Archive for June, 2012

Texas-sized Free Day!

Published June 29, 2012 Friday Photos Closed
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Howdy, Texas!  Around these parts, we’re all pretty familiar with a fella named Big Tex, an icon of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas’ Fair Park area.  If Big Tex could take a stroll across town, you know he’d be sure to mosey up for some fun at the DMA‘s First Tuesday on July 3.  He could add some flair to his bandana in the art studio, join a roundup for stories and songs about Texas, search for Texas artwork treasures throughout the Museum, and more!  From 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, the DMA will be bustling with activities for families and kid folks.  We invite you to bring your pardners for the celebration on Tuesday, July 3, and kick off the national holiday a little early with some Texas pride.  General Museum admission is FREE!

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Texas artwork treasures featured in the slideshow include:
George Grosz, Cowboy in Town, 1952, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of A. Harris and Company in memory of Leon A. Harris, Sr.

George Grosz, Dallas Night, 1952, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, anonymous gift in memory of Leon A. Harris

George Grosz, Cattle, c. 1952-53, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of A. Harris and Company in memory of Leon A. Harris, Sr.

George Grosz, Cotton Harvest, Dallas (Cotton Pickers), c. 1952-53, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of A. Harris and Company in memory of Leon A. Harris, Sr.

Nicole Stutzman
Chair of Learning Initiatives and Dallas Museum of Art League Director of Education

We’ve Looked at Clouds

Published June 28, 2012 Behind-the-Scenes , Center for Creative Connections , Education 1 Comment
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If you’ve come into the Center for Creative Connections (C3) within the past month you may have noticed a few changes in our space. Aside from new artworks in our Encountering Space exhibition, we have transformed one area into a Prototyping Station. What does that mean exactly? Well, in this space we use reproductions of works of art to engage our visitors in conversations. These conversations allow us to better understand visitors’ perspectives and inform our thinking in the development of exhibitions. For the past month, we have focused on three works of art from our collection.

We often have so much background information about a work of art that it is difficult to decide how much of it visitors need to know. There is a delicate balance between providing information and allowing visitors to learn through their own observations. While we did these tests, we only provided a minimal amount of information besides the image.

Our dialogues have included both face-to-face conversations and written responses to questions we’ve posed. We have documented these responses and decided to make word clouds to show you what we have received so far. Word clouds, or tag clouds, are a way of visualizing data. You enter text into a computer program, and it generates a visual representation of which words are repeated most often. The words that are used most often appear larger. Take a look at the following word clouds we generated based on visitors’ responses to the following:

“The title of this work of art is The Minotaur. Tell us what you know about the Minotaur.”

“We are looking for descriptive words for this work of art. List what comes to mind when you look at this picture.”

Marcel Dzama, “The Minotaur,” 2008, plaster, gauze, rope, fabric, chair, bucket, and paintbrushes, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund, 2008.43.2.a-e, (c) Marcel Dzama

Jerry Bywaters, “Share Cropper,” 1937, oil on Masonite, Dallas Museum of Art, Allied Arts Civic Prize, Eighth Annual Dallas Allied Arts Exhibition, 1937.1

Visitors noticed many things, ranging from objects to emotions.Why is this process important? We want to gather input from visitors. Putting this testing area in the middle of the gallery allows visitors to see the process we use to develop interpretive components for a work of art. It also gives Museum-goers a chance to contribute information and a perspective that may be different from the staff’s, which is an important component of the C3 mission.

The next time you are at the Museum, stop by the C3 and share your responses in our new prototyping area.

Jessica Nelson is the C3 Gallery Coordinator at the Dallas Museum of Art.

An Introduction by Way of Road Trip

Published June 25, 2012 Curatorial , Staff 2 Comments
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As the newest member of the DMA’s curatorial team, I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself to the online community. I am from Los Angeles and have been actively engaged with contemporary art in one way or another for the past ten years. While in Los Angeles, I worked as the director of Blum & Poe gallery and then as a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Most recently, I’ve been working on my Ph.D. in art history at UCLA, and for the past year I was a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellow, researching at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. As the new Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, I will be in charge of the ongoing Concentrations series, which organizes exhibitions of work by emerging and under-represented artists.

