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Red, White, and Blue

Published July 4, 2012 American Art , Collections , Contemporary Art , Decorative Art and Design , European Art , Modern Art , Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Some visitors to the DMA may have taken our self-guided tour Seeing Red, and loyal readers of our blog may remember a post we did back in December about works in our collection that are white. So while we have not focused on the color blue yet, we thought this would be a good day to share with you a few works in our collection that feature red, white, and blue.

Striped chevron bead, Drawn glass, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of The Dozier Foundation

Childe Hassam, Flags, Fifth Avenue, 1918, Watercolor, Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund, in memory of Mrs. George Aldredge

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Bouquet of Flowers in a Blue Porcelain Vase, 1776, Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, Mrs. John B. O’Hara Fund and gift of Michael L. Rosenberg

Rufino Tamayo, El Hombre (Man), 1953, Vinyl with pigment on panel, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association commission, Neiman-Marcus Company Exposition Funds [credit line published in 1997 DMA Guide to the Collections: Dallas Museum of Art, commissioned by the Dallas Art Association through Neiman-Marcus Exposition Funds]

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Large Blue Plane, Red, Black, Yellow, and Gray, 1921, Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of Mrs. James H. Clark

Yves Tanguy, Apparitions, 1927, Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., in honor of Nancy O’Boyle

Jean Antoine Theodore Giroust, Oedipus at Colonus, 1788, Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, Mrs. John B. O’Hara Fund

James Brooks, Quand, 1969, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Meadows Foundation Incorporated

Wassily Kandinsky, Boating (from Sounds), 1907-1911, 1913, Volume with thirty-eight prose poems and twelve color and forty-four black-and-white woodcuts, Dallas Museum of Art, Centennial gift of Natalie H. (Schatzie) and George T. Lee

Stacey Lizotte is the Head of Adult Programming and Multimedia Services.

Let Your smARTphone Be Your Guide

Published July 2, 2012 Behind-the-Scenes , Collections , Curatorial Closed
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For many of us, our smartphones are an integral part of how we interact with and even interpret the world around us. At the DMA, we’ve been using smARTphone tours as a tool to do precisely that–allow visitors to become actively engaged with works of art throughout the Museum.

In 2009, when smartphones were first becoming popular, the DMA decided to experiment with creating tours for visitors on them. The Museum offers free Wi-Fi throughout the building, so we went with a web-based application that would work on any web-enabled smartphone. We gathered videos and audio clips, images, and text related to thirteen works of art in the collection and made them accessible to visitors via smartphones. There is so much fascinating information that can’t be displayed on labels and wall texts, and that first tour demonstrated the exciting possibilities offered by the interactive and multimedia features. Since then, we’ve created smARTphone tours for special exhibitions and added many stops to our collection tour.

Currently on the DMA’s smARTphone tour, you can listen to audio and video introductions for more than seventy-five works of art, learn about the artists and cultures that created them, check out community response projects like poems and sound designs, and look through archival and contextual photographs. Personally, some of my favorite choices include watching Dr. Heather MacDonald discuss why Claude Monet’s painting The Seine at Lavacourt was a failure, listening to sound designs created by UTD students in response to our Indonesian jaraik, and perusing the photographs of Coco Chanel at the Villa La Pausa.

While our initial efforts were well received, in 2011 the Museum embarked on a new phase of development of the smARTphone tours program. We revamped the design and organization, created a feature that allows multiple staff members to publish content, and added over fifty-five new stops to the tour.

From the interface design to the production of content, the DMA’s smARTphone tours are created entirely in-house and bring together staff from many of the Museum’s departments including IT, Education, Curatorial, and Marketing. While IT and Marketing worked on the new look of the tour, staff from the Education and Curatorial departments decided which works of art should be included and developed content.  The new tour stops include over one hundred video and audio clips of curators speaking about works of art and artist biographies, and reflect the collaborative efforts of the various departments.

