Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated

Love is in the air—and in the art at the DMA! Take a look below to see our staff picks of art that we heART in celebration of Valentine’s Day.

Becca Merriman-Goldring, McDermott Intern for Arts of the Americas
Each spout of a Pueblo wedding vase represents one spouse; the two are joined by a bridged handle to form a continuous whole. Mary Louise Eteeyan emphasizes that significance in the decoration of this vase, with two butterflies coming together over a single basket of corn.

Dr. Mark A. Castro, The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art
There are several wedding rings, like this one, in the Museum’s collection of Maya textiles from Guatemala. We don’t know if they were ever used, but perhaps they might bring you good luck if you’re popping the big question this Valentine’s Day!

Martha MacLeod, Senior Curatorial Administrator and Curatorial Assistant for American Art
John White Alexander painted Dorothy’s portrait shortly before she married Langdon Greer. It was possibly a gift for her soon-to-be husband. The composition includes her beloved Irish Setter, Shamrock. Artists often include dogs in paintings to symbolize fidelity and devotion.

Hilde Nelson, Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art
In her series The Notion of Family, Frazier centers three generations of women—herself, her mother, and her grandmother. Here, the artist honors her grandmother; the fridge covered with the proud matriarch’s family memorabilia conveys their loving bond.

Dr. Nicole R. Myers, Interim Chief Curator and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art
Everything about François Lepage’s sumptuous still life speaks of love, from the flora to the fauna. The pairs of white doves and monarch butterflies—traditional symbols of love—may reflect the artist’s courtship of his future wife, Julie Blum. Not only was this painting finished the year they married, but it remained in Lepage’s family for almost 200 years, perhaps a sign of its deeper meaning.

Ed Clark is an American abstract expressionist and pivotal Black artist in the DMA’s collection who experimented with shaped canvases. His large-scale painting Intarsia is on view for free in the exhibition Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia. To create this work, he laid raw canvas on the floor, poured acrylic paint directly on the surface, and spread it across the canvas with a push broom in a performative process. The title of this painting refers to a knitting and metalworking technique used to create fields of different colors that appear to blend in and out of one another. Combined with the elliptical shape of the canvas, which Clark saw as evocative of the shape of an eye, the radiant colors give the overwhelming sense of an expanding, pulsating image. Find out how our team of art conservators and preparators worked to preserve this work’s thick layers of paint by stretching the canvas before displaying it.

From Laura Hartman, Paintings Conservator at the DMA:

It was a true team effort—the painting measures over 5 meters by 3.5 meters, and weighs over 200 pounds! This painting is unique in that the artist has applied so many layers of paint that the paint is in fact thicker than the canvas, which changes the entire physics of the work. It has also traditionally been shown pinned directly to the wall, which was possible in 1970 when it was painted, but now the work has aged and needs a new approach to ensure longevity.

We worked directly with a stretcher maker in New York to design a stretcher that would hold the weight of the piece while remaining thin, giving the appearance that the work is pinned to the wall.

I worked with our preparators to create edge extensions, or a strip lining, and attach these to the back of the work to be able to stretch it while retaining the illusion of pinning. We first stretched a loose lining, which is a giant piece of canvas that acts as an additional support, and then carefully stretched the work onto the prepared stretcher, slowly increasing tension over several days to allow the paint to relax and release into a comfortable position. The work is now secure for the long haul, while retaining the artist’s original intention.

It took a lot of hands but we got it done! It takes at least 8 people to safely move the work, so all hands were on deck for this one!

The following is an excerpt from the exhibition catalogue for Octavio Medellín: Spirit and Form, opening for free at the Dallas Museum of Art on February 6, 2022.

