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Fit for a Prince (and His Future Princess)

Published April 27, 2011 Collections 2 Comments
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Millions of people around the world will watch as Prince William marries Catherine Middleton on Friday in Westminster Abbey, but only 1,900 lucky guests received invitations to attend the service, including members of the British Royal Family, religious leaders from the Church of England and other faiths, and international dignitaries. Did you receive that coveted gilded invitation from the Queen and need something special to wear to the wedding of the century? Let the DMA’s collections offer some wardrobe inspiration . . .

Etruscan, Pair of bauletto earrings, 6th century B.C., gold, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. James H. Clark

No Royal Wedding outfit would be complete without glittering jewelry, and these ancient Etruscan earrings (from the 6th century B.C.) would complement a smart spring suit or frock. Known as bauletto (or “little bag”) for their cylindrical shape, these earrings originally would have been suspended on hooks. Each earring is decorated with an elaborate floral motif, created by fine gold filigree wire and tiny gold globules.

Yotoco period, Headdress ornament with heads flanked by crested crocodiles, c. A.D. 1-700 (?), gold, Dallas Museum of Art, The Nora and John Wise Collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jake L. Hamon, the Eugene McDermott Family, Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, and Mr. and Mrs. John D. Murchison

This extravagant headdress would have been only one component of ceremonial regalia worn by men in the Calima region of Colombia about 2,000 years ago. Imagine the gleaming image of a wedding guest outfitted from head to toe in gold – including ear ornaments, pectorals, bracelets, and anklets. This ornament probably would have been attached to a cloth headdress, like a turban, and its gold dangles produced a soft ringing as the wearer moved.

Charles Willson Peale, “Rachel Leeds Kerr”, 1790, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Pauline Allen Gill Foundation

Both Catherine Middleton and her future grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, are well known for their shared taste in glamorous hats (compare their recent looks and vote on your favorite here). Whether the bride will wear a hat, tiara, or flowers on her wedding day remains a secret, but we can surely expect a parade of fanciful millinery from the guests at Westminster Abbey. This elaborate hat must have been a favorite of Mrs. Rachel Leeds Kerr, as she wore it when sitting for her portrait by leading American artist Charles Willson Peale in 1790. Wearing this sumptuous topper would signify Mrs. Kerr’s wealth, fashionable taste, and high social status—just as a fabulous hat does today.

Abraham Portal, Huntingdon wine cistern, 1761-1762, silver, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. Patricia D. Beck

Guests to the Royal Wedding have more to think about than clothes, jewelry, and accessories; a wedding gift for William and Catherine is an equally important consideration. Silver serving pieces are often cherished wedding gifts for any bride and groom, but buying for royal couples demands something truly special, such as the monumental Huntingdon wine cistern. In fact, this magnificent piece was used to hold ice and chill wine in the home of Frances Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, who was appointed to the cabinet of the King of England in the late 18th century. Weighing more than eighty pounds (empty!), it would be the perfect centerpiece at any royal party. If we could, we would fill it with bottles of champagne to toast William and Catherine on their wedding day.

Cheers!

Lisa Kays is Manager of Adult Programming at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Seldom Scene: Our Jazz Bowl

Published April 4, 2011 Collections , Thursday Night Live Closed
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This stunning new acquisition, The Jazz Bowl by Viktor Schreckengost, was inspired by an evening’s revelry during one of the artist’s visits to New York City in the early 1930s. Currently on view in the DMA’s 4th floor galleries, it celebrates April as Jazz Appreciation Month.

Viktor Schreckengost, "Jazz bowl" or "New Yorker", c. 1930-1931, glazed earthenware, Dallas Museum of Art, The Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, gift of Patsy Lacy Griffith by exchange

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!