It was thrilling to see all of our hard work come to fruition when the new stops were released in February 2012 at the opening of the exhibition Face to Face: International Art at the DMA. The real highlight, though, is to see visitors using it. While conducting an evaluation of the smARTphone tour, I spoke with a mom and her twin 9-year-old boys, who said they had looked at every video in Face to Face and wanted to look at more when they got home!

Feedback from our visitors is especially important, and periodic evaluation has played an integral role in the development of the tours. From user experience to content, we’ve assessed visitor experiences with the smARTphone tours four times over the past several years. Each time we learn something new.

If you’re at the DMA or at home, be sure to check out the smARTphone tour at dma.mobi.

Laura Bruck is a museum consultant and also adjunct assistant professor of art history at the University of Dallas.

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!

 

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

BooksmART Festival – My Favorite Things

Published May 23, 2012 Arts & Letters Live , Dallas , Special Events Closed
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Well, it’s that time again! The second annual FREE BooksmART Festival at the Dallas Museum of Art is right around the corner. Mark your calendars now: Saturday, June 9, 2012, 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Spend the entire day with authors, illustrators, musicians, and actors! Every member of the family is guaranteed to find something to enjoy–there is really something for everyone. The full lineup can be found on our website, but I thought I would go ahead and give you my “Top Ten” list of things you need to do at the festival.

My Top Ten List of Things To Do (And See) at the BooksmART Festival 

1. Get here early! The first events start at 11:00 a.m. and you won’t want to miss them. You know what they say,  “To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. To be late is unacceptable!”

2. Make sure you go to an author or illustrator presentation. Whether you read picture books, chapter books, young adult books, or comic books, we have an event for you.

3. Get as many autographs as humanly possible. If, by chance, you miss an author at their booksigning, you can politely ask them to sign a book for you if you attend their workshop.

4. Eat something from the food trucks! I pinky promise that you’ll be glad you did. We’ve invited all kinds of trucks to come to the festival, but I know you’ll be especially excited for snow cones and ice cream sandwiches as the hot Texas sun threatens to swallow you up. You are welcome.

5. Head over to the Crow Collection of Asian Art for paper and pop-up fun! I am dying to learn how to re-create the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry using only paper, scissors, and my own two hands. I tried, and Wingardium Leviosa doesn’t really work in the Muggle world.

6. Stop in for a workshop or performance by the Dallas Theater Center. I’m so curious–just what is an Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? They don’t exactly sell them at the Gap.

7. Get your eyes checked! The Essilor Vision Foundation will be at the festival all day providing FREE vision screenings and glasses to kids ages 5-16. After you get your glasses, go meet Taye Diggs. I’m 99.9% positive he’ll be wearing his glasses too.

8. Grab a snack and re-hydrate in the Atrium while you listen to music. Food, water, and music–life’s essentials!

9. Drop in on the Center for Creative Connections (a.k.a. C3). Check out the Art Studio, where several illustrators will be giving workshops; stop by the Tech Lab and create a digital short film; or just hang out at the space bar and let your imagination run wild!

10. Buy your favorite author’s books in the Museum Store, and visit Half Price Books’ table in the Concourse. Sign up for their summer reading program so you can keep the BooksmART fun going all summer long.

And now, since your appetite has been whetted, I’m going to leave you with a little song I’ve written for the BooksmART Festival. Sing it over and over with your family and friends in anticipation. If, by chance, you happen to memorize it, come find me; I’ll have a special prize for the choristers who serenade me. I will be at Horchow Auditorium all day, so look for me.

My Favorite Things (BooksmART Remix)

To the tune of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things”

Readings and writings and workshops and classes
Joe wears a dreamcoat and new stylish glasses
Pablo Picasso and yum, Chocolate Me!
These are a few of my favorite things
Cartoons and funnies and writers of stories

Mice and amoebas and full Scrabble glory
Dramas and comedies and mysteries
These are a few of my favorite things

Papers that morph into pop-up creations
Aliens that go on extended vacations
Monkeys that bounce on a bed full of springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When I’m grounded
When the ship sinks
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad

For more information about the 2nd annual BooksmART Festival, visit our website or call 214-922-1818.

