Official behind-the-scenes blog of the Dallas Museum of Art
DMA members are able to preview exhibitions before the official openings and this past week our members were able to get a sneak peek at the new exhibition The Legacy of the Plumed Serpent in Ancient Mexico. Below are a few photos from the preview days, be sure to visit the exhibition now through November 25.
Photography by Adam Gingrich, the Marketing Administrative Assistant at the Dallas Museum of Art
The new DMA exhibition Variations on Theme: Contemporary Art 1950s–Present explores themes and ideas that drive an artists’ creative process. With this concept in mind, the Contemporary Art Department thought it would be the perfect opportunity to share one way that curators tap into their own creative processes when developing a new exhibition – by using a scale model. Curators use scale models much like they would a doll house, to rationalize the gallery space in accordance with the placement of the art objects. Variations on Theme is installed in the gallery spaces known as the Barrel Vault and Quadrant Galleries, which are roughly 11,500 square feet. DMA carpenter Dennis Bishop constructed a wooden model of these galleries with a scale of 1:24 (one half-inch equals one foot). The objects in Variations on Theme are of various sizes and mediums and are complicated to install, so in order to visualize how certain works might look next to one another DMA exhibitions intern Jasmine Shevell created maquettes of each work that are proportional to the scale model of the exhibition space. Once each object is set into place, the design model is shared with our talented exhibitions team, registrar, and preparators, who bring the curator’s model to life!
Variations on Theme is on view at the Dallas Museum of Art until January 27, 2013.
Meg Smith is a Curatorial Administrative Assistant at the Dallas Museum of Art. Photography is by Adam Gingrich, the Marketing Administrative Assistant at the Dallas Museum of Art.
We have been receiving and unpacking crates for a couple of weeks in preparation for the opening of The Legacy of the Plumed Serpent in Ancient Mexico on Sunday, July 29. This exhibition contains a number of works weighing hundreds of pounds, including a sculpture of sandaled feet weighing more than three tons, so we brought in some extra equipment and helping hands to assist in the installation process, which you can see below. Join us this Saturday, July 28, for a free sneak peek of the exhibition (normally $14) during the WFAA Family First Day from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.
Photography by Adam Gingrich, Administrative Assistant for Marketing and Communications
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.
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.
As the newest member of the DMA’s curatorial team, I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself to the online community. I am from Los Angeles and have been actively engaged with contemporary art in one way or another for the past ten years. While in Los Angeles, I worked as the director of Blum & Poe gallery and then as a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Most recently, I’ve been working on my Ph.D. in art history at UCLA, and for the past year I was a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellow, researching at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. As the new Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, I will be in charge of the ongoing Concentrations series, which organizes exhibitions of work by emerging and under-represented artists.
Gabriel Ritter, The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA
Being new to Texas, I thought a cross-country drive would be a great way to familiarize myself with my new surroundings. On our way from Los Angeles to Dallas, my wife and I decided to make a pilgrimage to the city of Marfa in West Texas, which the minimalist artist Donald Judd called home. As many of you know, the city houses both the Judd Foundation, which oversees the artist’s private estate, as well as the Chinati Foundation, which Judd founded as a contemporary art museum that presents large-scale, permanent public art installations by Judd and by artists Judd selected, including Carl Andrea, John Chamberlin, Dan Flavin, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, and John Wesley, among others. For me, a highlight of our visit was the rare glimpse into Judd’s private life. Seeing his neatly organized studio spaces used for contemplation and his winter bedroom adorned with his collection of Native American jewelry and pottery was a treat. In addition, walking through Donald Judd’s untitled works in mill aluminum (1982-1986) was a transformative experience. Installed in two former artillery sheds, which Judd adapted specifically to house this installation, the work consists of one hundred unique sculptural iterations that utilize the same outer dimension of 41 x 51 x 72 inches. Natural light floods the two sprawling exhibition halls and reflects off the metallic volumes in a way that continues to change as you walk through the space.
Image credit: www.chinati.org
The road to Marfa (and ultimately Dallas) took us through Phoenix, El Paso, Midland, and Abilene. On the way, we stopped by Elmgreen and Dragset’s roadside installation titled Prada Marfa (2005), which feels as if it dropped out of the sky. Literally in the middle of nowhere, with miles and miles of open road to either side, the installation mimics the Italian fashion brand’s posh boutiques but is in fact a nonfunctional storefront. At first we almost missed it and drove right past it, but then I quickly turned around so we could grab a shot of this mirage-like space on the highway. If you ever find yourself on I-90, stop by and check it out.
Prada Marfa (2005)
All-in-all it was a fun road trip and a great way to see the Texas countryside. We also enjoyed some great Tex Mex cuisine and even caught a concert at the local bar in Marfa. Now that I am settled in at the DMA, this will hopefully be the first of many blog posts focusing on contemporary art. I look forward to your comments, and I hope to meet you during your next visit to the Museum.
Gabriel Ritter is The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art.
Just in time for Memorial Day, the Dallas Museum of Art has added to its collection David Johnson’s 1870 painting View from Garrison, West Point, New York. This landscape is a fantastic panoramic view of the Hudson River Valley with the United States Military Academy at West Point front and center. As we take time off to celebrate the many sacrifices our veterans have made for our country, consider stopping by the Museum to see this painting, now on view in the American galleries.
David Johnson, “View from Garrison, West Point, New York,” 1870, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, gift of Patsy Lacy Griffith by exchange, and General Acquisitions Fund, 2012.6
David Johnson, “View from Garrison, West Point, New York” (detail of United States Military Academy), 1870, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Patsy Lacy Griffith Collection, gift of Patsy Lacy Griffith by exchange, and General Acquisitions Fund, 2012.6
Martha MacLeod is the Curatorial Administrative Assistant in the European and American Art Department at the Dallas Museum of Art.
Over a year ago, the Dallas Museum of Art sent College of Animals by Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1681) to a conservator for cleaning and minor repair. With the grime removed from the Dutch artist’s enigmatic composition, it was the perfect time to do a bit more. So we replaced the thin, unadorned gilt frame that formerly surrounded the canvas with one more in keeping with the sort preferred by Dutch artists working during Saftleven’s time. Seventeenth-century Netherlandish artists typically favored a waffle or ripple style molding frame. These darkly painted wooden frames that simulated ebony are decorated with several rows carved in a zigzag design, and often have a reverse ogee profile. A few months ago, the DMA purchased a period Dutch frame that has all of these design elements from a Parisian dealer. Now that Saftleven’s College of Animals is back from the conservator and has an appropriate frame, it is once again on view in the European galleries for everyone to enjoy!
The simple gilt frame that formerly surrounded Cornelis Saftleven’s “College of Animals,” n.d., oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Karl and Esther Hoblitzelle Collection, gift of the Hoblitzelle Foundation, 1987.32
Cornelis Saftleven, College of Animals with its period seventeenth-century waffle-style Dutch frame.
Detail of College of Animals’ new frame
Martha MacLeod is the Curatorial Administrative Assistant to the European and American Art departments.
Did you get a chance to travel to 1950s Dallas this weekend? Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas opened on Sunday and will be on view through August 19. Below are a few images from the installation of the exhibition.
Photography by Adam Gingrich, DMA Marketing Assistant.
This past weekend, Souvenir: A 19th-Century Carved Tusk from the Loango Coast of Africa opened in the Museum’s Concourse. Below are a few shots of the installation process.
Photography by Adam Gingrich, DMA Marketing Assistant
