If You Remember, I’ll Remember
Dario Robleto
2025 Texas Artist of the Year
On view: September 26 - December 21, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, September 26, 2025, from 6-8 PM
Dario Robleto in Conversation with Jennifer Roberts: Sunday, October 12, 2025, at 2 PM
Film Screening - Ancient Beacons Long for Notice (2024): Friday, December 5, 2025, at 7 PM, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Dario Robleto
American Seabed, 2014
Fossilized prehistoric whale ear bones salvaged from the sea (1 to 10 million years), various butterflies, butterfly antennae made from stretched and pulled audiotape recordings of Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row,” concrete, ocean water, pigments, coral, brass, steel, Plexiglas
37 x 68 x 55 inches (overall without pedestal)
If You Remember, I’ll Remember features a selection of work by the 2025 Texas Artist of the Year, Dario Robleto. This exhibition highlights Robleto's transdisciplinary practice, which is rooted in profound perception, curiosity, and, above all, empathy. If You Remember, I’ll Remember will be on display from September 26 to December 21, 2025, with an opening reception on Friday, September 26, from 6 to 8 PM. As part of the exhibition, Robleto will be in conversation with Jennifer Roberts on Sunday, October 12, 2025, at 2 PM. On Friday, December 5, 2025, at 7 PM, there will be a screening of his 2024 film Ancient Beacons Long for Notice at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, co-presented by Art League Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Aurora Picture Show.
Long intrigued by humanity’s enduring attempts to articulate love, this exhibition explores Robleto’s ongoing inquiry into the human heart, not only as a biological organ, but as a symbol for endearment, care, and connection. Through sculptures and prints, Robleto blends science, history, and poetics to trace how those who have come before us have understood the lifeline of humanity and to offer his own interpretations for future generations.
The work on view in the Main Gallery highlights Robleto’s investigations inspired by the Voyager’s Golden Record and his tenure as artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute. Deeply moved by Ann Druyan’s inclusion of her own brainwaves via EEG, recorded while she thought about the history of the planet and humanity, and the unique experience of falling in love, Robleto explores what it means to send messages of emotion and identity into the cosmos. What should we communicate about ourselves to beings we may never meet? How might we be remembered, even after our last breath?
Transitioning inwards in the exhibition space, the work in the Front Gallery provides a meditation on early attempts to visualize the human heartbeat. Paying homage to the 19th-century physiologists who first invented the sphygmograph and cardiograph, Robleto examines the lyrical intersections of medicine and memory. These physiologists’ playful experiments of wondering how heartbeats might change while listening to Schubert’s “Serenade,” smelling lavender, or eating chocolate, become a springboard for Robleto’s reflections on how care and curiosity have always been intertwined in our pursuit of understanding the body.
Across both galleries, Robleto encourages us to consider how art might bridge the fragile distances between past and future, body and cosmos, self and other.
In conjunction with the exhibition, ALH will produce a catalogue designed by Isobel Chiang of Small Editions. The publication will feature an essay by Maggie Adler and an introduction by Zhaira Costiniano.
About the Artist
Dario Robleto was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1972. He received his BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997. He lives and works in Houston, Texas.
Robleto’s work has been widely exhibited and is held in prominent collections, including the Menil Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Since 1997, he has had numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2024), the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (2024), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2019), Menil Collection (2014), the Baltimore Museum of Art (2014), the New Orleans Museum of Art (2012), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2011). In 2008, a ten-year survey exhibition, Alloy of Love, was organized by the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. In 2023, a second ten-year survey show, The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of Dario Robleto, was organized by the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. A major monograph accompanied each exhibition.
His work has been featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including Radiolab, Krista Tippett's On Being, and The New York Times. Robleto has held positions as an artist-in-residence, research fellow, and lecturer at various cultural and scientific institutions, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the SETI Institute, the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Center for the Advancement and Study of Visual Arts at the National Gallery. During 2013-2014, he served as the Viola Frey Distinguished Visiting Professor at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. From 2016 to 2019, he was the Artist-in-Residence in Neuroaesthetics at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering, and from 2018 to 2023, he served as Artist-at-Large at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and the Block Museum of Art. In 2015, he became a part of a distinguished team of scientists as the artistic consultant for “Breakthrough Message”—a multi-national initiative designed to stimulate intellectual and technical discussions about how and what to communicate if the ongoing search for intelligent life beyond Earth proves successful.
His awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, the USA Rasmuson Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant, and a VIA ART grant. In 2016, he was appointed the Texas State 3-D Visual Artist.
Since 2019, he has been a member of the advisory board for the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. In 2020, he served as a research consultant for the popular science television series Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which aired on National Geographic and Fox. He is currently working on his first book, The Heartbeat at the Edge of the Solar System: Science, Emotion, and the Golden Record, co-authored with Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts, and is set to be published by Scribner, Simon & Schuster. In 2025, Robleto was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Middlebury College, and his newest film debuted at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
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Major funding and support for the exhibition and catalog were generously provided by the Edaren Foundation and the Houston Arts Alliance.
In celebration of Robleto’s award as the 2025 Texas Artist of the Year and Leah Bennett as the recipient of the 2025 Texas Patron of the Year award, a Gala will be held in their honor at the Thompson Hotel on Friday, October 10, 2025. For more information about tickets and sponsorships, please visit https://www.artleaguehouston.org/2025-gala.