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Arturo’s Kids Club at the Dallas Museum of Art

Published June 24, 2011 Education , Members Closed
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Hi! I’m Arturo, the family mascot at the Dallas Museum of Art. Have we met? I’m a bright, colorful Peruvian bird and I am based off a ceramic vessel in the DMA’s collection from Peru that is over 1,000 years old! I’m planning on heading to the next Kids Club event and thought I would tell you all about my soon-to-be adventure. The next Kids Club event is on July 23 at the Museum of Nature and Science, and it’s the perfect Dallas event for kids just like you!

Before, I tell you about my plans for my visit, maybe I should explain Kids Club. Kids Club is a group you can join at the Sustainer level membership. We partner with the Dallas Zoo, the Museum of Nature and Science, the Trinity River Audubon Center, the Dallas Arboretum, and the Crow Collection of Asian Art. Each organization hosts an event each year. That means I fly to five off-site events and then I host one at home, here at the DMA. If I miss the event, I can still go to the Zoo or Arboretum and use my membership discount. As a bird, I don’t have much room for pocket money, so I like to save when I can!

The adventure will start with a brainstorming meeting with the DMA’s education staff. They help me with my activity. Like all the other organizations, I have to take a fun, crafty activity that will appeal to all ages. Last time, I took wands on my fairytale adventure to the Dallas Arboretum. They were really popular. I think moms and dads like to decorate as much as kids!

Once I get my materials and learn how to make the activity with my wings, I’m ready to go! I’ll get to the Museum of Nature and Science about 8:30 a.m. so I can set up for a 9:00 a.m. opening. Then, for the next two hours, I help kids make something special to take home.

By 11:00 a.m. I’m exhausted. I then have to find bird food (I like sunflower seeds) and then I’ll need a nap in Arturo’s Nest in C3!

Arturo is the mascot for all Museum family programming. He makes appearances on First Tuesdays and Late Nights; you can also find him on all family related print materials and temporary tattoos. He had a bit of help with this post from Wendi Kavanaugh, Member Outreach Manager.

How to Install a 27-Foot Sculpture

Published May 26, 2011 Behind-the-Scenes , Contemporary Art , Curatorial , Exhibitions , Installation Closed
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The installation of James Lee Byars’s Figure of Death was caught on camera last week in preparation for the exhibition, Silence and Time, which opens this Sunday, May 29, in the Barrel Vault and Quadrant Galleries.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu3fx3ZkZg]

James Lee Byars, The Figure of Death, 1986, basalt (ten pieces), Private Collection, Dallas, TX, © James Lee Byars

Video by Ted Forbes, Multimedia Producer at the Dallas Museum of Art

Seldom Scene: @Art Ball

Published May 2, 2011 Behind-the-Scenes , Dallas , Fundraising 1 Comment
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Saturday we hosted the Art Ball, our annual black-tie gala. Below is a peek at the preparations for this very special evening.

[slideshow]

Seldom Scene: Fancy Dancing

Published April 26, 2011 American Art , Education , Exhibitions 1 Comment
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On Saturday we welcomed hundreds of visitors to our Art of the American Indians Family Celebration, a day of fun activities, performances featuring the Oklahoma Fancy Dancers, art, tours, and a special sneak peek of the exhibition Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection. Below are a few pictures from the day. Join us on Friday, May 20, to celebrate this exhibition during Late Night.

Photos by Chad Redmon, Photographer at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Artfully Green

Published April 22, 2011 Arts District , Behind-the-Scenes , Dallas Closed
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Reduce, reuse, and recycle. As Earth Day rolls around, we’re reminded of our impact on the environment. But what are we doing at the Dallas Museum of Art to be green? Uncrated went on a search to find out.

Each year, over half a million visitors step through the Museum’s doors, and our large building is 500,000 square feet, taking up two city blocks in downtown Dallas. Our global collections span over 24,000 works of art, and we produce an average of eighteen exhibitions each year. We have an underground parking garage, a cafe, a store, and over two hundred employees.

With this large footprint, we were excited to find out about some long-standing practices and a few new ones that the DMA is using to reduce its impact on the environment:

  • Three years ago, The City of Dallas and the DMA retrofitted the building’s entire energy management systems in order enhance energy efficiency. Efforts included replacing our boiler and chillers, adding eco-friendly light bulbs, low flow toilets and water fixtures throughout the museum. As a result, utility consumption has been reduced over 50%.
  •  The Museum has a water management system throughout the building. It is a smart system with rain sensors for our hardscape and landscaping.
  •  We added healthier, more drought-tolerant trees along the Museum bordering St. Paul Street.
  •  All chemicals and cleaning agents used at the DMA are eco-friendly.
  •  DMA employees are offered a discount to ride the DART system to work. There is a bicycle rack located on Ross Avenue Plaza.
  •  When layouts of our galleries are changed for new exhibitions, we reuse studs and building materials. All crates and art packing materials are reused and/or recycled.
  •  The DMA participates in a recycling program with the City of Dallas. The profits the City makes are sent into the general fund for City programs such as Park and Recreation projects and Fire Department equipment.
  •  All copy paper used at the Museum has a minimum of 30% post-consumer waste content.
  •  All of the printed materials produced by our Creative Services team are printed on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified paper, using an FSC-certified paper distributor, and 95% of the commercial printing (100% local) that the Museum does uses an FSC-certified printer.
  •  The admission tags that visitors receive when they visit the DMA are collected and reused. Look for boxes at the Visitor Services Desk to recycle your tag when leaving.
  •  The Museum Store features products from many local artists and craftsman and also has a wide variety of eco-friendly products.
  • Our cafe uses compostable or biodegradable disposable containers and recycles all plastic, glass bottles, paper, cardboard, wine corks, and cooking oils. This summer, we will begin working with a food composting company.
  •  The cafe menu consists of locally purchased organic produce, sourcing through local vendors within a two hundred-mile radius. Soon, the cafe will implement new infused water stations and glass-bottled waters, phasing out plastic-bottled water.

The DMA is working with the U.S. Green Building Council to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for these efforts. We hope to have our designation by August 2011.

For a selection of works on view at the Museum that incorporate recycled materials, visit our sister blog, We Art Family, for their Earth Day post. And for eco-friendly activities, emerging green technology, and thought-provoking ways to think, work, and live green in Dallas, join us today and tomorrow in the downtown Dallas Arts District for the free Earth Day Dallas Festival (the DMA will have FREE admission on Saturday, April 23, 2011!). To reduce your carbon footprint, ride DART to Pearl Station and walk to the Arts District.

Happy EARTH Day!

Mandy Engleman is the Director of Creative Services at the Dallas Museum of Art

Designing Stickley

Published April 20, 2011 Behind-the-Scenes , Decorative Art and Design , Exhibitions , Installation Closed
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Hello, everyone! DMA resident exhibition designer Jessica Harden here to give you a short and sweet behind-the-scenes snapshot of where some of our inspiration for exhibition design comes from. The Gustav Stickley exhibition was fun to work on because I had lots of great resources, including original photographs and The Craftsman catalogues, which Stickley published with drawings of many of his architectural and interior designs and finishes . . .

as well as records of popular colors of the time. We chose paint colors for the exhibition based on the Sherwin-Williams Arts & Crafts palette. BTW, drawing up plans for the exhibition is also part of my job . . .

as is producing construction drawings.

But back to inspiration and resources—this is a photograph of a model dining room created to show Stickley’s furniture in 1903.

. . . and this is our gallery at the DMA that we designed and built to replicate the original.

In fact, if you look around the Gustav Stickley exhibition galleries, you might notice a number of details that were inspired by Stickley’s original designs. Here, we were inspired by how Stickley used interior cut-outs to define spaces and create interesting thresholds to transition from one room to the next.

We also took inspiration from Stickley’s use of simple trim work on walls to help us define spaces and create a more residential environment for the exhibition. This included using a cap rail to imply a lower ceiling height in our 14-foot-high exhibition galleries.

And just to have a little fun, we took a few chances to let visitors discover glimpses of upcoming galleries and objects along the way.

Even some of the smallest details of the exhibition were inspired by Stickley. Here you can see that the mount for this lamp was modeled after drawings from Stickley interiors and was fabricated by our extremely talented preparators and carpentry staff. They even made new heads for the screws to match the originals!

Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement is on view at the Dallas Museum of Art until May 8, when it will travel to San Diego to open on June 18.

Jessica Harden is Exhibition Design Coordinator at the Dallas Museum of Art.

20/20 at the DMA

Published April 20, 2011 Social Media Closed
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We have reached 20,000 fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter! To thank every one of you we are offering 20% off adult general admission and 20% off new memberships*  from 11:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, 2011. Just tell the Visitor Services Desk, or visit the Membership desk on Level 1, that you follow the DMA on Facebook or Twitter to get your 20% discount.

* not available with any other offer

C3’s Interactive Space Takes Center Stage

Published April 2, 2011 Center for Creative Connections 1 Comment
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Our Center for Creative Connections (C3) is an interactive space and innovative learning environment at the heart of the Museum’s galleries where museum-goers can explore their own creativity and discover new ways of experiencing and connecting with art from the Museum’s collections. C3 especially encourages active learning for people of all ages and learning styles through exhibitions and programs. You may have left (literally) your mark on C3 by measuring your height against Jacques Lipchitz’s 6 and ½ foot tall bronze sculpture of The Bather or by submitting your photos of varied spaces to our monitor wall. The theme for it changes every 6 months so you can continue to contribute to it throughout the run of our current exhibition Encountering Space.

