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Installation of Ja’Tovia Gary’s “In my mother’s house there are many many…”

As we approach the final weeks of Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD, I thought I would look back on the process of bringing this exhibition together. Specifically, I’ll walk you through the discussions, installation, and maintenance of In my mother’s house there are many many…, the DMA’s commissioned work from Gary.

In March 2022, Dr. Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, proposed that the DMA commission and acquire an artwork from Ja’Tovia Gary. Brodbeck and the Contemporary Curatorial Team had been working with Gary on a solo exhibition of her artwork at the DMA as part of our Concentrations series (which focuses on emerging artists), originally proposed by former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator Vivian Crockett. During these discussions, Gary mentioned a new idea for a project she was interested in designing. The work was modeled after an armillary sphere and would have three metal rings surrounding a large, rotating sphere covered in cotton. A short film composed of excerpts from her upcoming feature-length production would be projected onto the sphere. As part of the DMA’s initiative to be a leader in contemporary art, this proposal provided us with the opportunity to partner with an emerging star in the contemporary art world on a large scale and with exciting new work.

The acquisition of In my mother’s house there are many many… was approved in May 2022, and Gary and the DMA team began to work in earnest on the development of the exhibition and fabrication of the new artwork. The artist partnered with Independent Casting in Philadelphia to construct the armillary sphere. The artwork was new for both Gary and Independent Casting, so it was vital that plenty of time was allocated not just for construction but for hundreds of hours of testing. By April 2023, In my mother’s house there are many many… was ready and shipped to the DMA for installation.

Part of my job as the Associate Registrar for Collections and Exhibitions is to oversee and document the first installation of newly acquired artworks that are considered complex. I take copious notes and hundreds of photographs, and I make sure to document the installation process thoroughly and in a way that will allow for easier installations in the future. As this was the first time In my mother’s house there are many many… was being assembled at the DMA, it was vital that I take good notes in order to write reliable installation instructions.

We were assisted during installation by Jonathan Maley, one of the fabricators from Independent Casting. Together, the team installed the piece as shown in the following photographs. Our Senior Manager for Gallery Technology, Lance Lander, worked with Carlin Belkowski of Sensory Innovations on the projectors and the video. They digitally moved the pixels and contoured the projection to precisely fit the sphere using a technique called pixel-mapping.

Uncrating the sphere.
Placing the base.
Lowering the central shaft into the base. Mr. Maley had to thread the power cord down through the base as it was lowered into place.
Sphere is in position to be lowered onto base.
Mr. Maley attaches the wiring from the sphere to the wiring of the base.
Installing the middle ring and the start of pixel-mapping the video.
Third ring is lowered into place.
Motor gears are positioned between the gears at the base of the shaft. This is what makes the rings rotate.
Ja’Tovia Gary adds more cotton to the sphere.
The base covers are added. Almost finished!
Last step! Adding the mirror covers.

And, just like that, In my mother’s house there are many many… is up and running!

While it is always the hope that everything runs smoothly once an installation is completed, our team must always be ready to jump in to problem solve if there is an issue. This is especially true of artworks that have motors and moving parts. Since the installation, we encountered a few issues that have required attention. The most significant of these was when the center ring became disengaged from the motor and would no longer turn. Addressing this required much consultation with Gary and the team from Independent Casting, and ultimately required that staff from Independent Casting come out to address the problem. In the end, we got the artwork back up and running, and the DMA team now has a better understanding of how to care for and maintain it.

Working with contemporary art is fun but not without its challenges. Installing a 19th-century painting is certainly more straightforward than installing a newly conceptualized interpretation of an armillary sphere with a video projected onto it! But the fact that the DMA is willing and eager to engage with, cultivate, promote, and support new and innovative artists is part of what makes our institution so special.

Katie Province is the Associate Registrar for Collections and Exhibitions at the DMA.

“Talk of the Town: A Dallas Museum of Art Pop-Up Exhibition Featuring Artworks from the Dallas Art Fair”

Published March 22, 2023 Contemporary Art , Curatorial , Dallas , DFW , Exhibitions , works of art Closed
Tags: Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art

Talk of the Town is a collaborative exhibition between NorthPark, the Dallas Art Fair, and the Dallas Museum of Art to showcase works that the DMA was able to acquire through funds made available by the Dallas Art Fair Foundation to purchase works for the Museum at the fair. This program will celebrate its seventh year in April, and the DMA has brought 46 amazing works into the collection to date. I have been lucky to participate in six of the seven years, so curating this exhibition was a very personal exercise for me. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on the unique opportunities of this type of exhibition program, which allows us a more immediate responsiveness to unfolding trends in contemporary art, as well as the ability to react in real time to that magical first encounter with a work of art.