In 1978, the artist Octavio Medellín (1907–1999) wrote a short text that appears to have been the beginning of a book project that he later abandoned. Opening with a poem, The Masterpiece, presumably by the artist, … it reads as a stream of consciousness, unedited and without paragraph breaks. At times the text seems akin to an artist’s statement…. On the third page he writes:  

“…we think of materials as purely a medium, I personally believe that materials have a soul of their own particularly if you are to work directly with them, each one is different than the other. My mission was to search in them their behavior so that I communicate with them and develop a sensitive feeling and become part of them, not to take for granted their natural formation but to be inspired and invent a form that is not entirely what’s there, but a mixture of both.” 

Medellín’s artistic practice was defined by his exploration of the duality that he alludes to in this unpublished text. He demonstrated a drive to understand and master new materials, beginning first with wood, stone, and clay, later expanding to include various forms of glass and metalwork. At the same time, regardless of facture, Medellín’s work can be characterized by its animate qualities—pose, movement, etc.—that the artist harnessed to provoke an emotional response. This “spirit” comes in part, as Medellín points out, from the materials themselves. 

Given his view that an artist’s spirit contributes to an object’s ability to engage its viewers, Medellín was understandably cognizant of the role of his own personal history and identity in his work and its reception. Throughout his almost seven-decade career, he utilized pivotal events in his life as sources of inspiration for his work, such as his experiences of the Mexican Civil War or his transformative trip to Yucatán to study Maya ruins.  

Medellín’s philosophies were … also at the heart of his approach to teaching. Over the course of his career, he taught at numerous institutions across Texas, his repertoire of classes expanding alongside his own artistic practice…. Stories and anecdotes abound of his legendary ability to guide students, and of the lingering impact of their interactions with him. Within the city of Dallas, Medellín’s legacy as a teacher has in some senses overshadowed his importance as an artist, but in fact the two roles are intertwined and inseparable—his connections to his students were an important source of inspiration and creativity.  

This catalogue, and the exhibition … seeks first and foremost to draw attention to Medellín’s work and his unique place within mid-twentieth century art in North America. A pivotal individual within a network of artists and cultural figures that contributed to the development of modern art in Texas, Medellín also had significant connections throughout the wider field of “American” art, as well as to leading figures within Mexican Modernism.  Despite his position at the intersection of so many important groups, Medellín’s work remains relatively overlooked.… This project represents the most expansive assessment of the artist’s career to date.

Dr. Mark A. Castro is The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art at the DMA.

January marks a new year and new possibilities, and at this time almost 40 years ago, the DMA and the citizens of Dallas were looking forward to a brand-new museum and watching it grow from the ground up.

The site for the new museum, chosen in 1977, was in an area north of the Central Business District, where it would serve as the anchor of a new Arts District for the city. This location had once been home to grand mansions facing Ross Avenue at the turn of the 20th century, but by the 1930s and 1940s the area was dominated by car dealerships, tire and auto repair shops, and small machine shops.  

The design for the new museum building by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes was created in 1979. Barnes’s plan included a central concourse to connect museum functions, terraced galleries with internal courtyards and skylights for natural light, vaulted space for contemporary art, a sculpture garden, and a quiet, continuous background that lets the artworks shine. 

The site chosen was not empty land, and the structures were still mainly automotive related, especially on the Ross and Harwood sides. 

The demolition of the existing structures began in September 1980, but in keeping with the January theme, the following images are from January 29–30, 1981.

Construction in January 1982:

The photo above is of the back of the Museum and Barrel Vault from St. Paul Street, looking southeast. The First United Methodist Church of Dallas can be seen in the background. 

This photo is of the northeast corner of the Museum. The large set of doors and windows in the center of the image now lead out to the Fleischner Courtyard. 

And circa January 1983—there weren’t process photos from January, so the interior view is from December 1982, and the aerial view is from February 1983:

This staircase is in the center of the Concourse; the first doorway on the left goes to Museum offices; the second doorway in the top center of the image leads to what is now the Arts of the Pacific Islands Galleries on Level 3. The windows in the background are where the Hamon Building now stands.

