Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated

As the closing date for the exhibition For a Dreamer of Houses approaches, I can’t help but reflect on how timely, vibrant, and meaningful the show has been to those who have experienced it. The exhibition was originally set to open in March 2020, an opening that was never realized due to the pandemic. The timing was poignant and somewhat surreal—here we have a show about the significance of one’s home coming to fruition during a time of socially distanced shutdown, when all of us were becoming significantly more familiar with the spaces we inhabit. During that time, we launched a virtual tour of the exhibition, which allowed audiences from near and far to explore the contents of the show and think about how they relate to our present experiences, how our spaces reflect ourselves, and what our spaces and the everyday objects within them mean to us. The themes hit close to home, so to speak.

The exhibition finally opened in person along with the rest of the DMA in August 2020. We welcomed you home to your city’s museum—home to this special exhibition of contemporary art—after all of us spent months in our own homes. With fresh perspectives, you, our visitors, made magic happen as you ventured out and became part of the art. Here’s a look back at what you experienced.

The colorful energy of Alex Da Corte’s unmissable Rubber Pencil Devil:

The whimsy of the Drawers, Chests, and Wardrobes section, featuring works by Olivia Erlanger, Robert Pruitt, and Sarah Lucas:

The awe-inspiring immersion of Francisco Moreno’s Chapel:

The intimate materials of Janine Antoni’s Grope:

The delicate beauty of Do Ho Suh’s Hub, 260-10 Sungbook-dong, Sungbook-ku, Seoul, Korea:

. . . and much more.

There’s still a bit of time left for you to visit For a Dreamer of Houses before the exhibition closes on July 4, 2021. Be sure to book your visit soon and make yourself at home.

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

We are grateful for the significant support of our DMA Members! We recently held a Member Appreciation Weekend from May 21–23 and we were delighted to see so many of you show up to enjoy your exclusive DMA Member benefits. Check out this slideshow recap of the events, which included art activities, prizes, a members-only lounge, members-only viewing hours, and more!

With Father’s Day just around the corner, we asked DMA staff to highlight their favorite works across our collections that connect to the art of fatherhood. See what they selected, and celebrate your own father or father figure with a visit to the DMA on June 20!

Nicole R. Myers, The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art

One of the things I love most about this grand self-portrait by Carpentier is that it celebrates his role as a father and husband as much as it does his profession as painter. By tightly grouping the figures, the women’s arms lovingly intertwined, Carpentier places familial love and support at the center of his studio practice.

Listen to Laura Eva Hartman, Paintings Conservator at the DMA, discuss this painting here.

Stacey Lizotte, DMA League Director of Adult Programs

Julian Onderdonk was one of the greatest early Texas artists known for his paintings of bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas. Julian was originally trained by his father, Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, an artist and art teacher in San Antonio and Dallas who was known as the “Dean of Texas’s Artists” for his contributions to the arts in Texas.

Mark Castro, The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art

In the Americas, Saint Joseph is depicted as youthful and strong, often carrying the child Christ in his arms, like in this New Mexican bulto currently on view in Devoted: Art and Spirituality in Mexico and New Mexico. This reinforced his role as Christ’s earthly father and the protector of the Holy Family.

Alyssa Wood, Curatorial Assistant for the Arts of Africa, the Americas, the Pacific and Asia & Antiquities

Ceramicist María Martinez’s works were renowned for their shapely forms. However, it was the subdued designs of her husband, painter Julian Martinez, that set her collaborations apart; a tradition that Julian passed to their children, Popovi Da and Adam Martinez.

Leah Hanson, Director of Family, Youth, and School Programs

This might seem an unusual choice to celebrate fathers, but what you can’t see behind the scenes is a father who supported his daughter in becoming an artist. This love even extended to a menagerie of animals he brought to the family studio for Rosa to study and paint!

Martha MacLeod, Senior Curatorial Administrator and Curatorial Assistant for Decorative Arts/Design, Latin American Art, and American Art

Chase was one of America’s leading painters and teachers. He completed about a dozen portraits of his daughter Dieudonnée. Here she is in her early teens. Also, one of her father’s students, she was an accomplished still life and landscape painter.