C3 is easy to find: centrally located on the Museum’s first level it includes an exhibition gallery and several distinct learning areas, including an Art Studio, an interactive learning space for children under the age of four called Arturo’s Nest, a Young Learners Gallery for children 5–8 and their families, a theater, and a digital studio called the Tech Lab. There are always activities happening in one or more area of C3 for all of the Museum’s visitors, and hands-on experiences at the Museum aren’t just for kids.

Museum visitors can literally grow-up with C3 by participating in exploratory programs as early as 2 years old in Arturo’s Nest during Toddler Art through an Artist Encounter for grown-ups to celebrate creativity and the artistic process.

Here is what some of you, our visitors, have said about your experiences in C3:

“A visit to the Center for Creative Connections is like visiting Alice in Wonderland because magic happens here.” – Kelaine, 50

“[C3 is] a fun place with a lot of imagination, where the imagination flies.” – Victor, 17

“[C3 is] a place where art actually comes alive, where it’s more than just something pretty to look at but never touch.” – Caitlin, 18

“A visit to the Center for Creative Connections is like going back to preschool because you are looking at things through new eyes.” – Rob, 38

“I don’t want to leave. Can I live here?” – C3 visitor, 4

All the Single Ladies

Published April 1, 2011 Collections Closed
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Did you know that the Dallas Museum of Art’s sculpture The Shade by Auguste Rodin served as inspiration for Beyonce’s famous “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” dance?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April Fools!

Growing Pains

Published March 31, 2011 Behind-the-Scenes 1 Comment
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Since our art storage area is not available to the general public, we thought we’d give you a behind-the-sceneslook at our new and improved space.

In 2008, the Museum was awarded an important grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through the grant, the DMA has increased the square footage of several art storage spaces, expanded storage capacity, and modernized the spaces with new lighting, HVAC, and furniture fixtures. Each storage space was renovated to the highest preservation and green-building standards in coordination with the architecture firm Solomon & Bauer of Watertown, Ma., the City of Dallas, and contractors.

The building of the new Works on Paper (WOP) facilities was the final building stage of this multi-year project.  Three new rooms were constructed within the museum’s existing storage space to specifically hold the museum’s roughly 6,000 works. With the construction complete and the new cabinets installed, we have started the process of moving art from our old storage to the new.

Space was one of the biggest concerns in our previous WOP storage. This was especially true for our storage of framed works, where our cabinets were full the point of overflow. We often needed to remove five or six pieces in order to access the one object we needed. Since the goal is to move the work as little as possible, the “overflow” constituted a threat to the care of our objects.

Speaking in strictly numbers, we previously had 18 cabinets with a total of 126 bins, each bin being 10 inches wide and 42 inches deep. As you can see in the picture below, the height of each bin was set. While this created an aesthetically pleasing consistency, it left significant gaps and wasted precious space.

In our new space, conversely, we have 142 bins, each 11 inch wide by 42 inches deep. Not only do we have a greater number of overall bins, our new cabinets are completely modular.  Depending upon the need of the collection, we can add or subtract shelves.  The photo below shows the new cabinets in process of being loaded with objects.  Already you can see the increased functionality of this style unit.

The new framed work storage units are attached to rolling racks, which allows us to maximize our space by removing the need for aisles. While the use of rolling racks has been relatively common in library stacks for years, it is only now becoming the standard in collections care. With the addition of the rolling racks in the area, we have now updated all of our storage spaces to these compacting racks.  The photo below shows the new flat storage units on a rolling rack.

Always a problem in our old space, we specifically designed an area of the new storage space to view works on paper. Shelves built in to the slanted wooden backing fold out to support objects without having to bother with hanging.  The shelves are large enough to support almost any framed work in the collection, but are also designed in such a way where many smaller pieces could also be shown all at once.  The flexibility of the unit is vital to curators as they arrange and rearrange objects in preparation for gallery installations.  The overall size of the viewing space is an extra plus as we can now accommodate more students or scholars visiting on research trips.

The changes in how we store our works on paper will greatly improve the overall level of care we are able to maintain.  Thanks to the NEH and the Hoblitzelle Foundation, these improvements, along with the updates to our library and archives, the collections file storage space, and small objects—shown in last fall’s  Small Objects Collection is Movin’ on Up!—have made a profound impact on the way the collections staff cares for our museum’s collection.

Anne Lenhart is an Assistant Registrar at the Dallas Museum of Art

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