Museums are necessarily very deliberative when making acquisitions—the vast majority of works that come into the collection stay with us in perpetuity, so often the acquisition process takes months if not years. We have a much shorter runway in making final decisions for works that come into the collection from the Dallas Art Fair. The curatorial team researches the participating galleries and their rosters in advance of the fair to make a shortlist of artists that would find good context in the Museum’s collection—an essential criterion for museum acquisition. But in the end, the final decisions are made by committee, in the course of a day, after immersion in the fair’s presentation and a lively debate. As such, we can decide, together in collective wisdom, to make a vote of confidence—and even take a risk—on works in a different way than the standard museum procedure allows. The results speak for themselves. For example, in February we closed our retrospective of the late Matthew Wong, who saw a meteoric rise in his career in the past few years. The DMA was the only museum to acquire Wong’s work in his lifetime, at the Dallas Art Fair in 2017. The DAFF Museum Acquisition Fund thus allowed us to take a chance, and, in turn, become trailblazers.

When I was thinking about how best to highlight the work that we’ve done, while also responding to the exhibition site—NorthPark—I had the idea to showcase the depiction of and by women by the diverse group of artists we have acquired at the fair. Malls are traditionally seen as feminine spaces—spaces to browse, buy, and, especially, socialize. Feminine spaces are often derided as unserious and trite; however, the works in this show present a picture of women that highlights strength, independence, generosity of spirit, reflection, and play. I had originally titled the show Breadwinners, after a stunning Summer Wheat work bought in 2017, but I changed course when it was pointed out that there is a cafe of the same name below. I loved the original title, and the imagery of that work, because it depicted women as providers, as opposed to passive recipients, blowing through their husband’s or father’s money carelessly shopping. Talk of the Town became the new title, after the daring portrait of a Black woman smoking, defiantly meeting the gaze of the viewer, in Danielle Mckinney’s small but mighty portrait of the same name. Even better, I thought. Not only did this new title point to our cross-city collaboration (and may I add, the core team working on this show between all three partners consisted of all women), but it also allowed for a vision of feminized, social spaces as sites for articulation: to define the self amidst community, in all the powerful and beautiful and wise ways we show up as women.

Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck is the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA.

A Conversation with Rashid Johnson

Published November 8, 2022 Contemporary Art , Exhibitions Closed
Tags: Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art

*^{Pictured Left to Right: Artist Rashid Johnson; Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; Dr. Agustín Arteaga, The Eugene McDermott Director}*

Rashid Johnson, this year’s TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art 2022 honoree and renowned multidisciplinary artist, gifted the DMA with his multimedia work, The New Black Yoga Installation. Featuring five men performing an enigmatic dance of ballet, yoga, tai chi and martial arts across a sun-soaked beach, the work explores the complexity of personal and cultural identity. Johnson’s ongoing meditations on black masculinity and mysticism are reflected through their choreographed dance movements. Rugs branded with crosshairs, a symbol that is etched into the sand in the video, are situated throughout the gallery, projecting the film’s combined sense of peace and foreboding into physical space.

Below is an excerpt from a transcript of a conversation between Rashid Johnson and the DMA’s Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, at The Warehouse in Dallas, Texas. This dialogue has been edited for length and clarity.

Katherine:

When I saw you yesterday at the Museum, you were saying it’s been probably eight or nine years since you’ve really interacted with the piece and seen it in person. I’m so happy to have this work on view and to discuss it with you for the first time because it’s a very layered and enigmatic work. Perhaps you could speak a little bit on how this work came about in your practice.

Rashid:

This film, The New Black Yoga, was born of a time when I was living with my wife, Sheree, in Berlin. And it was the first time I was living internationally. I was working on an exhibition and doing a residency. But, as anyone who’s familiar with my work knows about me, I’m an anxious person. And I was asking myself, how do I start to deal with this anxiety? My doctor said I should go do yoga. Since I was in Germany, all the yoga classes were in German. Apparently, that’s just how it works, right? [Laughs] I thought I would just follow what the other people did.

