Official behind-the-scenes blog of the Dallas Museum of Art
Stop by the DMA Store to stock up on supplies! Pick a postcard of your favorite work of art from the DMA’s collection and send it to a friend with a thoughtful message.
Jessica Fuentes is the Center for Creative Connections Gallery Manager at the DMA.
For all of you 21st-century Wise Men, the DMA has the perfect holiday shopping list for all of your gift needs. Explore the more than 80 creative and artful gifts in the 2015 Gift Guide online and check out a few highlights below:
For Her:
She’ll be home for Christmas no matter where she is with a Dallas, Texas necklace custom made for the DMA store.
For Him:
He’ll pack his suitcase to the nines every time with fool-proof folding board.
For Fun:
Dominate family game night with a beautifully designed Chinese checkers set.
For Kids:
Create curiosity for the youngest on your shopping list with colorful Pantone books.
For the Home and Host:
Be the guest with the best gift this holiday season for the hostess with the mostess.
For the Reader:
Light up your favorite bookworm’s holiday with a Mini Lumio lamp.
For the Art Enthusiast:
Add a little art to a rainy day with a Gerald Murphy Watch Umbrella.
For the International Pop Star:
Give a gift that pops with a cool tote.
For the Rebel in Your Life:
Set the table with plates inspired by the DMA’s Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots exhibition.
For Your One and Only:
Give a one of a kind gift this season with items available exclusively at the DMA.
For the One with it All:
Give a year of art to the hardest to shop for on your list with a gift DMA Membership.
Don’t visit the International Pop exhibition on an empty stomach! With paintings of luscious cakes and pies, installations of tempting produce stands, and giant French fries spilling over your head, you just might find yourself suddenly craving a snack. For the December Homeschool Class for Families, we are exploring food-inspired works in the exhibition, and then turning our snack attack into inspiration for art-making. Using recycled food packaging and labels, children experiment with the idea of mixing advertising and art in their own crazy consumer collages.
Visit DMA.org for a fill list of upcoming classes and workshops offered for kids of all ages.
Leah Hanson is the Manager of Early Learning Programs at the DMA
Many visitors, especially those coming with families, often start their visit to the DMA in the Center for Creative Connections (C3), a great starting point because it is located on the first floor, in the heart of the museum, and displays works of art from across the Museum’s diverse collection. However, after starting in C3, visitors tend to ask, “What else should we see while we’re here?” Of course, there could be a multitude of answers to that question, but I think I’ve laid out a nice action plan, using one of my favorite artworks currently on view in C3 as a starting point.
In the main C3 Gallery, notice the similarities between The Minotaur by Marcel Dzama and Ram Mask with Feather Cape created by the Kom people of Cameroon. They both depict features of two beings, The Minotaur with the head of a bull and the body of a human, and Ram Mask with Feather Cape with a stylized mask representative of a ram and a cape made of chicken feathers. Taking this idea as a starting point for works to see throughout the Museum, exit C3 and turn right down the main concourse. Headdown the concourse and take the Red Elevator up to the 4th Floor. Upon exiting, turn left and walk through the Native American Art gallery, taking a left into American Art. Then stay to the right and walk to the back corner where the American Silver Gallery is located. In a small case in the center of this gallery you will encounter the beautifully intricate silver Vase (for the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York.
Notice the serpentine handles culminating in bird heads and the etched patterns of scrolls and masks. Next, continue to walk around and through the American Gallery and take the small staircase that leads to the African Gallery. At the bottom of the staircase, walk to the far end of the gallery and take a right to find the Helmet mask (kifwebe) and costume.
Kifwebe masks are “composite beings,” compiled of human and animal elements. The striated designs on them derive from the markings and patterns of wild or dangerous animals such as antelopes, zebras, and okapi. The central crest may represent that of an ape or rooster. When you view this work of art in the galleries, it is accompanied by a short video which shows the mask in use, truly bringing it to life. Finally, continue through the African Gallery and take a left into the Egyptian section. To your immediate left you will find a collection of small works including a slate remnants depicting Thoth, God of Learning and Patron of Scribes a human figure with the head of an ibis.
Visit all of these works, for free, during your Thanksgiving break.
Jessica Fuentes is The Center for Creative Connections Gallery Manager at the DMA
You may have heard about an exhibition that we are just a little bit excited about here at the DMA. Since we cannot wait for you to experience Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots, which opens this Friday during Late Night, we thought we would share the homecoming of the DMA’s Portrait and a Dream, which was recently installed inside the exhibition. Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots will be on view November 20, 2015, through March 20, 2016.
Kimberly Daniell is the Manager of Communications and Public Affairs at the DMA.
Artifacts, the DMA Member magazine, invited Jackson Pollock’s nephew Jason McCoy to share his thoughts on his uncle’s work on the eve of the DMA’s exclusive presentation of Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots, which opens on Friday, November 20. We hope you are as delighted by his article as we were to publish it.