Hayley Dyer is the Audience Relations Coordinator for Programming at the Dallas Museum of Art. Growing up, her favorite picture book was “A Bargain For Frances.”

Youth and Beauty in the Harlem Renaissance

Published May 17, 2012 Late Nights Closed
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Regarded as one of the premier art historians on the Harlem Renaissance, Dr. Richard Powell will be joining us on Friday, May 18, for our Late Night celebration centered on the Harlem Renaissance and the Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties exhibition.

Dr. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke University, has been writing on art and curating since 1988, when he received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He has worked with the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We asked him a few questions about his work before he joins us on Friday.

You’ve worked extensively on African diaspora, American art, and African American art.  What drew you to the Harlem Renaissance specifically?

So much of the work during this period was trail-blazing. It was pushing against conventions to make a bold, new statement in art.

Would you comment on the work Congo (1928) by Aaron Douglas, which is featured in Youth and Beauty, and how it is evocative of the Harlem Renaissance?

It is evocative of the Harlem Renaissance because Douglas is encouraging viewers to see African dance, bodies, and art as sources of inspiration and information. My favorite part of the picture is the woman looking upward with what seems like “super sight” Eyes that radiate upward on a levitating figure. Eyes that do more than simply see; they project.

Aaron Douglas, Congo, c. 1928, gouache and pencil on paperboard, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of Susie R. Powell and Franklin R. Anderson

Do you have a favorite, little known fact or story about the Harlem Renaissance?

My little known fact is that the term “Harlem Renaissance” actually comes into common currency starting in the 1940s. Artistically inclined black artists in the 1920s and 1930s referred to that moment as the “New Negro Arts Movement.”

What are you most looking forward to on your visit to Dallas?

Just seeing Dallas. It’s been a little while since I was last there. I’m really looking forward to my visit!

Dr. Powell’s lecture, Jungle Beauty: Harlem Renaissance Portraits and Their Marks, will start at 9:00 p.m. in Horchow Auditorium on Friday, May 18. We hope to see you there!

Liz Menz is the Manager of Adult Programming.

Our Quest for a Player Piano

Published April 11, 2012 Behind-the-Scenes , Education , Late Nights , Special Events , Uncategorized 4 Comments
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Our upcoming Late Night on Friday, April 20, will celebrate our exhibition Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties. As we were planning for this event, we learned that Chilton Gallery I would be empty during this time, as staff prepares the space for a new installation, so we inquired about using it for one of our programs. Once we got the green light, we immediately thought: Speakeasy!

The Speakeasy will feature 1920s-inspired cocktails and live music, with an area where visitors can “cut a rug.” But we also wanted to have music playing in-between the live acts, and what speakeasy would be complete without a player piano!

We believed the easiest thing to do would be to rent one from a local piano company, but after placing a few calls we found that they didn’t have any “older-looking” player pianos, and even if they did, it would cost a lot of money to rent one for a night. We thought we were out of luck until one of the companies suggested that it would be cheaper if we just bought one online.

Surprisingly (to us at least), there were quite a few to choose from.

Welcome to Carrollton

After examining all of the listings for pianos for sale we picked our favorite four. We heard back from a couple who was selling a Rubenstein player piano that fit the feel of the 1920s. So we headed to Carrollton to take a look, make sure the player part did indeed work, and check out the instrument’s overall condition.

Checking out the inner workings of the piano.

A box of music rolls for the player piano.

Once we agreed to buy the piano we then had to work out transport to the Museum. After a few more calls, and the brief thought of moving it ourselves with a U-Haul, we ended up working with Piano Movers of Texas.

Bringing the piano into the Museum via our loading dock.

Two weeks after beginning our quest for a player piano we finally have one on-site, where it is waiting in our auditorium greenroom for its move next Friday to the Speakeasy.