And, apparently, that’s just not how a real yoga practice is formed [laughs]. And so, because of that my sense is to do something absurd and continue to follow a path. I found a male performer and made a film, and I called it Black Yoga. Now, this man knew nothing about yoga—I, too, knew nothing about yoga [laughs]—but he was interested in ballet. I had an 8mm camera and I said, “Let’s do it, let’s make up black yoga.” I just started giving him moves to do and we made this film called Black Yoga. And by expanding on that was born this film, which is executed using five characters called The New Black Yoga and shot on 16mm film.

It’s this fun way to kind of revisit this idea of healing, or the creation of healing, using your own creative sensibility to invent a way to navigate complicated circumstances. And that’s how this film was born. That’s its origin story.

Katherine:

Thank you for that. I want to talk a little bit about the healing aspect of the piece. The installation that we have at the DMA has a series of branded rugs on the floor. Then you look at the film—it is a very serene film of beautiful movement on a beautiful beach at dusk—and there also appears to be crosshairs that are written into the sand. Then you notice that there are enigmatic runes that give a sense of mysticism but also of foreboding because it does appear that there are these crosshairs in the rugs. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the kind of symbolism that you’re dealing with.

Rashid:

You know, throughout my practice I’ve built an iconography, or a series of symbols and signs, that reference either personal or collective experience—for example, the rugs through branding, but also on the beach, a kind of simple technique of drawing in the sand. And one that you mentioned, Katherine, is the crosshairs.

I’m a child of the eighties. The day before yesterday, I went to see a play by an incredible playwright and screenwriter named Susan Laurie Parks—she happened to also write the script for a film that I made. But I was sitting behind Spike Lee. I love Spike Lee. I’m just a huge, huge fan of Spike Lee.

I have to say that, early on, I was quite obsessed with his films. One of his early films is a film many of you have probably seen called Do the Right Thing. I was quite young when it came out. But, there’s a song in it by a band called Public Enemy, and the song is called Fight the Power. I fell in love with Public Enemy. I thought that they were so brilliant. It was this radical discourse but it was also urban music and it was philosophy. Chuck D, who was the lead singer for the band, was this activist and this really brilliant character. On the cover of their albums, they often had this kind of crosshair—a gun sight. I remember asking myself over the course of looking at that album, listening to the music, and seeing how they employed the symbol—who was that sight for? Was the gun being pointed at them? Were they in the crosshairs or were they projecting the crosshairs onto whoever they were battling against? I’ve borrowed this symbol a lot in my work through branding.

Of course, Katherine, you mentioned there’s several rugs that lay on the floor. Well, my wife is Iranian and I always joke that my mother-in-law and I don’t have a ton in common. But she likes Persian rugs and I like Persian rugs. So I started using these things in my work—almost as a way of reflecting on this relationship that I was building with her, and these cultural signifiers and the possibility that cultural encampment, instincts, and signifiers can become global and employed in different ways and borrowed, sanctioned, and given agency in different languages. So I coated the floor in these Persian rugs and then I branded them with different symbols. I’m excited about how they become both legible and potentially mysterious, simultaneously.

Focus On: Rashid Johnson

The Dallas Museum of Art invites visitors to step into the artwork of renowned multidisciplinary artist Rashid Johnson in Focus On: Rashid Johnson, an installation showcasing Johnson’s multimedia work The New Black Yoga Installation. Gifted to the DMA by the artist in 2022, this installation combines a video projection and branded Persian rugs to create an experience that is, at once, intense and intimate. The film features five men performing an enigmatic dance of ballet, yoga, tai chi, and martial arts across a sun-soaked beach, exploring the complexity of personal and cultural identity. Their choreographed movements reflect Johnson’s ongoing meditations on Black masculinity and mysticism, as well as his investigations of the body in space. Rugs branded with crosshairs, a symbol that is etched into the sand in the video, are situated throughout the gallery, projecting the film’s combined sense of peace and foreboding into physical space.