Gabriel Ritter, The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA

Being new to Texas, I thought a cross-country drive would be a great way to familiarize myself with my new surroundings. On our way from Los Angeles to Dallas, my wife and I decided to make a pilgrimage to the city of Marfa in West Texas, which the minimalist artist Donald Judd called home. As many of you know, the city houses both the Judd Foundation, which oversees the artist’s private estate, as well as the Chinati Foundation, which Judd founded as a contemporary art museum that presents large-scale, permanent public art installations by Judd and by artists Judd selected, including Carl Andrea, John Chamberlin, Dan Flavin, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, and John Wesley, among others. For me, a highlight of our visit was the rare glimpse into Judd’s private life. Seeing his neatly organized studio spaces used for contemplation and his winter bedroom adorned with his collection of Native American jewelry and pottery was a treat. In addition, walking through Donald Judd’s untitled works in mill aluminum (1982-1986) was a transformative experience. Installed in two former artillery sheds, which Judd adapted specifically to house this installation, the work consists of one hundred unique sculptural iterations that utilize the same outer dimension of 41 x 51 x 72 inches. Natural light floods the two sprawling exhibition halls and reflects off the metallic volumes in a way that continues to change as you walk through the space.

Image credit: www.chinati.org

The road to Marfa (and ultimately Dallas) took us through Phoenix, El Paso, Midland, and Abilene. On the way, we stopped by Elmgreen and Dragset’s roadside installation titled Prada Marfa (2005), which feels as if it dropped out of the sky. Literally in the middle of nowhere, with miles and miles of open road to either side, the installation mimics the Italian fashion brand’s posh boutiques but is in fact a nonfunctional storefront. At first we almost missed it and drove right past it, but then I quickly turned around so we could grab a shot of this mirage-like space on the highway. If you ever find yourself on I-90, stop by and check it out.

Prada Marfa (2005)

All-in-all it was a fun road trip and a great way to see the Texas countryside. We also enjoyed some great Tex Mex cuisine and even caught a concert at the local bar in Marfa. Now that I am settled in at the DMA, this will hopefully be the first of many blog posts focusing on contemporary art. I look forward to your comments, and I hope to meet you during your next visit to the Museum.

Gabriel Ritter is The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Friday Photos: Summer Seminar 2012

Published June 22, 2012 Art & Teaching , Creativity , Teaching for Creativity 2 Comments
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Last Friday marked the end of Summer Seminar 2012: Teaching for Creativity, a week-long, immersive workshop for teachers of all grades and subjects to explore ways to foster creative thinking skills in their students. As a relatively fresh DMA employee, this Summer Seminar was my first. I was joined by eight educators from near and far (from Texas to Nebraska to Monterrey, Mexico!). Participants spent the week with the Museum’s resident creativity expert, Dr. Magdalena Grohman, engaging in group and independent creativity exercises, exploring creativity through art in the galleries, discussing current scholarship on creativity, and developing lesson plans to be tested in their classrooms next school year.

Thank you to this year’s participants for your insight, enthusiasm, and open-minds. Check out some of the photos from our idea-filled week.

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Andrea V. Severin
Coordinator of Teaching Programs

Summer Art Hopping

Published June 20, 2012 Staff 1 Comment
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With today being the first official day of summer, vacations are on the minds of the DMA staff. As employees of an art museum, we tend to include museums in our travel plans. Below are a few of our favorite museum visits and some we have on our “art bucket lists.”

Stacey Lizotte, Head of Adult Programming and Multimedia Services
One of my most memorable museum visits was to The Accademia Gallery in Florence, Italy. I had always wanted to see Michelangelo’s David and walking towards it, down a hallway that was lined with more of Michelangelo’s uncompleted sculptures, was an amazing and powerful experience.

The museum(s) I am most looking forward to visit are the Tate museums in England (Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St. Ives). If I had to pick just one site to visit to just look at art it would be the Tate Modern, and if I had to pick one to visit for a program it would be Late at Tate Britain when that museum stays open until 10 p.m. the first Friday of every month and offers a variety of programs.

Tate Modern at night

Hillary Bober, Digital Archivist
My favorite museum is the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, for the simple reason that I really love glass. Glass is such a unique medium; you can create incredibly beautiful and delicate pieces or amazingly durable industrial stuff, and the museum covers it all. There are also glass making demonstrations, Make Your Own Glass projects – I made a blown glass bottle and a flameworked bead when I went – and extensive courses for beginner to professional. Of course, there is also a great gift shop – I do love a gift shop – and you can’t beat the Finger Lakes setting in upstate New York.

Along this same vein, a museum that I would really like to go to is the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin which holds a world-renowned collection of glass paperweights and other works in glass. Since my family lives in Wisconsin, a visit is definitely going at the top of my to-do list for my next trip home.