In this aerial view, the Sculpture Garden is still under construction on the left side of the image, and construction on the Reves and Decorative Arts galleries has not yet begun. If you look really closely at the top center, you can see Woodall Rodgers Freeway, which was still a few months away from completion.

The building was completed and on January 29, 1984, the new DMA opened!

I am looking forward to what the coming year and the future brings for the DMA.

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the DMA.

Did you Gogh? We’d love to see! Be sure to tag your best Van Gogh and the Olive Groves photos on social media using #VanGoghDMA for a chance to get featured on our channels! Check out this roundup of visitor photos who have shared their exciting exhibition experiences on Instagram.

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.

A small treasure of late 19^th-century realism is a small seaside scene by Winslow Homer. The Sand Dune (1871) was created early in the artist’s career following the Civil War when tourism for the middle classes was becoming fashionable. Homer depicted tourists exploring the White Mountains as well enjoying the sea air at the beaches of New England. Here he depicts an immense dune on Coffin Beach at West Gloucester, Massachusetts being traversed by a lone woman, whose long blue shadow points us to seated figures at lower right. The painting is highly remarkable for its spontaneity and loose brushwork, which strongly suggests that Homer executed it on site and not from sketches back in his studio, as was his usual practice. 

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.  

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.

Ex-votos are works of art that express gratitude for miraculous events or answered prayers. To go along with the ex-votos 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 roundup 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:

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}

Swiss Concretism promoted geometric art, often using industrially derived materials, which became especially attractive to artists in South America, where it complemented the region’s rapid industrialization. When a sculpture by Swiss Concretist Max Bill won first prize at the inaugural São Paulo Biennial, it had a huge impact on young artists there, such as Lygia Clark. Clark’s Cocoon revolutionized Bill’s use of geometric forms in Rhythm in Space. She takes a layered square, and through a simple action—folding one corner of the black foreground across the composition—she introduces the element of time and irregularity that will be heightened in her later Critters, which have no default form and can be manipulated by the viewer to create multiple configurations. Unlike Swiss Concretism, Clark used organic metaphors to describe these works.

_{Images: Lygia Clark, Casulo (Cocoon), 1959, acrylic paint and balsam, Collection of Deedie Rose; Max Bill, Rhythm in Space, 1962, granite, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of Mrs. James H. Clark, 1981.91.FA, © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pro Litteris, Zurich}

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}

Mira Schendel and Zao Wou-Ki drew upon language and its myriad graphic forms to create intricate works of abstraction. As postwar émigré artists—Zao in France and Schendel in Brazil—both were acutely receptive to the multiple sources of conceptual and material inspiration they encountered, including European modernism, phenomenology, and East Asian philosophy and calligraphy. In 1951, upon seeing Paul Klee’s fascinating use of line while visiting Switzerland, Zao returned to his earlier training in calligraphy to create compositions of atmospheric energy and ecstatic lines. Schendel’s compulsive repetition of icons, symbols, and signs also embraces the spontaneity and transcendent possibilities of language and abstraction informed partly by her interest in Zen philosophy and calligraphy.

_{Images: Zao Wou-Ki, Dedie a may chan (Dedicated to May Chan), 1958, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Elsa von Seggern because of her love and respect for the arts, 1996.60, © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zurich; Mira Schendel, Untitled, 1960s, oil transfer drawing on thin Japanese paper between acrylic sheets, Collection of Marguerite Steed Hoffman, © The Estate of Mira Schendel. Courtesy the Estate of Mira Schendel and Hauser & Wirth. Photographer: Jeff McLane}

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}

Lygia Clark’s works were one of the main inspirations behind Brazilian theorist Ferreira Gullar’s “Theory of the Non-object” (1959), which described the increasingly blurred lines between painting and sculpture, as well as an overall shift from representational space to physical space. While the theory referred specifically to artists in Brazil, it has many resonances with the works created by Senga Nengudi throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. Both Clark and Nengudi centered interactivity and the use of unconventional materials in their practices. The influence of Sadamasa Motonaga (whose work is also featured in Slip Zone) and his 1956 installation Work (Water) can be felt on Nengudi’s Water Composition, with their shared use of vivid colors, innovative use of materials, and consideration of weight in space.