About Rashid Johnson

Rashid Johnson’s practice encompasses a wide range of media, including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation. Via a rich visual lexicon of coded symbolism and autobiographical materials, Johnson’s artwork conducts searing meditations on race and class, in addition to examining individual and shared cultural identities. The artist, who was born in Chicago in 1977, is perhaps best known for translating cultural experiences, most commonly that of Black Americans, through his unique visual language. Johnson was recognized as the 2022 honoree for his contributions to contemporary art at the 2022 TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Gala and Auction, a charity auction that benefits both the DMA and amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

Edited by Trey Burns, Multimedia Producer, and Ellee McMeans, Communications Manager

Photos Trey Burns, Multimedia Producer

It’s All in the Family: The Earles in “Spirit Lodge”

Published March 23, 2022 Dallas , DFW , Exhibitions , works of art 1 Comment
Tags: Art, Caddo, Caddo art, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

For over a thousand years, Caddo peoples lived, traded goods, made art, and grew crops in communities clustered around rivers in present-day Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. They, like other Mississippian peoples, constructed earthen mounds that marked and shaped their landscape for political and ceremonial purposes. You can visit and learn more about three of those mounds at the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in East Texas.

Colonization and colonialism dealt blow after blow to the Caddo, with epidemic diseases, forced removals to reservations, and the boarding school system all threatening the continuation of knowledge within Caddo communities. Many traditions survived through the concerted efforts of Caddo knowledge keepers, and others, though disrupted, have now been revived and revitalized through the work of contemporary artists and other cultural practitioners.

Among those artists are brothers Chad “Nish” Earles and Chase Kahwinhut Earles and their father, Wayne “Tay Sha” Earles, all of whom have artworks featured in Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro (on view through August 7, 2022).

_{Tah-nah-hah “Buffalo,” Chad “Nish” Earles, Caddo, 2018. Acrylic on maple skateboard deck}

Academic and professional experience in art and graphic design, a background in graffiti art, and deep engagement with Caddo history and traditions have all shaped Chad’s art. These varied influences are visible in his piece in Spirit Lodge, Tah-Nah-Hah “Buffalo,” a hand-painted skateboard deck featuring his characteristic bold lines and creative use of negative space.

_{Horse tripod vessel (Deé-Tumbah Kah’-Wis), Chase Kahwinhut Earles, Caddo, 2015. Ceramic. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2018.12}

Chase’s Batah Kuhuh alligator gar fish effigy bottle, acquired by the DMA in 2020, welcomes visitors into the exhibition. After its acquisition, Chase and Dr. Michelle Rich, the DMA’s Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of the Arts of the Americas, had a conversation about his ceramic practice, which can be found here.

When you enter Spirit Lodge’s galleries, you’ll find not one, not two, but three additional works by Chase—two more of his ceramic vessels and one collaboration with Muscogee painter Starr Hardridge. The intricately incised designs on many of Chase’s pieces, as seen on Deé-Tumbah Kah’-Wis above, reflect his own spin on motifs used by pre-contact Caddo potters. Jeri Redcorn, the Caddo pottery revivalist, helped him start working in uniquely Caddo styles.

Inspiration isn’t only flowing from the older generations to the younger though—while Wayne had loved art since he was a child, his interest in stone carving was sparked by going to art shows with his sons (and some encouragement from Chase and Chad!). The stunning ceremonial weaponry featured in the exhibition is a testament to his rapid mastery of the art form. And there’s an extra layer of family connections—Wayne’s ceremonial mace shares a title with Chad’s skateboard deck, and his monolithic axe—like Chase’s effigy bottle—is in the shape of a gar fish.

_{Left: Ceremonial mace (Tah’-nah-ha—Buffalo), Wayne “Tay Sha” Earles, Caddo, 2018. Stone. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2019.34.1
Right: Monolithic axe (P-i-ta-u-ni-wan’-ha—To Have Power), Wayne “Tay Sha” Earles, Caddo, 2018. Stone. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2019.34.2}

Join us for the Late Night event on March 25 to see Chad along with the Caddo Culture Club exhibiting traditional Caddo dances, Chase demonstrating his potting, and many other artists and knowledge keepers sharing their expertise. And of course, come experience the Earles family’s incredible art in person in Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro!

Becca Merriman-Goldring is the McDermott Intern for Arts of the Americas at the DMA.

Behind the Scenes: Installing Senga Nengudi’s “Water Composition I”

Published March 22, 2022 Behind-the-Scenes , Conservation , Contemporary Art , Exhibitions , Staff , works of art Closed
Tags: Art, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

Influenced by Black cultural traditions and Japanese Gutai, artist Senga Nengudi’s work synthesizes multiple ideas circulating in the 1960s and 1970s: feminist practice, the role of materiality, and the relationship between activation, viewership, and performance. In her sculpture Water Composition I, currently on view in Slip Zone, Nengudi encloses colored water in plastic, creating a body-like form.