Breakthrough: Pollock’s Black Paintings
By Jason McCoy
Original publish date: Artifacts Fall 2015
Jackson Pollock, n.d.
Photograph by Hans Namuth, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate
When DMA curator Gavin Delahunty first talked to me about his dream of organizing an exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s so-called Black and White paintings, I was of course intrigued but thought to myself “good luck.” It is notoriously difficult to organize any Pollock show, and I knew the paintings were scattered all over the world. But the good luck seems now to be ours—Gavin has pulled it all off and we have been given the great good fortune to be able to view the largest assemblage of these works together, ever. Jackson Pollock is one of the most recognizable names in modern art, but we generally associate the name not with a single image of a specific painting but rather with the idea of paintings that consist of masses of fine lines, skeined across the picture’s surface in seeming confusion.
I appreciate that the Blind Spots exhibition will present an additional view of Pollock’s oeuvre, the paintings that followed the so-called pourings. These paintings were yet another breakthrough for Jackson Pollock, because here he was able to convey the certainty and discipline of works that, for the most part, were made in one session. There is a clarity to the paintings, a minimalism and a simplicity that make it all look so easy and pre-ordained. Not so, of course, but what is revealed is a master’s ability to get it right the first time, and so let the paintings stand for themselves. They are a powerful, fascinating lot, crowned with one of my personal favorite paintings of all, Portrait and a Dream, a longtime resident of Dallas.
Blind Spots will enable all of us to reevaluate the breadth and depth of Pollock’s accomplishments. It will illuminate that there was most often a figurative element in all of Pollock’s paintings, as images of man or beast are easy to recognize in Pollock’s first gestures on the plane. We can recall a comment he made to this effect, that in these paintings the “figure is coming through.” Such recognizable forms in fact caused consternation with certain modernist critics at the time, who did not care to acknowledge less than fully abstract painting as being modern.
Blind Spots will also include examples of Pollock’s interest in scale. In 1951, with the help of his brother, Sanford McCoy, he chose six paintings not at all similar in size to be used in a suite of serigraphs, a selection of which are exhibited in this exhibition. With a computer today, this type of curiosity might seem obvious, but this was not the case sixty-five years ago.
Had Pollock stopped after his “drip paintings” of the late 1940s he would certainly still have his place in history. Rather, his creative drive was such that it continued to evolve in unexpected ways and cover new ground, as Blind Spots reveals, accentuating that Pollock’s gift was much more than one-dimensional.
Untitled, n.d., Photograph by Hans Namuth, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
© 1991 Hans Namuth Estate
–Jason McCoy is President of Jason McCoy Gallery in New York.
For more stories like the one above, all of which were created exclusively for Artifacts, visit DMA.org/members.
(image: Jackson Pollock, Portrait and a Dream, 1953, oil and enamel on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated © 2015 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)
In order to celebrate the birthday of Sesame Street’s iconic Cookie Monster, Uncrated decided to go a little further with our imagination.
What would it be like if Cookie Monster stopped by the Museum? Would he try and serve up his tasty confections to guests at the Cafe? Or would he blend in and wait for the rest of the Sesame Street gang in the atrium?
Here’s how we think Cookie Monster would spend a day at the DMA.
Gregory Castillo is the Multimedia Producer at the DMA
We were digging through the archives and found the photo below. The back states “‘The Sacrifice’ DMFA comic opera 1962 (Aug).” We don’t know the full history of this photo but we thought it was a fitting image for Halloween. We hope your holiday is perhaps less eventful than this trio’s in the 1960s.
“The Sacrifice” DMFA comic opera 1962 (Aug); left to right: Gene Mitchell, John Lunsford, Jerry Jane Smith
This past weekend the annual TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art benefit dinner and contemporary art auction raised a record $8.3 million! In commemoration of the event, which supports the DMA’s contemporary art acquisitions fund and amfAR’s AIDS research efforts, and in recognition of Ellsworth Kelly, this year’s honored artist, we installed the artist’s work Red Panel, which entered the DMA’s collection in 1985. You can view this work in the Museum’s Concourse on your next visit, and then stop by Untitled , which was commissioned for the Museum’s Sculpture Garden.
This past Friday, artist Ushio Shinohara entered the artistic ring to create one of his Boxing Paintings out on the Museum’s Ross Avenue Plaza as part of our Late Night celebrating the opening of International Pop. Late Night visitors were able to experience his interactive painting style in which he uses paint-soaked sponges attached to boxing gloves to create his unique brand of action painting. If you missed Friday’s artist performance, you still have a chance to view four works by Shinohara in the International Pop exhibition on view through January 17, 2016.
Kimberly Daniell is the Manager of Communications and Public Affairs at the DMA.