_{Images: Lygia Clark, Creature–in itself (Bicho–Em si), 1962, aluminum, Promised gift of Deedie and Rusty Rose to the Dallas Museum of Art, PG.2011.6; Senga Nengudi, Water Composition I, 1969–1970/2019, heat-sealed vinyl and colored water, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund. Simone Gänsheimer. Installation at Lenbachhaus, Munich, via The New York Times}

Curbed Vanity: A Contemporary Foil by Chris Schanck has given visitors the opportunity to step between the past and the present and see themselves caught in the middle. The free exhibition features two ornate dressing tables facing each other—one an extravagant example of Gilded Age silversmithing and the other a contemporary interpretation by artist Chris Schanck. The vanities are presented together in a conversation from the 19th century to today about craftsmanship, material, and how humans see and perceive themselves.

The exhibition is the perfect spot to stop, reflect, and snap a selfie—something many of you have done over the past five months that these works have been on view. As the show nears its closing date on August 29, we’re looking back on some highlighted “silver selfies” that have been shared on Instagram:

Hayley Caldwell is the Social Media and Content Manager at the DMA.

The Dallas Museum of Art and Art Bridges Foundation partnered in early January of this year to undertake the conservation treatment and technical study of Art Bridge’s newly acquired masterpiece The Thankful Poor by Henry Ossawa Tanner. Additionally, the project will allow for the first public presentation of the work, curated by Sue Canterbury at the DMA.

When The Thankful Poor arrived at the DMA’s conservation studio, it was already strikingly beautiful. The composition holds space and immediately draws the viewer in. The painting is double-sided, presenting an unfinished version of The Young Sabot Maker on the reverse, a composition Tanner would complete the following year and which now resides in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s collection.

Prior to any conservation treatment, a thorough examination is always undertaken, including archival documentation research relating to any previous interventions. It became apparent that the work had undergone at least one relatively minor restoration campaign in the 1970s. It was also evident that the painting was cleaned and re-varnished in a second treatment, though no verifiable documentation was found. UV illumination was used to better understand which varnishes and treatment materials might have been used, as surface materials such as varnishes and areas of retouching can be differentiated based on their observed fluorescence. In this painting, the varnish is seen glowing green, and older areas of restoration present as black spots.

As both of these treatments took place many years earlier, the varnish layers had become discolored, both yellowed and cloudy. An old tear that had been repaired using wax and paper had also begun to open and needed to be addressed. Finally, a thick layer of discolored adhesive was scattered throughout the composition on the reverse of the canvas.

Tanner was an innovative artist, known to experiment with layering techniques that require especially mindful cleaning approaches. Cleaning tests were conducted under microscopic magnification to determine a cleaning protocol to remove the layers of discolored varnish. To better understand the boundary between paint and varnish, a microscopic sample was used to gain a view of the various layers. The resulting cleaning process was executed almost entirely under the microscope to ensure the most delicate layers were preserved.

The tear was then mended and areas of losses were filled and retouched using reversible conservation materials. Wide cracks, known as traction cracks, were carefully retouched to better integrate the surface visually.

The cleaning was transformative. The layers of discolored varnish lifted to reveal a colorful palette previously unseen. The overall tone of the painting shifted to unveil a much cooler composition, balancing the contrast.

It was an honor to work on this beautiful painting. Results from the treatment allow the work to be appreciated as the artist intended. Tanner was a master of tone and light, both of which he captured so beautifully in this magnificent composition. Research and treatment work were done collaboratively with my fabulous curatorial colleagues, both at the DMA and at Art Bridges, and I want to give a heartfelt acknowledgment to Sue Canterbury, Martha MacLeod, and Margi Conrads for their collaboration.

Laura Eva Hartman is the Paintings Conservator at the DMA.