_{Senga Nengudi, Water Composition I, 1969-1970/2019, heat-sealed vinyl and colored water, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund}

We asked Senior Preparator and IPM Coordinator Mary Nicolett what stood out to her about her experience installing this abstract work. Here’s what she had to say:

First priority upon being approached to work with Fran Baas, Interim Chief Conservator, on the Nengudi was sourcing two 2-gallon jugs for filling the piece.

Once that had been done, we set about opening the contents of the packing tube. There I found a beautiful rope, tubing and funnels, pre-filled dye containers with pre-measured amounts, and of course the plastic “bags.” Also included, and very important, was the template for placement! We were able to figure out exactly where on the platform the piece would go, and it detailed the exact pinpointed location of each PVC bag including position of the heat-sealed-seam.

It took a while to truly understand the tubing and funnel system. What I wasn’t prepared for was how exquisitely this PVC bags where packed, in order of installation, one by one. Preparators often wish for things to be packed better, but this was a thing of beauty!

Fran and I set about the morning hooking the tubes into each bag and filling with the prescribed amount of dye mixed with the prescribed ionized distilled water. It was “slow and steady wins the race” and we did not spill a drop! Each funnel was marked with tape on the wall, as to which bag the tube went to, just to avoid any possible confusion.

After all the bags were filled, Fran and I began removing bubbles in the bags by gently thumping each bag until the bubbles moved to the top.

A bit of tape removal, sweeping, touch-up paint, and we were done! And it looks marvelous!

Come see this work for yourself in the free exhibition Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia, on view now through July 10, 2022.

Mary Nicolett is the Senior Preparator and IPM Coordinator at the DMA.

Expanded for DMA Members: Q&A with Yonavea Hawkins

Published March 16, 2022 Exhibitions , Guest Blog Post , Late Nights , works of art Closed
Tags: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

Yonavea Hawkins is an artist who creates intricate beadwork for Native American and Caddo cultural items. We are delighted to have her participate in the upcoming Late Night celebrating the new exhibition Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro, during which she will showcase several of her pieces and talk about her process and the connection between traditional and contemporary beadworking. Read our special Q&A with her to learn more about her practice ahead of the event on March 25!

_{Yonavea Hawkins working on a belt on a loom during a “Live Bead” on stage at an event.}

How did you begin creating art?
As a child I was always drawing and painting, with art class in school being my favorite subject, then to obtaining a fine arts degree from Oklahoma City University and started working as a graphic designer. Eventually my 8 to 5 creative jobs morphed into print quality control with organized paperwork of meeting deadlines and budgets. Then and now with a full-time job, evenings and weekends are my creative times. Working from a small desk, my present work evolved from learning to sew and bead to make Caddo regalia for myself, my children, and then Native American regalia for others. Now I create a variety of bead work, cultural items, or diverse art with different beading techniques for juried art markets with competitions. Changing from pencil and paint to beads and buckskin became new mediums to work in and another way to express myself creatively.

_{Hawkins completing beadwork on a commissioned piece while in her booth at an art market.}

What makes working with beads special?
It’s the tactile experience of being able to stroke your fingers across a piece of finished beadwork or to pick it up and hold it. Buyers looking at my work will lightly run their fingers across a strip of beadwork and without hesitation others will pick up a piece to examine it closer and to hold it. Work created with Charlotte glass beads are visually appealing with the sparkle coming from the cut sides and with an iris shimmer. Though I do like the one bead at a time challenge to reach a completed work.

_{Work in progress of a smoked buckskin pipe bag with a Southeastern eagle on the front.}

The words “contemporary” and “traditional” carry a lot of weight when describing Indigenous arts. Where do you situate your work?
For my work it’s a combination of contemporary and traditional because of the materials used and the design elements, to the construction of the finished work. Contemporary because of the use of the current Charlotte bead colors and todays materials to bead on. Traditional, when I find the materials online to buy as I am an urban Native American without access to harvest and collect traditional materials once used. The use of glass bead work starts from European contact as beads, wool and silk were trade goods to Indigenous peoples, and these trade goods became traditional for some Indigenous peoples. Beading techniques developed for using trade beads and used today holds the traditional look, but in contemporary colors and designs, unless you find a stash of antique beads.