Stop by during the Late Night and take a look at the newest addition to the DMA piano family, which also includes a 9-foot Steinway Concert Grand piano and a 6-foot Yamaha G Series Baby Grand white piano.

Stacey Lizotte is Head of Adult Programming and Multimedia Services.
Denise Helbing is Manager of Partner Programs.

Sacré Bleu! A Twisted Tale of the Ultramarine Hue

Published April 4, 2012 Arts & Letters Live , Behind-the-Scenes 1 Comment
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Recently I managed to get my hands on an advance copy of Christopher Moore’s newest book, Sacré Bleu. This auspicious event was followed by two days of ravenous reading, skipped meals, and neglected chores. Christopher Moore, the author who has brought us absurdly funny stories about Jesus Christ, vampires, and sassy whales, has cannonballed into the pool of art history–and has made a huge splash!

"Sacré Bleu" by Christopher Moore. On sale April 3, 2012.

When asked about the origin of his latest novel, Moore says, “I simply set out to write a novel about the color blue.” This desire brought him to Paris, London, and Italy, where “it turns out they keep a lot of the art discussed in this book.” The novel opens as the tragic news of Vincent van Gogh’s death reaches Paris. His friends, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Lucien Lessard, set out to solve the mystery of Vincent’s death after receiving this warning from him:

“P.S. If you see the Colorman, run. Run. You are too talented and too delicate of constitution to endure, I think. I am not mad. I promise.”
–Vincent

To solve the murder, Lucien and Henri will have to hunt down this twisted little Colorman who has a penchant for ultramarine blue. They will find love, heartbreak, forgotten memories, and, ahem, some girls in Moulin Rouge. Ultimately they will uncover the secret of the Colorman and the ordained powers he gets from Sacré Bleu, but not before having a little bit of fun with their impressionist friends.

Here are some examples of uses of Sacré Bleu from Christopher Moore’s novel. Throughout the story, each of these artists is visited by the manipulative Colorman.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “The Swing,” 1876, oil on canvas, Museé d’Orsay.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, “Rousse dit aussi La Toilette,” 1889, oil on cardboard, Museé d’Orsay.

Claude Monet, “Camille Monet on Her Deathbed,” 1879, oil on canvas, Museé d’Orsay.

Georges Seurat, “Bathers at Asnières,” 1884, oil on canvas, National Gallery.

Sacré Bleu, the “sacred blue,” the truest blue, was at the time the most expensive paint in history. It was extremely difficult to obtain. First, colormen would need the gemstone lapis lazuli, which, for centuries, was more rare and more valuable than gold. On top of that, lapis lazuli is only found in one place in the world, the mountains of Afghanistan–a world away from Europe! Why go to all this trouble to make a little bit of blue paint? Because the pigment derived from lapis lazuli creates the most spectacular, everlasting, ultramarine blue. It does not fade over time or blacken with age like some other blue paints. This quality of ultramarine blue, as well as the significant sacrifice one had to make to obtain it, made it the perfect color to reserve for the Blessed Virgin, the mother of Christ. In many religious scenes, Mary is seen wearing a Sacré Bleu gown.

Michelangelo, “The Entombment,” c. 1500, tempera on panel, National Gallery.

Although he spends most of his time haunting the impressionists in Montmartre, the Colorman does make his way back to 16th-century Italy to visit the masters of the Renaissance. In this example, it appears as though Michelangelo’s The Entombment remains unfinished because he was unable to obtain the ultramarine paint he needed to finish the figure of the Virgin Mary. Of course in reality this is probably due to the high cost of the paint, but in Sacré Bleu, it is a mystery that is waiting to be solved by you!

Christopher Moore will discuss his new book as part of the Arts & Letters Live program at the Dallas Museum of Art on Tuesday, April 1o, at 7:30 p.m. For more information and tickets to this event, visit our website. The DMA’s Museum Store is selling first-edition copies of Sacre Bleu, with beautiful color illustrations of the art discussed in the novel.