Motherhood is an art! Mother’s Day is just around the corner, and we’re celebrating the occasion by spotlighting artworks and objects in our collection that illustrate the theme of motherly love and strength. Read below to find out about what our curators from different departments selected.

Dr. Michelle Rich, The Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of Arts of the Americas

Curator Michelle Rich selected this 100 BCE–250 CE ceramic sculpture made by the people of Jalisco. The object depicts the bond between a mother nursing her infant child.

Dr. Mark A. Castro, The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art

In this drawing, Guillermo Meza draws a reddish line from the mother’s head and down her spine. The same color as the blanket that holds the child on her back, together they evoke the physical ties that bind mother and child together.

Sue Canterbury, The Pauline Gill Sullivan Curator of American Art

Mary Cassatt is known for images of a mother and child that also recall Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child. Typically, her models were neighbors rather than family. This is one of the last works she devoted to this theme.

Dr. Roslyn Walker, Senior Curator of the Arts of Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific, and The Margaret McDermott Curator of African Art

African sculptures rarely depict a mother and child facing each other. Yet, carving demonstrates, they are physically and emotionally connected. The mother protectively wraps her left arm around the baby’s torso and holds its feet with her right hand to form a circle of protection.

In anticipation of an upcoming Arts & Letters Live event with author Kaitlyn Greenidge, I had the opportunity to chat with her recently about her new novel Libertie. Deemed one of the most-anticipated books of 2021 and the May pick for Roxane Gay’s Book Club, Libertie is a fictionalized account rooted in women’s history.

In the novel, Libertie Sampson, a young Black woman in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, feels confined by her mother’s stringent vision for her future. Libertie is to go to medical school and practice alongside her mother. However, the independent-minded protagonist finds herself being drawn more to the arts than science and longs for adventure.

Greenidge told me how she got the idea for the character while running the oral history program at the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, which preserves one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America. There, Greenidge interviewed Ellen Holly, a TV soap actress who shared stories of her family heritage which included Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward (1847–1918), Brooklyn’s first Black woman physician, and the third Black physician in the U.S. Dr. Steward’s renown as a doctor and founder of medical clinics and her work for suffrage and civil rights were not the only thing that caught Greenidge’s attention. She learned from the oral history that Dr. Steward traveled to Haiti to rescue her daughter from a failed marriage. And thus the character of Libertie was born.

Like the historical figure on which she is based, Libertie follows her husband to Haiti. Greenidge found inspiration in Hattian art. “I loved the blending of history and current events into art, and how people use fine arts to document history,” she told me.

She also conducted meticulous research on a number of topics including homeopathy. In Greenidge’s novel several pivotal moments occur in Dr. Sampson’s (the fictional version of Dr. Steward) home garden, which flourishes with medicinal plants. John Gerad’s work (below) mirrors the bountiful uses of plants as medicine. Throughout the novel, Greenidge intertwines the lives of the characters and the purpose and magic of plants.

Dr. Steward’s passion for healing extended beyond the walls of the hospital into the social, intellectual and artistic health of her community as she fostered racial inclusion, women’s rights, and local art exhibits. “What’s interesting about the period of Reconstruction, is that you have Black people creating communities whole scale from scratch,” Greenidge told me, “and what was really striking to me was how revolutionary their ideas of care were.”

Greenidge described her fascination upon discovering that African American newspapers serving newly freed Black people dedicated half of their space to news and half as a literacy primer. The consideration demonstrated in this—a paper both for those who can and those who are still learning to read—struck Greenidge as genius.

“The novel is really looking at the politics of care, and how communities decide who is worthy or unworthy of care,” Greenidge explained.

In Jacob Lawrence’s The Visitors, above, loved ones offer consolation to the bedridden. The theme of care, as seen here and in Greenidge’s novel, resonates today.

Cristina Carolina Echezarreta is the 2020-2021 McDermott intern for Adult Programs/Arts & Letters Live at the DMA.

With world premiere of Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris opening at the DMA this month, an illustrated catalogue that reconsiders the artistic practice and legacy of this important yet underappreciated modernist master was simultaneously published. Read the below excerpt from one of the book’s contributing authors, Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.