Tell us about some of the work you’re showing at DMA’s Late Night.
Several years back, a collector of my art told me that my beadwork was “Wearable Art”. As such a great deal of my work created for art markets are bracelet cuffs, contemporary beaded belts, belt buckles, hair barrettes, necklaces, and hatbands. After attending an art market, I never know what work will sell out and what I will be creating next, but I plan to show a variety of pieces mentioned earlier. I will also show cultural items that have won awards at art markets such as moccasins, turtle shell purses, bandolier bags, and pipe bags.

________

You can find out more about Yonavea Hawkins in this recent artist interview. Don’t miss out on our Late Night celebration on March 25, featuring artist demonstrations, art making, performances, films, and talks about the exhibition Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro, and more! Get tickets here.

Highlights of “Pursuit of Beauty”

Published November 8, 2021 American Art , Collections , Curatorial , Dallas , Exhibitions , works of art Closed
Tags: Art, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

Museum exhibitions serve different purposes. Some do heavy lifting in the field of new scholarship about unknown or understudied artists or cultures. Others may capitalize on strengths in the museum’s collection and, thereby, present a richer, contextual understanding of an artistic movement. And yet others present to our visitors works by artists that address gaps in our own permanent collection—a role beautifully fulfilled by the present exhibition, Pursuit of Beauty: The May Family Collection. I would like to focus on a few works and what—besides their apparent beauty—makes them special to me.

_{William Merritt Chase, Weary, c. 1889, oil on panel, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr., 114.2019.17}

_{Gertrude Fiske, Contemplation, before 1916, oil on canvas, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr.}

Weary (1889), a small interior scene by William Merritt Chase is a quintessential example of the artist’s skills of observation that also provides us a peek into his well-appointed studio in Manhattan. Chase was not striving to make a narrative here. The subject is beauty alone—of a sitter placed within a beautiful setting full of patterns and textures. The large Japanese screen in the background, the plush velvet of the cushion beneath her feet, the sparkle of gilding on the armature of the chair, and the gleam of light on the large vase in the background at right, are all effects that lure and please the eye. A wonderful counterpoint to Chase’s creation is Contemplation (1915) by Gertrude Fiske, an artist trained in Boston. While it too presents a contemplative woman set in an interior, the artist is presenting to us a modern woman for the new age. Using complimentary colors of orange and green to frame the sitter, the crisp striped wallpaper effectively foregrounds her. Fiske further illuminates her with light flooding in from the upper left, which simultaneously bathes her face and torso in yellow that reflects off the material at the right edge.

_{Theodore Robinson, Miss Motes and Her Dog Shep in a Boat, 1893, oil on canvas, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr.}

_{John Henry Twachtman, Frozen Brook, 1893, oil on canvas, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr., 114.2019.12}

American Impressionism is underrepresented at the DMA and two works within the May Family Collection created in the exact same year offer comparison of two artists whose means (light & brushwork), achieved different ends. Theodore Robinson’s small canvas of Miss Motes and Her Dog Shep in a Boat (1893) is an oil sketch by the first and most important of the American Impressionists to paint alongside Monet at Giverny between 1886 and 1892. Robinson’s intent was to capture an individual in a fleeting moment and his quick touches of brushwork fix her at a point in time as well as evoking the optical effect of forms blurred in reflection on the dappled surface of the water. In Frozen Brook (1893), John Twachtman also endeavored to capture a particular moment, but his motivation was to capture the atmospheric and emotive effects of a winter’s day. His brushwork is more varied, complex, and labor intensive (daubed, scumbled, and dragged) to conjure the optical effect of heavy, wet snow on the cusp of spring, when all is blanketed in contemplative silence.

I do hope that you will come to the DMA to explore these five works for yourselves, along with the other twenty-three now on view.

Sue Canterbury is The Pauline Gill Sullivan Curator of American Art and Interim Allen and Kelli Questrom Curator of Works on Paper at the DMA.

Expanded for DMA Members: Q&A with Dr. Nicole R. Myers

Published September 29, 2021 Curatorial , European Art , Exhibitions Closed

Dr. Nicole R. Myers, Interim Chief Curator and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art, spent almost a decade working tirelessly on bringing Van Gogh and the Olive Groves to life. Read about her perspective in making the magic of the exhibition happen.