Wendi Kavanaugh, Member Outreach Manager
One of my favorite museums to visit outside of Dallas is the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  The PMA is one of the largest Museums in the US with over 200 galleries. It’s easy to get lost in the PMA and end up in a room full of medieval armor – which I have done on one than one occasion.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

I would most like to visit the Musée National du Moyen Âge (National Museum of the Middle Ages) in Paris, France. A professor recently shared that this is his favorite museum in Paris, as someone that spent most of their life in the city – he’s one to trust.  After spending an hour (or so) on their website, it’s easy to see why you should visit.

National Museum of the Middle Ages by Giraud Patrick (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hayley Dyer, Audience Relations Coordinator
I had a great experience at the SFMOMA. The summer before my senior year of college I lived in San Francisco working for a jewelry designer.  As it was my first time in the city, I spent most of my free time exploring my temporary home.  One weekend I stopped by the SFMOMA and saw exhibitions of photography from Robert Frank and Richard Avedon; what a treat!  After I soaked up all the art inside the Museum, I headed up to the rooftop garden where I got an espresso from the coffee bar and read a book.  I think I treasure this experience because I was visiting the Museum alone.  I was able to have a personal connection with the artwork, the environment, and the city, and it wasn’t something that I had to share with anyone.

SFMOMA

The Museum I would like to visit is the Magritte Museum. Located in Brussels, Belgium, the Magritte Museum is the home of Belgium’s Royal Museums of Fine Arts’ collection of works by René Magritte.  Widely known as the painter of The Son of Man, aka The Guy in the Bowler Hat with an Apple on His Face, René Magritte is my favorite surrealist painter.  His colorful paintings feature his wonderful sense of humor.  Check out the Museum on YouTube.

Magritte Museum

Brent Mitchell, Registrar, Loans & Exhibitions
My favorite museum is the Museo Nacional Del Prado in Madrid. I had the pleasure of visiting on my first trip abroad, and I make sure to stop by every time I find myself in the city. My initial aim was to see the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, but with so many stellar works throughout the museum, every gallery holds special promise for visitors. I remember turning around after viewing a Botticelli painting and finding myself in front of the rather remarkable painting Dead Christ held up by an Angel by Antonella de Messina. It has become one of my favorite depictions of Christ.

Bosch in the Prado

If I’m ever fortunate enough to find myself in Italy, I will head to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It would be great to see Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Titian’s Venus of Urbino.

Uffizi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Martha MacLeod, Curatorial Administrative Assistant/European and American Art Department
Visiting the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts was on my “must visit” list for a very long time.  The old building is a fabulous piece of architecture and houses works by many of my favorite American artists.  Three years ago, I received a research grant to go there.  When I took a break from my work to wander through the building, I came upon a large studio filled with many plaster casts.  Suddenly it struck me that I may well have been standing in the same space where Thomas Eakins once taught life-drawing classes over 140 years ago.

Another place on my “must visit” list is not a museum per se, but I want to go to the Boston Public Library to see John Singer Sargent’s mural cycle The Triumph of Religion.  I have wanted to see it firsthand ever since I wrote a paper about it when I was in graduate school.  Until I make a trek there, the poster on my office wall of Frieze of the Prophets, which is part of the mural cycle, will have to suffice.

Martha’s private Boston Public Library

Kimberly Daniell, PR Specialist
My favorite Museum in the entire world is Musée de l’Orangerie, I have to visit every time I am in Paris. The museum is located in the beautiful Jardin des Tuileries near the Louvre and Seine, how could you go wrong? I fell in love with Monet in elementary school and experiencing a room filled with his large Nymphéas paintings is amazing. I think it may be one of the most peaceful galleries I have ever been to.

Monet in the Musée de l’Orangerie

The Museum I desperately want to visit is Museo Nacional Del Prado. Other than being located in Madrid, I have to see Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez’s Las Meninas (The Family of Felipe IV). Luckily the Prado already has a three hour tour, with Las Meninas as a stop, ready for me!

Las Meninas (Photo Credit: Museo Nacional Del Prado)

An Artistic Aegean Anniversary

Published June 19, 2012 Art & Teaching Closed
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A few weeks ago, my husband and I celebrated our first anniversary on an amazing cruise through the Aegean Sea. I majored in Ancient History at the University of Texas, so you can imagine my excitement at getting to experience numerous ancient sites in person. In particular, I have always been fascinated with prehistoric Aegean cultures, so the stops on both Crete and Thera (Santorini) were definitely a highlight.

