Exhibition / “Victor Houteff: At the Eleventh Hour”

Date: 20 August–16 September 2009
­Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday­, 12–6 pm, and by appointment
Opening reception: Thursday, 20 August, 7–9 pm

Cabinet is pleased to present “Victor Houteff: At the Eleventh Hour,” an exhibition of paintings drawn from the collection of Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw. A Bulgarian immigrant to the United States, Victor Houteff was running a hotel in the Midwest when, in 1918, he attended a tent meeting of a Seventh-day Adventist group. He joined the church, and in the late 1920s began teaching doctrines that eventually resulted in his expulsion from the Seventh-day Adventist church in Los Angeles, where he had relocated. Despite his ousting, Houteff continued to preach his message. He and his followers, now known as the “Shepherd’s Rod Seventh-day Adventists,” finally moved to Mount Carmel, Texas, on the outskirts of Waco, where the group changed its name to the “Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.” After Houteff’s death in 1955, numerous factions broke-off—the largest was led by Benjamin Roden, who named his congregation the “Branch Davidians.” In 1983, Vernon Wayne Howell, later to change his name to David Koresh, joined the Branch Davidians.

Jim Shaw first came across Houteff’s paintings in 1994 at the Pasadena City College Flea Market.

For a review of this show in Frieze, see here.