Andy Coolquitt made of found metal pipes, sockets, bulbs and electrical wires.

King tells stories about his works of art, but he also saves a surprise for the end of the tour that combines art, architecture, history and, possibly, more British hospitality. The back of his property includes the Paggi House, one of the oldest buildings in Austin, and for years a restaurant.

King has preserved the building's limestone structure, in part by enclosing a large section of it, unseen from the street, in a glassy modern capsule.

"We'll use it as a room for special events and a gallery," he says. "But what I'd really like to do with it is open a true English pub. Austin needs one."