Spirited bidding, high attendance and a new small works selection led the 2025 Night of Artists to $2 million in art sales.
The Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, was a place to be during its opening weekend festivities of the Night of Artists on March 28 and 29. The event, in its 24th edition, has only continued to grow over the years, such as adding a collector’s summit to supplement the fine art. The most recent updates—the addition of Tim Newton as the Curator of Night of Artists and a new small works component—have only enhanced the event.
This year’s show included an array of new exhibitors, whose works only added to the excitement. They included Thomas Blackshear II, S.M. Chavez, Scott L. Christensen, Quang Ho, Josh Elliott, Dean Mitchell, T. Allen Lawson, Sally Maxwell, Kyle Ma, Matt Smith, Daniel Sprick, Dustin Payne and Vic Payne. Among the returning artists, who collectors look forward to seeing art from each year, were Martin Grelle, John Coleman, Greg Beecham, Eric Bowman, Bonnie Marris, Teresa Elliott, William Haskell, Ed Natiya, Don Oelze, Gladys Roldán-de-Moras, Jim Vogel and more.
Throughout the two days, more than 1,700 guests vied for artwork across a series of sales, yielding to $2 million in art sales. Friday night festivities included the small works luck of the draw sale and the popular live auction. During the small works event, 85 percent of the works sold, while the live auction saw a gorgeous wolf painting by Marris titled THE BEST STICK EVER become the top selling lot at a hammer price of $103,500. Additional sales in the auction that laded above their presale estimate were Coleman’s OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, Don Oelze’s ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD and Vogel’s A BIRD IN THE HAND.
Saturday started with the Awards Breakfast, which recognized the artists who took home six prizes. The two awards representing the event’s Best of Show—the Sam Houston Award for Painting and the James Bowie Award for Sculpture—went to Grelle’s TRACKERS AT BLACKTAIL PONDS and Natiya’s SILENT HUNTER, respectively. These prizes are selected by the Night of Artists Art Selection Committee, an anonymous panel of Western art collectors who are involved with the museum. Also chosen by the group is a new prize, the Alamo Award for Best Body of Work, which went to Lawson for his three landscape paintings.
Fellow artists and show patrons have a hand in selecting winners with the David Crockett Award for Artists’ Choice and the William B. Travis Award for Patrons’ Choice. The former award went to Haskell for his painting HEAVENS IN MOTION, while attendees at the show selected Blackshear’s THE BLUE BIRD as their favorite work.
The annual “Cowboy Bob” Museum Purchase Award places a new work of art into the permanent collection of the Briscoe Museum at the end of exhibition’s run. This year that honor went to a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln titled WHAT MAN CAN CONCEIVE by Dustin Payne.
That night, at 5 p.m. the main luck of the draw sale began, with many artists seeing their larger scale art finding new homes. Artwork not sold during the opening weekend is available to purchase in-person and online at the museum’s website through May 11.
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