This exhibition has never been done before, and yet Van Gogh is a legendary artist. How does it feel to premiere this exhibition in Dallas?

I’m incredibly excited to bring Van Gogh’s dazzling olive grove series to the DMA this fall. The paintings are not only beautiful but unique as well, and hold a special place in the artist’s life and production. Van Gogh and the Olive Groves is the very first exhibition to reunite this important, yet relatively unknown, series of paintings, and Dallas is the only place in the US to see them.

In addition to learning about Van Gogh’s olive groves—the fascinating story of their production, as well as their evolving styles and symbolism—I hope that visitors will leave with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the artist not as the mythic persona of popular culture, but as a hard-working artist and complex human being. Van Gogh painted the olive groves while he was grappling with serious mental illness at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He was thoughtful and deliberate in his selection of the olive trees as a motif and the visual means he used to convey both their appearance and the deeply personal, often spiritual significance they held for him. Produced in isolation during this very difficult period of his life, the olive grove paintings were intended to provide us—the weary modern viewer—with feelings of solace, peace, and hope, something that resonates today more than ever.

What was your favorite part about working with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to make this exhibition possible?

When I first started this exhibition, I had the hope that the Van Gogh Museum (VGM) would join me on the endeavor. They have three out of the 15 paintings in the olive grove series, in addition to related drawings, so their support was tantamount to the project’s success. I initially approached my colleagues at the VGM to gauge their general interest and whether they would be willing to lend artwork to the show. Their enthusiastic response exceeded my expectations, and a wonderful partnership was born on the spot. I’m fortunate to work with such great colleagues in Dallas and Amsterdam to bring this once-in-a-lifetime show to fruition. And now, after almost a decade in the making, we’re ready to share our discoveries and passion for Van Gogh’s olive groves on both sides of the Atlantic!

_{Vincent van Gogh, Olive Trees, June 1889, oil on canvas, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-2. Image courtesy of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Media Services/Photo: Gabe Hopkins}

How does it feel to approach the exhibition opening after so many years in development?

I began developing the concept for this exhibition in 2012, while I was researching the incredible olive tree painting by Van Gogh in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Although I had worked a great deal on the artist, I was shocked to find that the painting belonged to a significant series about which I knew nothing. I set out to learn more, only to find that there had been no exhibition or book dedicated to the subject to date. Moreover, there were many unknowns about the series, such as the dates of some of the paintings, the sequence in which they were made over a six-month production period, and which paintings Van Gogh was describing in his letters—something unexpected given the incredibly saturated research field dedicated to this beloved world-famous artist. With that, I launched the exhibition and the unprecedented comparative study that involved an international team of curators, researchers, conservators, and scientists.

The exhibition planning took many twists and turns along the way. It’s never easy to borrow important artwork by heavily sought-after artists such as Van Gogh, and some of our loan negotiations took five years to secure. Just as the checklist was nearly finalized, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about new challenges and uncertainties. Rather poignantly, the exhibition catalogue, which takes as its subject the artistic production of a painter confined within an asylum—an experience Van Gogh described as a “necessary and salutary quarantine”—was written and produced in its entirety during the self-isolation and confinement imposed by the pandemic. It was with a mixture of trepidation and sadness that after all these years of working tirelessly to bring this project to fruition, I didn’t have access to a library or other resources when it finally came time to start the book. But the work forged ahead and I’m deeply grateful for what we accomplished under these exceptional circumstances.

As I worked at my dining room table turned remote office, I thought often of Van Gogh and his experience at the asylum. Never before had his enduring belief in the healing and consolatory power of art and of nature felt more relevant, his experience more relatable, his achievement more astounding. I hope that visitors to the show will take as much joy and comfort from the olive trees as I have over the last decade, and especially this last year.

_{Vincent van Gogh, Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy, November 1889, oil on canvas, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. Photo: Hossein Sehatlou, Gothenburg Museum of Art}

Describe some of the discoveries from the conservation study for the exhibition.

