If you put up an exhibition called The Arts of the Circus, as the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts did in October 1962, it is a no-brainer that the preview party will be its own three-ring circus.
DMCA Director Douglas MacAgy as Ringmaster for the Arts of the Circus preview party.
Photo credit: Paul Rogers Harris
The party featured clowns, balloons, animal crackers and pink lemonade, a sideshow, fire-eaters, and a baby elephant.
Fire-eater at the preview party for the DMCA’s The Arts of the Circus exhibition. Photo credit: Paul Rogers Harris
Dallas artists Roy Fridge, Nancy Levinson, David McManaway, Herb Rogalla, Peggy Wilson, and Roger Winter created special sideshow banners to complete the circus atmosphere.
Sideshow banners by local artists created for The Arts of the Circus
The exhibition proper included both circus objects and memorabilia, and artworks with a circus-related subject; it was on view at the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts October 9-November 11, 1962.
Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the Dallas Museum of Art.