Official behind-the-scenes blog of the Dallas Museum of Art
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.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiNKab5RaZQ&w=560&h=315]
Kimberly Daniell is the Manager of Communications and Public Affairs at the DMA.
On October 7, the DMA Education Division took a small (and well-deserved!) break to explore the food, photography and fun at the State Fair of Texas! We really enjoyed the Creative Arts Exhibition Hall, and of course the crazy fried food concoctions. In honor of the Fair’s closing weekend, here are a few snaps from our day!
Madeleine Fitzgerald
Audience Relations Coordinator
In September, a group of DMA Friends joined us for an exclusive and new DMA Friends rewards event: Tea Time, Deep in the Heart of Texas. We began our afternoon getting to know each other over Texas-inspired light refreshments which included sweet tea and lemonade paired with mini jalapeño cornbread muffins and mini buttermilk biscuits, baked fresh especially for us by the wonderful staff of the DMA Cafe.
We learned interesting tidbits about each other, such as what artwork from the DMA collection Friends wanted to take home. The Icebergs was the clear winner, yet another Friend wanted to jump into The Ocean’s Bounty: Undersea Windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany!
Next, we ventured up to the Dozier study room, a meeting space named after and honoring Texas artists Velma and Otis Dozier. Rae Pleasant, the Museum’s Research Associate for Early Texas Art, showed us objects in the collection that we might not ordinarily see as they are displayed in cases inside the DMA offices.
The “Tea Time, Deep in the Heart of Texas” reward gives DMA Friends a fun social interaction combined with a new way to engage with art. We heard interesting facts, perused archival material and shared personal reactions to the artworks in Dozier as well as in the Museum galleries. Best of all, we deepened and expanded our circle of art Friends!
Start saving your points now and be on the look out for a new tea time with a new theme at the beginning of the new year.
Tanya Miller is the Friends Community Manager at the DMA
Two week’s ago we had a special visitor at the DMA, the great godson of Gerald Murphy! The Museum’s education blog, DMA Canvas, shared his visit and snapped a few photos of 11-month-old Vance in front of his great godfather’s work Watch.
Gerald Murphy was described as “the progenitor of Pop Art” in a New York Times review of the exhibition Making it New, which the DMA presented in in 2008. His two works in the colelction serve as a precursuer to those works on view in International Pop, now open and on view through Janaury 17, 2016.
It’s been a busy, colorful week in the Museum’s Barrel Vault gallery. We have been putting the final touches on the nationally touring exhibition International Pop, which opens this Sunday, October 11, including the installation of León Ferrari’s The Western Christian Civilization (La civilización occidentaly cristiana) from 1965. This morning DFW press were given a sneak peek of the groundbreaking and critically acclaimed exhibition. Here’s your behind-the-scenes look, and mark your calendars for Sunday.
The design of the DMA provides several places for visitors to observe disparate forms of art within adjacent spaces. I find these vantage points to be the Museum’s most unexpected assets and my recommended route passes three of them.
Take the mid-Concourse stairs to the third-floor balcony. From this elevated perspective you’re able to recognize the curious pairing of sculptures on the ground level and left wall. William Wetmore Story’s Semiramis follows the familiar tradition of depicting legendary figures in white marble. She reclines near the base of a 1930s Ceremonial pole (mbis) created by the Asmat people in the southwestern region of present-day New Guinea. These works arguably have little in common, and yet at the DMA they are neighbors, ripe for comparison and appreciation.
Next, proceed through the Japanese gallery on the Museum’s third level to the balcony that looks back onto your previous position. The expanse of artistic styles, periods, materials, and intentions gains a level of complexity with the presence of a cast bronze sculpture from the Meji period, Takenouchi no Sukune Meets the Dragon King of the Sea.
Emily Schiller is the Digital Collections Content Coordinator at the DMA.
Tomorrow Spirit and Matter: Masterpieces from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art opens during our September fall block party Late Night. Huffington Post ranked it at #1 among “need to see” art shows this fall and it is a “Critic’s Pick” in The Dallas Morning News. This morning, exhibition curator and DMA Senior Advisor for Islamic Art Dr. Sabiha Al Khemir shared a sneak peek of the exhibition with national press.
Be among the first to see these intricately decorated objects spanning numerous centuries and continents tomorrow night and join Dr. Al Khemir for a talk on the works of art at 7:00 p.m.