Joaquín Torres-García was arguably the greatest proponent of abstract art in the Americas. After a long and diverse career in Europe from 1891 through 1934 (interrupted by a stint in New York from 1920 to 1922), he moved back to his native Uruguay to establish the School of the South, which would go on to influence some of the most important artists to emerge from Latin America. . . . Gris’s influence resonates in the work of artists who followed in the Uruguayan master’s footprints, notably the groundbreaking Argentine concretists and the Brazilian Neoconcretists. Through Torres-García’s influential pedagogy, Gris’s forms would find new life in important aesthetic developments in South America. . . .  

. . . Torres-García had flirted with several styles before coming to his signature brand of post-Cubist abstraction, which he developed as he was exposed to, and collaborated with, some of the most important artists of the day. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, soon after Gris’s death, he would partake in the development of international Constructivism with the diverse group of artists living in Paris. . . . 

However, Torres-García diverged with . . . artists on the role of figuration, which he believed could co-exist with the ideals of abstraction. In this way, he follows closely Gris’s love of the depicted object, which, distinguishing itself from Picasso’s approach, was not utilized as a mere premise for abstraction. Gris thus pointed the way toward a revolutionary reconfiguring of the depiction of reality within abstraction as developed by [South American] artists. . . .  

. . . Torres-García lauded Gris’s creation of a new world made of geometric abstract forms, never losing his love of the object in his quest for mathematically precise geometry. [In Brazil, contemporary artists Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Pape] exemplify this complex duality, highlighting how Torres-García’s unique translation of Gris spoke to the organic and environmentally contingent innovations for which their work is known. . . .  
 
. . . Tracing [Gris’s] legacy through the works of his successors in Brazil and Argentina offers a salient reminder that these South American artists have only recently come into mainstream critical acclaim for their own contributions to our new understanding of the transformative power of geometry. 

The Dallas Museum of Art was given the opportunity to exhibit a collection of exceptional Frida Kahlo works. In advance of their display, we received permission from the owners to study three of the paintings—Still Life with Parrot and Flag (1951), Sun and Life (1947) (fig. 1), and Diego and Frida 1929–1944 (1944)—in the DMA’s Paintings Conservation Studio. Conservators and curators often collaborate on this type of research, bringing together their distinct knowledge, training, and perspectives to better understand a work of art. Although some artists’ works have been extensively studied in this fashion, Kahlo has received surprisingly less attention, making this an especially unique opportunity.

Using infrared photography, X-radiography, and microscopic examination, novel information was brought to light regarding each work. X-radiography allows us to visualize compositional changes made in paint. This type of imaging provided a fascinating new perspective into Frida Kahlo’s working practice, particularly for the painting Sun and Life (fig. 2).

In this work, Kahlo depicts a vibrant red sun surrounded by a dense array of rich green vegetation. As if drawing energy directly from the star in their midst, the leaves of the plants sprout roots that reach for the soil below, while the large pods that dominate the upper half of the painting ripen and split open. The pods reveal dark interiors, some of them full of glistening phallic appendages. Directly behind the sun, a small embryo appears inside one of the pods, tears dropping from its unformed eyes. Often interpreted as a rumination on the cycle of life and mortality, Sun and Life is a pivotal work from the end of Kahlo’s career.

The X-ray taken of Sun and Life revealed an exciting evolution in the painting’s creation. Kahlo’s basic composition was generally established from the underdrawing to the early painting phase, but the details evolved significantly in later phases of painting. The pods surrounding the sun, for example, initially had smaller openings, but these were widened during the painting process. Another interesting discovery was that the embryo-like element in the pod directly behind the sun was added as Kahlo finalized the painting; the X-ray shows that the pod was originally closed. The blue lines overlaid onto the painting (fig. 3) represent a tracing made from the X-ray and indicate where compositional changes took place during the painting process.

These findings offer us important insight into how Kahlo conceived of her works at this point in her career. While she used drawing to map out the general structure of the composition, she clearly did not allow this to dictate its final appearance or content. As she worked, she made adjustments and additions, revealing that her own conception of the work evolved with each new layer of paint.