Longtime Curator “Travels” DMA’s Silk Road

Published March 23, 2011 Asian Art , Behind-the-Scenes , Collections , Curatorial , Installation 3 Comments
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Following her new installation in the third-floor galleries of objects that reflect transport along Eurasia’s  Silk Road, “seasoned” curator Dr. Anne Bromberg sat down with us to discuss her fascinating career. A lifelong Dallasite—except for her years at Harvard getting her B.A. in anthropology and M.A. and Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology—Dr. Bromberg has been on the staff of the Dallas Museum of Art for more than forty years, first as a lecturer and docent trainer beginning in 1962, then as head of the education department, and currently as The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art. What’s more, she has led an inspired life, traveling extensively to little-known locales, researching and experiencing the cultures within her discipline.

Q: How would you describe your job at the DMA?

AB: Most curatorial jobs involve trying to acquire art for the museum, organizing exhibitions and/or working on exhibitions that come to us from elsewhere, publishing, lecturing, working with volunteers, [and] cultivating donors. In terms of legwork, it’s going around and seeing dealers and other collections, visiting other museums, going to conferences, and giving lectures outside the museum.

Q: You are in charge of a very diverse area of the Museum’s collections. What is your particular area of expertise?

AB: Classical art, meaning the art of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and all Asian art, but I’m mainly working with South Asian art.

Q: How did you become interested in Asian art?

AB: One of the really outstanding teachers I had taught evolution in her biology courses, including historical geology, and I was really fascinated with historical geology and that got me into reading about archaeology. And I thought, this is what I want to do. A good teacher makes a difference. I’ve actually been interested in Asia for a long, long time. When I was an undergraduate, I was reading books on Zen Buddhism and haiku, the Ramayana, and things like that. Books stimulate your passion to go see these things in reality.

Q: What are some of your favorite places you’ve traveled to?

AB:  I think both my husband, Alan, and I would say the single favorite place we’ve been is Isfahan in Persia. Italy, of all the European countries, is easily the most seductive, and everybody I know who has been to India is dying to get back. We’ve been there so many times, and you feel like you’ve just scratched the surface.”

Q: What is your favorite object within the ancient and Asian collections at the DMA? Within another collection?

AB: The Shiva Nataraja, because that image is the single most important iconic image in Hinduism generally, and many Hindus would agree with that. It is exceptionally beautiful both aesthetically and because it represents the loving quality of the god Shiva. South Indian Hindu poems describe worship as falling in love with the god, and our Shiva Nataraja is the embodiment of that Chola period poetry.

Brancusi’s Beginning of the World. because of my background, I personally have a strong response to pure geometric forms and classical idealism, and I’m certainly not alone in believing that the ancient Greeks would appreciate that classical, pure, and geometric vision of the beginning of the world.

Q: Do you personally collect art? What types of objects are you most drawn to?

AB: Primarily we’ve collected what I would call third-world contemporary art—things that at the time were being made wherever—New Guinea, India, South America, Mexico, etc.

Q: Why do you think it is important for people to study non-Western art?

AB: If you study non-Western art, you’ll learn what human beings create and why. If you stick only to your own civilization, you are much less likely to think about why these things are being made . . . or about a much more serious question to me, why do we call it art?

Q: Describe your current project, an installation of objects from the DMA’s collections focusing on the Silk Road.

AB: The Silk Road installation is something that has interested me for a long time. We do have a lot of artwork that really displays the meaning of the Silk Road, which tied Eurasia together for millennia. So I was delighted when I got a space where I could show the ties between the Mediterranean world and Asia.

The Silk Road is an ancient transcontinental network of trade routes that spread across Eurasia from the Mediterranean to China and Japan. The phenomenon of the Silk Road is constantly studied and has recently been featured in museum exhibitions around the world. The new installation, organized by Dr. Bromberg, addresses six themes related to the Silk Road, including the development of cities and trade, the importance of animals to early societies, and the spread of religions. The installation presents well-known DMA favorites, such as the Javanese Ganesha and the bust of a man from Palmyra, and new works from several local private collections. Opening this weekend, come see the new installation on Level 3 the next time you visit the DMA.

Ashley Bruckbauer is the McDermott Intern for Programs and Resources for Teachers at the Dallas Museum of Art and Madelyn Strubelt is the McDermott Curatorial Intern of Ancient and Asian Art at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Published March 3, 2011 American Art , Collections Closed
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Are you ready for a picnic, fireworks, and to “remember the Alamo”?  It’s time to celebrate Texas Independence Day!