One of the most interesting cultures is the Minoan civilization, which thrived during the Bronze Age from 2100-1500 B.C. on the island of Crete. Named for the mythical King Minos, the Minoans developed a centralized political system ruling from urbanized palace centers, the largest of which was located at Knossos on the north central coast of Crete. As prosperous sea-farers, the Minoans established extensive contact and trade with the contemporary cultures of Egypt and the Near East. Ancient writers even asserted that King Minos ruled over a maritime empire which included many Aegean islands. Although the extent of the Minoan political sphere is unclear, the Minoans were certainly in contact and influencing the culture of nearby islands like Thera, as attested by the surviving art.

Looking into the caldera on Thera, with the active volcano at left

Thera is a unique island whose history has been shaped by the active volcano at its center. During the period of Late Minoan 1A (c. 1625 B.C. or c. 1550 B.C.—dating is disputed by different scholars), the volcano erupted with such extreme force that it spread ash across the entire eastern Mediterranean and likely created a global cooling event. This eruption not only formed the distinctive caldera and picturesque cliffs seen on the island today, it also covered an entire ancient site in ash and pumice, perfectly preserving it like a prehistoric Greek Pompeii. Because of this eruption, the archaeological site of Akrotiri has yielded frescoes that are much more complete than those found elsewhere in the Aegean.

To execute their frescoes, Minoan artists used mineral pigments in white, red, brown, yellow, black, and blue. The wall surfaces were divided into three zones: the upper zone, above windows and doors, contained miniature friezes or decorative patterns; the middle zone included the large main subject; and the lower zone served as the base, sometimes using patterns to imitate stonework. The basic composition was painted in buon fresco technique, on the wet lime plaster surface. Additional colors and details were added after the plaster dried (fresco secco), using an organic fixative like egg white. The scenes include themes from nature (landscapes with plants and animals), daily life (fishing, sea-faring), and ritual (offerings to a goddess). The Theran fresco style is similar to the style found in Knossos and other palace centers on Crete, but utilizes a livelier, though less refined, hand.

A visit to Thera is certainly not complete without a trip to the Museum of Prehistoric Thera, where you can see examples of these beautiful frescoes, along with other objects found at Akrotiri. But visiting the extensive ancient sites of both Knossos and Akrotiri really allows for a more complete understanding of the Minoan culture that flourished thousands of years ago. That such beautiful art could be created so long ago—simply amazing!

Click on the thumbnails below for larger images.

Further Reading:

  • Chapin, A. (2010). Frescoes. In E. H. Cline (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (ca. 3000-1000 BC) (pp. 223-236). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Doumas, C. (1992). The wall-paintings of Thera. Athens: Thera Foundation.
  • Rutter, J. (n.d.).  Lesson 17: Akrotiri on Thera, the Santorini Volcano and the Middle and Late Cycladic Periods in the Central Aegean Islands. Retrieved from Dartmouth.edu.
  • Shelmerdine, C. W. (2008). The Cambridge companion to the Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sarah Coffey
Assistant to the Chair of Learning Initiatives

Off the Wall: An Underground City

Published June 18, 2012 Center for Creative Connections 1 Comment
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In our Center for Creative Connections we ask visitors to reflect on their responses to the spaces they encounter in art, as well as those they encounter in their everyday life.

For one work of art specifically, Lee Bontecou’s Untitled, we ask visitors to respond to one of three prompts:

  • To me, sharing space with this work of art feels like…
  • The words or pictures that come to mind when I look at this work of art are…
  • If this work of art was part of something larger, describe what it would be.

    Untitled (35), Lee Bontecou, 1961, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of an anonymous foundation

We have gotten a lot of great responses from visitors and want to share a few with you. Once a month we will have an “Off the Wall” post featuring three responses left by visitors.

Next time you are in the Center for Creative Connections add your contribution to the wall and maybe you will see it on Uncrated!

 

Friday Photos: Father Knows Best

Published June 15, 2012 Friday Photos Closed
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Last month, we honored moms (and moms-to-be) with a photo post.  It only seems fair to do the same for dear old dad on this Father’s Day weekend.  Several of us have dads who are loyal followers of the DMA Educator Blog–they’ve even been known to comment on our posts a time or two.  To my dad, I say thanks for teaching me everything I know.  Except about art…you didn’t teach me anything there, but thanks for tolerating all of those Museum visits in Paris last summer.

To celebrate all dads, here are images of fathers both good and bad (I’m looking at you, Ugolino) from the DMA collection.  Happy Father’s Day!