It’s worth noting that although the X-ray offers us a glimpse into Kahlo’s working practice, none of the changes are visible to the naked eye. Sun and Life’s long, sinuous brushstrokes demonstrate the artist’s mastery of her medium and betray none of the process behind it. The painting’s final appearance is cohesive and seamless, an example of Kahlo’s ability to combine vibrant color with captivating compositions.  

Examining these works together was a great privilege, and we have enjoyed discussing them with our colleagues at the DMA, including Dr. Agustín Arteaga, The Eugene McDermott Director. We hope that you’ll visit Sun and Life and the other works in Frida Kahlo: Five Works, on view through June 20, 2021.

Dr. Mark A. Castro is The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art and Laura Eva Hartman is the Paintings Conservator at the DMA.

In early 1938, 26-year-old Thurmond Townsend was appraising his backyard and became intrigued by the now malleable mud, which had the consistency of clay. Though he had never tried modeling before, Townsend started working with the mud to create busts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from pictures. The two sculptures were going well… except for the ears. On his way home from work as a bus boy, Townsend stopped into the Dallas Art Institute and asked instructor Harry Lee Gibson how to sculpt ears.

Taking Gibson’s advice that he try modeling from life, Townsend created a bust of his wife Marie. He entered this sculpture in the 9th Annual Dallas Allied Arts Exhibition (March 20-April 17, 1938). The Dallas Art Association, now DMA, started holding juried exhibitions for artists residing in Dallas and Dallas County in 1928 and did so annually through 1964.

Townsend’s mud Marie Townsend was not only accepted to the exhibition’s Sculpture and Crafts section, but was awarded a $25 prize sponsored by Karl Hoblitzelle, a DMFA Board member. Townsend’s sculpture was the first work by a Black artist accepted to the Dallas Allied Arts exhibition. This was notable enough at the time that TIME Magazine reported on Townsend and his sculpture in the April 4, 1938 issue.

It should be stated that the eligibility rules in the exhibition prospectus did not limit entries by race and identification of race was not part of the information on the entry card required with each submission.

An interesting side note, the other sculpture award at the 1938 Allied Arts Exhibition went to Harry Lee Gibson, the Dallas Art Institute instructor who helped Townsend with his “ears” problem.

As the mud sculpture would crumble as it dried, Gibson made a plaster cast of the bust for the Townsends. The plaster cast would go on to be displayed at the Paul Laurence Dunbar branch of the Dallas Public Library.

1938 continued to be a successful year for Townsend’s sculptures. His Self Portrait, a second mud sculpture, was selected for the juried Texas Section of the Golden Jubilee Exhibition for the 1938 State Fair of Texas. In her review of the DMFA State Fair exhibition, the Dallas Morning News’ Elisabeth Crocker calls Self Portrait “…amazing…” and goes on to describe the sculpture as an “…even more sensitively executed, life-size bust of himself” discounting any who thought his Allied Arts prize-winning Marie Townsend was a “flash in the pan.”

The Texas Section of the 1939 State Fair Art Exhibition was an invitational exhibition and Townsend was invited to submit a piece due to his selection for the 1938 Allied Arts exhibition. He submitted a sculpture titled Dog, that Crocker described as a “cunning dog’s head,” in her review of the show.

Townsend was awarded his second Allied Arts sculpture section win, a $25 prize sponsored by the Rush Company, for Girl Friend at the 12th Annual Allied Arts Exhibition in 1941.

While Townsend was more well known in the press for his sculpture, he also tried his hand at oil painting. He submitted his first oil painting, a street scene titled Maple Avenue, for the First No-Jury Exhibition in May 1938.

The DMFA’s No-Jury exhibitions were open to anyone. Dallas artists could submit one original work for the exhibition with no fear of rejection because there was no selection. No-Jury exhibitions were held annually from 1938-1941 in conjunction with the Art Carnival. A significant purpose of the show was to provide an opportunity to young or inexperienced artists to get their work before the public. While some professional artists well-known through Allied Arts and Texas Annual exhibitions submitted work to the show, the No-Jury exhibitions were popular with students and dabblers. Interest in the exhibition and the quality of the artworks submitted varied over the 4 years the show was held. It was ultimately the decline of both interest and quality that ended the No-Jury exhibitions.