One hundred and seventy-five years ago, on March 2, 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico when Sam Houston and fifty-seven other men formed the Republic of Texas by signing the Texas Declaration of Independence. The Lone Star State’s triumphant struggle for independence ended a few days later at the siege of the Alamo. Among the approximately 250 brave men who died there were William R. Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett.

A sketch of this legendary battle by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (father of the Texas impressionist painter Julian Onderdonk) is part of the DMA’s collections. This preliminary drawing depicts Crockett in the center wearing his trademark coonskin cap. He swings a flintlock overhead, about to club advancing Mexicans who have broken through the building’s south gate.

Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, American 1852-1917, "Sketch for 'Fall of the Alamo,'" , c. 1901, Oil and pencil on paper board, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Eleanor Onderdonk, 1960.185

Davy Crockett was a celebrated 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He moved from his native Tennessee to serve in the Texas revolution and died at the Battle of the Alamo. A notable work in the DMA’s collections is William Henry Huddle’s portrait of the courageous young hero who made the ultimate sacrifice for the young Texas Republic. Best known for painting scenes from the Texas war of independence, Huddle also completed a series of portraits of Texas governors. In the DMA’s painting, Huddle depicts the hero wearing his hunting clothes with his trusty rifle by his side. Although historians debate many of the details surrounding Crockett’s death, they all agree that he died on March 6, 1836, on the last day of the siege of the Alamo.

William Henry Huddle, American, 1847-1892, "Davy Crockett," 1889, Oil on masonite, Dallas Museum of Art, The Karl and Esther Hoblitzelle Collection, gift of the Hoblitzelle Foundation, 1987.47

The DMA owns some lovely images of this treasured building. One by Plano, Texas, artist Frank Klepper is quite different from Onderdonk’s combative scene. By depicting the building on a tranquil, starry night, Klepper turns the battleground into a hallowed shrine that is the pride of every Texan.

Klepper, The Alamo

Frank Klepper, American, 1890-1952, "The Alamo," early 1930s, Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the History Club, 1933.7

Martha MacLeod is the European and American Art Curatorial Administrative Assistant at the Dallas Museum of Art.

California (Day) Dreaming

Published March 1, 2011 Behind-the-Scenes , Collections Closed
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Although we’re closed on Mondays, yesterday the Barrel Vault was all lit up. That morning we hosted two special guests from The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. The artist’s son-in-law, Richard Grant, who is also the foundation’s Executive Director, was here with a colleague to photograph our Ocean Park No. 29 for the Diebenkorn catalogue raisonné. This magnificent ab ex work, a highlight of the DMA’s collection, is now on view in our Re-Seeing the Contemporary exhibition.

The Night Owl and the Pussycats: Adventures in Igniting the Power of Art

Published February 23, 2011 Behind-the-Scenes , Center for Creative Connections , Collections , Education , Exhibitions , Installation , Late Nights , Social Media 3 Comments
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From the very beginning in February 2009, this exciting book project inspired by the DMA’s director, Bonnie Pitman, was a collaborative effort. And my responsibility was to serve as the publication’s gatekeeper, charged with trafficking the manuscript, compiling and incorporating the numerous edits and comments, and keeping track of all the details and loose ends. There were “those days” when I imagined masses and masses of rapidly proliferating Hydra heads—and, like a metaphorical Hercules, the faster I lopped them off (i.e., completed a task), the faster they seemed to regenerate.

To keep track of all the edits to the digital manuscript, we used the Microsoft Word feature known as Track Changes, where, like a board game, everyone gets a different color. With five or six people making rainbow-colored edits, the manuscript became a vivid, almost psychedelic, dazzle of clashing colors, from bright pink to pale brown. Since large chunks of text were moved around, Word could only track this by keeping the old, lined-out passages on the page, so I found myself on “fast forward” through whole paragraphs on occasion. Then when comments were added to the screen, a running series of squashed balloons of text crowded in along the right-hand margin. Pretty soon we were laughing about eye strain.