Hayley Dyer is the Audience Relations Coordinator for Programming at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Arturo is BooksmART!

Published March 9, 2012 Arts & Letters Live , Behind-the-Scenes Closed
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Hello everyone! Arturo here, the family mascot of the Dallas Museum of Art! I bet you already know that I like spending my time at the Museum painting, drawing, and doing yoga, but did you know that I like to read too? Picture books, chapter books, comic books–I like to read everything! This spring, Arts & Letters Live is bringing some of my favorite authors to the Museum to talk about their work–and I wouldn’t miss them for anything! If you like to read too, then I would love for you to come to a BooksmART event with me. I’ll be sitting on the front row–you can’t miss me!

If you’ve never been to an Arts & Letters Live BooksmART event, let me tell you a little bit about it. Arts & Letters Live is the DMA’s literary series, bringing authors of all kinds to talk to readers (like you and me) about books they have written. After the event, the author meets everyone at the book signing. Last year I met Rick Riordan!

Mark your calendars now for these upcoming events.

On Friday, March 16, as a part of our Spring Break Late Night, author Laura Numeroff will be talking about her new book, The Jellybeans and the Big Art Adventure. Laura is the author of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Give a Pig a Pancake. I’m going to suggest that she title her next book If You Give a Parrot a Paintbrush! She’s going to start at 7:00 p.m. so make sure you get your mom and dad to get you to Horchow Auditorium on time!  ickets to this event are FREE with paid general admission to the Museum but a reservation is required.

On Sunday April 15, the legendary author-illustrator Marc Brown will be right here at the DMA talking about If All the Animals Came Inside. You may know him as the creator of Arthur Read, everyone’s favorite aardvark! Did you know that Arthur was born one night while Marc Brown was telling his son a bedtime story?  Now his son has grown up and reads Arthur books with his children!  Before the event there will be a tour of some of the animals in the DMA’s collection, inspired by If All the Animals Came Inside.

On Thursday, April 19, we are having a huge birthday party at the DMA. No, no, it’s not my birthday! Judy Blume’s book Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is turning forty this year, so we are celebrating in true BooksmART style. I know you won’t want to miss it! Judy will be here talking about all of our favorite books–Frecklejuice, Blubber, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and of course, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and the indomitable Fudge. It’s going to be a lot of fun!

To order tickets, you can have your mom or dad call my friends in the Arts & Letters Live office at 214-922-1818 or they can always get them online.  For more information about all our events, visit our website. I hope to see you at one of these events soon. Until then, keep reading!

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 as a temporary tattoo. He had a bit of help with this post from Hayley Dyer, Audience Relations Coordinator for Programming.

Act Now: Spring Break at the DMA!

Published March 7, 2012 Center for Creative Connections , Collections , Education , Film 3 Comments
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***We interrupt your regular programming with this special public service announcement.***

Wondering how to entertain the kids for spring break? Need to get out of the house? Well, have we got a deal for you! During the week of March 13–16, the DMA will throw open its doors for HALF-PRICE ADMISSION. Each day we’ll have loads of activities for the entire family, from story time and art-making to robotics workshops and family tours. In fact, our staff couldn’t wait for spring break, so they got an early start trying out what is in store for you.

Enjoy story time in Arturo’s Nest with our favorite feathered friend, Arturo!

See amazing works of art created by local high school students in Advanced Placement art classes.

Make a masterpiece in the Art Studio.

Fuel your imagination and creativity in a hands-on interactive robotics workshop led by faculty from the American Robotics Academy.

Explore the galleries and make new discoveries during a family tour.

Wow your family with a one-of-a-kind sketch made during a lively session of Sketching in the Galleries.

Finish the day off with a family film in the C3 Theater.

Don’t delay! Take advantage of this amazing deal available for a limited time only. For details and a full schedule of events, visit our website.

***We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.***

Amanda Blake is the Manager of Family Experiences and Access Programs.
Leah Hanson is the Manager of Early Learning Programs.

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