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Shannon Karol
Manager of Docent Programs and Gallery Teaching

Stumbling Onto Something New

Published June 13, 2012 Arts District , Dallas , DFW , Guest Blog Post , Late Nights , Special Events 3 Comments
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Hello there! My name is Michele Loftus, and I’m the Marketing Coordinator for The Dallas Arts District. A lot of people don’t know that my organization actually exists, so let me take the opportunity to introduce us. We are an advocacy organization for . . . you guessed it, The Dallas Arts District! Still confused? I’ll put it this way: if you’ve ever eaten at a food truck, ventured out to an artsy block party, or consulted one of our kiosks looking for directions, then you’ve crossed paths with what our organization does. We’re often the ones who close off the streets for late night parties, coordinate the programs, and most importantly, do our best to make it easy for you to be a one-stop shop for all things Dallas Arts District. We bring together all the museums, restaurants, performing arts companies, and venues to promote the neighborhood along Flora Street as a cohesive district. All this being said, we hope you’ll join us for our next big bash, the Summer Block Party, this Friday night from 6:00 p.m. to midnight.

Now in our fourth year of throwing block parties, we’ve had the fortune of attracting more and more people to our neighborhood and educating them on the various offerings of the Dallas Arts District. What’s interesting now though, as observed in our most recent block parties and art crawls, is that people will come not knowing we’re throwing these events in the first place. They’ll stumble upon them for various other reasons: food trucks, a concert at the Winspear, or just driving by. Seeing the streets all lit up with activity, it’s difficult for them to stay away. It’s become something that amazes me every time and is now one of the things I look forward to most when wandering around, sending out my usual tweets, or taking pictures of what’s going on. It’s that curious “So what’s happening over there?” look, and the subsequent “Oh, awesome!” when I tell folks that the museums are open until midnight and send them on their merry way down Flora Street, knowing they’ve caught the buzz of our neighborhood.

Often, I’ve noticed these people are the faithful food truckies who follow their favorites to the ends of the earth, and this time their journey happens to lead to the Arts District. But I’ve also met a fair share of museum-goers who are equally as surprised and excited to find out there’s an entire food court waiting for them just down the street. We even come across people who are members at one institution and have no idea there’s something going on at the others right next door.

This kind of exchange is why we do these events and one of the many reasons we thrive on nights like the Summer Block Party. We’re fortunate to have an arts district that’s all on one street, so we can foster exciting collaborations like these and make it easy for people to stumble upon something new.

To discover something new for yourself, visit us at this Friday’s Summer Block Party. The museums will all be open until midnight. For more information, visit http://thedallasartsdistrict.org.

Michele Loftus is the Marketing Coordinator for The Dallas Arts District

Art is for Families

Published June 12, 2012 Creativity , Museum Insight , People , works of art Closed
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Do you remember family visits to museums as a kid?  Picking favorite artworks together, seeing something completely perplexing/absolutely beautiful, or learning (maybe the hard way) that you can’t touch the art?

My colleague, C3 Gallery Specialist Jessica Nelson, is dedicating her master’s thesis research capturing such experiences.  Last week, Jessica forwarded me a link to her more-than-excellent blog Art is for Families.  The blog documents her Art Education master’s thesis project, for which Jessica is embarking on a series of wonder-full museum adventures with her six-year-old daughter, Julia.  Jessica’s research focuses on family learning in museums: specifically, how museum-produced self-guided materials help families have meaningful experiences with artworks.  She is also interested in inter-generational collaborative research and art-making as a vehicle for storytelling.

Together, Jessica and Julia will visit six museums in the metroplex, making use of available self-guided materials, and documenting their journeys in a variety of media. The two are equal collaborators: Julia and Jessica make art together, collect stories, take separate photos of their experiences, and throughout, have a dialogue about their process.

So far, Julia and Jessica have visited the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art—taking advantage of the Modern’s self-guided sketchbook, Ten Pages and the Carter’s Postcard Tour.  Below are just a few of many pictures of their visits and resulting projects:

Julia twirled through my office last week, just in time for me to take the adorable mother-daughter photo above for this post.  Julia, we cannot wait to see more of your art and read (and read and read) more of your stories about museums.  Jessica, what an amazing project!  We look forward to learning from your research.

To have a self-guided family adventure at the DMA, ask for one of our four bite-sized Self-Guided tours at the Visitor Services desk, or print them at home.  And for more family-focused art-making and art-exploring ideas, visit We Art Family! The DMA Family Blog.

Amy Copeland
Coordinator of Go van Gogh Outreach

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