At the heart of the exhibition are the discoveries we made by studying all 15 olive grove paintings in the series. My original questions—what month did Van Gogh paint each work? In what order did he paint them? Can we connect individual paintings to specific mentions in his letters?—were explored in-depth by an international research team over the course of three years. Conservators and scientists analyzed every aspect of the olive tree paintings, from the materials used to how their appearance was altered by time. The exciting results of this three-year study make their debut in the exhibition in the chronological display of the olive groves, as well as in a dedicated gallery that will present the research team’s methods and discoveries. It’s the perfect demonstration of what’s possible when art meets science.

Expressing Hope, Dreams, and Gratitude with Ex-votos

Published September 24, 2021 Community Connection , Creativity , Dallas , DFW , Exhibitions , Latin American Art Closed

Ex-votos are works of art that express gratitude for miraculous events or answered prayers. To go along with the works displayed in the Devoted exhibition, we asked visitors to create their own ex-votos that express something they are thankful for or that is meaningful to them. Check out this round-up of community artwork submissions! Click each artwork to expand the image.

Themes of family:

Themes of nature and animals:

Themes of health:

Themes of art:

And everything in between:

Connections Across Collections: “Slip Zone”

Published September 5, 2021 Contemporary Art , Curatorial , Dallas , DFW , Exhibitions , works of art Closed

Opening September 14, Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia highlights the innovations in painting, sculpture, and performance that shaped artistic production in the Americas and East Asia during the mid-20th century. Find out about the transnational connections between pairs of artworks featured in the show from the exhibition’s curators.

Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art

While the narrative of US art history has focused on the singular achievements of Abstract Expressionism, it did not emerge on the world scene ex nihilo. Rather, US artists drew from multiple precedents, including the Mexican mural movement, which has special resonance for us at the DMA given our longstanding strengths in art from the region. In Slip Zone, Jackson Pollock’s Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls is paired with Crepúsculo by David Alfaro Siqueiros. Siqueiros taught Pollock to use industrial paints at the Experimental Workshop in New York in 1936, which would later inform his use of nontraditional art media in his classic era drip paintings. The expressionistic pathos of this earlier Pollock painting also mirrors the influence of José Clemente Orozco, whose murals he had seen at Dartmouth College the same year.

_{Images: Jackson Pollock, Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls, about 1934–38, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2017.7, © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; David Alfaro Siqueiros, Crepúsculo, 1965, pyroxylin and acrylic on panel, private collection, © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOMAAP, Mexico City}

Dr. Vivian Li, The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art

Using a hair dryer and polyvinyl acetate adhesive—commercially available since 1947 as Elmer’s Glue-All—Takesada Matsutani discovered that he could create corporeal, bulbous forms by blowing air into the material from behind until each “bubble” burst. Affixing them to the surface of his paintings, Matsutani constructed uncanny compositions. Similar to Matsutani and other members of the pioneering Gutai collective in Osaka, Robert Rauschenberg sought to blur the distinction between art and life through the use of everyday materials. For his Hoarfrost series, he transferred newspaper images to pieces of diaphanous fabric. After meeting the Gutai collective in 1964, Rauschenberg later collaborated with them, including onstage.

_{Images: Takesada Matsutani, Work-63-A.L. (The night), 1963, polyvinyl acetate adhesive, oil, and acrylic on canvas, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2012.1.5. Courtesy the artist. © Takesada Matsutani; Robert Rauschenberg, Night Hutch (Hoarfrost), 1976, ink on unstretched fabric, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the artist, 1977.21, © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation}

Vivian Crockett, Former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art

Around 1968 Lynda Benglis began pigmenting large vats of rubber latex with day-glo paint and pouring the dyed materials directly onto the floor. Created after Benglis visited a 1969 Helen Frankenthaler retrospective, this work is a nod to Frankenthaler’s method of pouring paint onto unprimed canvas. A founding member of the Gutai Art Association, Shozo Shimamoto was also deeply invested in experiments with materiality and technique. The artist often incorporated elements of performance in the creation of his paintings, such as throwing glass bottles of paint at the canvas. To produce Untitled – Whirlpool, Shimamoto poured layers of paint onto the canvas, removing the paintbrush as a mediating tool and leaving the final composition to chance and the physical, viscous qualities of the material itself.

_{Images: Lynda Benglis, Odalisque (Hey, Hey Frankenthaler), 1969, poured pigmented latex, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2003.2, © 2021 Lynda Benglis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; Shozo Shimamoto, Untitled – Whirlpool, 1965, oil on canvas, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2012.1.3, © Shozo Shimamoto Association. Naples}

Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated