Photo exhibition of Tejano icon Selena at Briscoe Museum

Selena Forever Comes to the Briscoe

Some stars belong to a moment.

Selena belongs to generations.

This summer, the Briscoe Western Art Museum is giving San Antonio a new way to see the Queen of Tejano Music with Selena Forever : Siempre Selena, a photographic exhibition celebrating Selena Quintanilla-Pérez through the work of acclaimed San Antonio photographer John Dyer.

The exhibition opens June 4 at the Briscoe, tucked along the River Walk in one of downtown’s most historic museum buildings. It is a fitting place for a show about memory, identity and Texas culture. Before the Briscoe became a museum of the American West, the building served as San Antonio’s original public library in the 1930s and later housed the Hertzberg Circus Collection and Museum. In other words, this has long been a place where San Antonio came to learn, wonder and remember.

Now, Selena takes her place there.

The photos in the exhibition capture Selena in the early 1990s, during that electric stretch when she was becoming more than a rising Tejano star. She was becoming an icon. The images were taken at a pivotal moment, when her talent, style, confidence and charisma were pushing Tejano music into larger rooms, larger conversations and eventually the world stage.

Photographer John Dyer had a front-row view of that rise. He first photographed Selena in 1992 for Más Magazine, when she was still a young artist from Corpus Christi turning heads across Texas. A few years later, he photographed her again for Texas Monthly, just months before her death in 1995 at age 23.