Townsend’s painting was ultimately recognized with an award as well. He returned to the subject of his wife Marie with an oil portrait submitted for the 13th Annual Allied Arts exhibition in 1942. Marie Townsend was awarded the prize of a frame sponsored by the Sherwin-Williams Company.

Townsend does not appear in any of the DMFA’s juried exhibitions after the early 1940s. The current location of the works mentioned here, or any other of his artworks is unknown. If you have any information on Townsend or his body of work, please let us know.

Thanks to former McDermott Intern Melinda Narro whose extensive research brought Thurmond Townsend’s story to our attention. Thanks also to Communications staff Jill Bernstein and Lillian Michel for additional research.

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Dolores Velásquez Cueto, better known as Lola, began taking drawing and painting classes at the National School of Fine Arts in 1909, when she was just 12 years old. Two years later, against the backdrop of the Mexican Civil War, she became a student at the school full time, taking classes alongside such notable artists as David Alfaro Siqueiros, who himself was only one year older than her. Cueto was a voracious student, studying printmaking and other mediums at the National School, while also studying painting at the Open-Air Painting School in Santa Anita under the acclaimed painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez. She also began to teach drawing at a night school for workers, and her interest in education would continue throughout her life.

Cueto’s early work was praised by critics, raising her profile in the flourishing art scene in Mexico City. In 1919 she married fellow art student Germán Cueto Vidal, who would become one of the most well known experimental sculptors of the period. Their home was one of the city’s cultural hubs, where prominent artists and other cultural figures came to socialize.

Although Cueto continued to work in other mediums, she was increasingly drawn to tapestries, no doubt influenced by a childhood passion for embroidery. At the same time, she was part of a contemporary international trend—inspired in part by the Bauhaus—that sought to modernize historic artistic traditions using new techniques and technology. In her early tapestries, for example, Cueto used a sewing machine to create dense, precise embroidery with mercerized and silk threads.

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

Dolores Velásquez Cueto, better known as Lola, began taking drawing and painting classes at the National School of Fine Arts in 1909, when she was just 12 years old. Two years later, against the backdrop of the Mexican Civil War, she became a student at the school full time, taking classes alongside such notable artists as David Alfaro Siqueiros, who himself was only one year older than her. Cueto was a voracious student, studying printmaking and other mediums at the National School, while also studying painting at the Open-Air Painting School in Santa Anita under the acclaimed painter Alfredo Ramos Martínez. She also began to teach drawing at a night school for workers, and her interest in education would continue throughout her life.

Cueto’s early work was praised by critics, raising her profile in the flourishing art scene in Mexico City. In 1919 she married fellow art student Germán Cueto Vidal, who would become one of the most well known experimental sculptors of the period. Their home was one of the city’s cultural hubs, where prominent artists and other cultural figures came to socialize.

Although Cueto continued to work in other mediums, she was increasingly drawn to tapestries, no doubt influenced by a childhood passion for embroidery. At the same time, she was part of a contemporary international trend—inspired in part by the Bauhaus—that sought to modernize historic artistic traditions using new techniques and technology. In her early tapestries, for example, Cueto used a sewing machine to create dense, precise embroidery with mercerized and silk threads.

Cueto produced tapestries inspired by European sources, such as her famous series based on stained glass windows in the cathedrals in Chartres and Bourges, which the artist saw while living in Europe from 1927 to 1932. Many of her tapestries, however, draw on popular Mexican imagery, such as this fruit seller from Tehuantepec, in the southern state of Oaxaca. Celebrated for their independence and grace, native women in Tehuantepec wore distinctive garments that were adopted by a number of female artists, including María Izquierdo and Frida Kahlo.

Made while Cueto was living in Europe, this tapestry depicting an indigenous Oaxacan woman seems to draw a direct connection between the lush landscape and the woman’s cultural identity. The cream-colored fabric of her garments and the green of her jewelry are echoed in the dense foliage and in the mountains in the distance. The work recalls a larger ideology embraced after the Mexican Civil War that saw Mexican national identity as being drawn not just from the nation’s cultural traditions, but also from the unique qualities of its natural landscape.

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