Our quest for a perfect set of images became the next challenge. We pored through hundreds of DMA images—sorting, juxtaposing, weighing, and discarding—for each of the 141 photographs finally chosen. So it was definitely an exciting moment when the book went to the printer in early October 2010. As I write this blog two years later, we have distributed the printed copies. While this project “had its moments,” it’s also been enormously rewarding. I’ve learned a lot about data analysis, the design and packaging of information, and the challenges and pitfalls of fact checking. Even at moments of relatively frazzled morale, our spirits were always kept up by the knowledge that we were presenting something new and important. This book was a labor of love for a large group of people, especially for the two authors.

Ending on a light note, Bonnie kept us entertained throughout the editing and production process by sending digital pictures of her two cats, Leda and Perseus. Owing to the late hours she usually keeps, Bonnie was frequently hard at work on this book at one or two o’clock in the morning, seated at her glass work-table, with Leda and Perseus lying on—or playing with—stacks of galleys, photo contact sheets, charts, layouts, and reports—all of which offered the cats an ideal playground. I still have the early photographs showing them stretched out on a hoard of papers and folders. The later pictures depict their puzzlement as the glass tabletop finally resurfaced and the papers receded. And there’s a final shot of the cats sitting wistful, but perhaps also slightly triumphant, on a table cleared of everything but a vase of flowers and a single copy of the printed book. I’m sure Leda and Perseus look forward to a sequel.

Eric Zeidler is Publications Coordinator at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Seldom Scene: Presidents at the DMA

Published February 21, 2011 Collections 2 Comments
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In honor of Presidents’ Day we wanted to share a few images of U.S. Presidents that are in our collection.

George Washington, Rembrandt Peale, c. 1850

George Washington, Jean-Antoine Houdon, c. 1786

Lincoln, Boardman Robinson, 1937

The Washington Family, Edward Savage, c. 1780

Seldom Scene: Love Designed

Published February 14, 2011 Center for Creative Connections , Collections , Curatorial , Decorative Art and Design 1 Comment
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A Date to the DMA:

The Center for Creative Connections invites you this spring to explore the Encountering Space exhibition with a fresh perspective inspired by designed spaces. Experience changes on view March 12 – September 30, 2011 throughout the Center including two additional works from our Decorative Arts collection shown below. Get involved and share your own photographs of designed spaces on Flickr, www.flickr.com/groups/dmadesigned.

Chair, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956

Hall chair, c. 1850-1860

Seldom Scene: A Fond Farewell to Dorothy Austin

Published January 31, 2011 American Art , Behind-the-Scenes , Collections 4 Comments
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Texas sculptor Dorothy Austin passed away last week at the age of 100. Her work Slow Shuffle was featured in the 2009 Dallas Museum of Art exhibition All the World’s a Stage: Celebrating Performance in the Visual Arts, and this past year her sculptures Noggin and Male Torso were included in the exhibition Texas Sculpture. We were fortunate to have Dorothy Austin visit us in October 2009 with her family and wanted to share those memories with you.

Sculptor Dorothy Austin with her family on a visit to the DMA in October 2009.

Dorothy Austin and DMA Senior Curator Olivier Meslay

Dorothy Austin, Noggin, 1933, white pine, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of an anonymous friend

Dorothy Austin, Male Torso, late 1930s-early 1940s, white pine, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert W. Webb

Dorothy Austin, Slow Shuffle, 1939, carved plaster, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas Art Fund and Early Texas Art Fund

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O'Keeffe may be her name, but this artist's work has been long eclipsed by that of her famous sister. Now #IdaOKeeffe's distinct creative identity is getting the spotlight it deserves in "Ida O'Keeffe: Escaping Georgia's Shadow". Opening TODAY, discover uA remarkable performance by @dallasblackdance in our American Art Gallery with choreography inspired by artist Dorothy Austin’s “Slow Shuffle”. See more #DMANights highlights in our story! . . #MyDMA #DallasMuseumofArt #AmericanArt #Dance #DancePerformanc
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