Official behind-the-scenes blog of the Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art’s collection has many wonderful works of art in it. Below are a few of my favorites that I like to see while I am in the galleries. I hope you enjoy them.
Amy Wolf
Coordinator of Gallery Teaching
Congratulations to all teachers for the completion of another school year! My colleagues and I would like to invite you to join us for great learning experiences with works of art this summer. Below are a few opportunities for you to engage with Museum education staff and educators from around the DFW area, and, of course, explore works of art from all times, places, and cultures.
Summer Seminar: Exploring the Creative Process
Tuesday, June 15 – Friday, 18, 2010
9:00 – 4:00 daily
$100 registration fee
Explore both the theory and practice of creativity in sessions led by Dr. Magdalena Grohman from The University of Texas at Dallas and DMA staff. Sessions will include gallery experiences in the Museum’s collections and Center for Creative Connections, creative thinking workshops, and discussions about classroom applications.
ONLY A FEW OPENINGS LEFT!
The application deadline has been extended until July 1.
SAVE THE DATE
Teacher Workshop with artist Jill Foley
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Details coming soon at www.DallasMuseumofArt.org/teachers
Join DMA staff and visiting artist, Jill Foley, for an interactive workshop filled with imagination and creativity. Foley, a Dallas-based artist, describes her work as her consciousness turned tangible. She creates large scale imaginary-type spaces to host her puppet-like figural sculptures and her paintings and drawings.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Until next time….
Jenny Marvel
Manager of Programs and Resources for Teachers
One of the things that I love about the photographs taken by DMA visitors and posted to the online photo community Flickr, is seeing the spaces, the works of art, and the building through their eyes.
Nicole Stutzman
Director of Teaching Programs and Partnerships
Sketches of artworks by Don Moyer
Roman Woman by Jim Arnold
Young visitor meets Mark Rothko by Rondostar
Ross Avenue entrance by Escuincle
Pinhole photograph of Ellsworth Kelly's Rocker by Mr. Holga
Dear loyal blog readers,
We have a new summer blog post schedule. Look for new posts on Wednesdays and Fridays. Have a fabulous summer!
The opening of the AT&T Performing Arts Center last fall brought our friends at the Dallas Theater Center (DTC) to the ever-growing Dallas Arts District. Having comfortably settled into their new home at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, the DTC has developed programs and collaborations as innovative as the building itself. Lisa Holland, Director of Education and Community Programs at the DTC, gives us a peek behind the scenes.
Tell us about your new home at the Wyly Theatre.
The Wyly Theatre is remarkable – there’s not another theater like it in the entire world. The flexibility that it affords is unparalleled and I think that we, as the primary tenants, are going to learn about this building as time goes on. I think the possibilities are going to be limitless in this building. I also think our patrons are going to be the lucky beneficiaries of seeing what this building can do. It’s like a giant transformer. What that provides to the patron in terms of the audience to artist relationship is going to be powerful and immediate. There’s nothing like it.
Also, the synergy between other organizations in the Arts District and the potential collaborations that exist now is so thrilling. I think about how we can collaborate with our friends and family at the Arts District in ways that will be really engaging and exciting. To walk down the street and see who you’ll run into, or walk down the street and have a meeting at the DMA – it’s exciting.
Do you ever consider integrating or thinking about works of art related to your programs?
Absolutely. In the past, we’ve incorporated a visual arts component in our SummerStage program. I believe that whatever kind of artist you are, you need to “feed your hopper”. In other words, you pour into yourself different experiences, whether it’s a trip to the zoo or going for a walk and looking at leaves. You never know what will inform your work as an artist.
Also, we deal with a lot of visual arts formal elements like color, line, and composition in the theater. And, we have had collaborative events with the DMA in the past, such as sending artists to the DMA and working with Arts & Letters Live.
Tell us about the Shannon and Ted Skokos Learning Lab, your new partnership with Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
It was brand new this year, and it was a resounding mutual success. Last spring, we auditioned the rising juniors and from that group chose eighteen seniors. The Learning Lab has three components. Kevin Moriarty (DTC Artistic Director), Charlton Gavitt (Booker T. Washington High School Theater Cluster Faculty), and I team-taught the class component, which occurred every other day, all year long. The second component is a twenty-hour internship that students complete outside of class hours. The final component is a performance project, in which we paired the students with our professional acting company, and they performed ten scenes in the Wyly Theatre with the professional actors. The students also came to every single show we produced this year, free of charge. This is a super exciting program, and I don’t think anywhere else has that sort of integrated relationship between a school and a professional theater with that kind of access. The program is a great example of the kind of collaboration that can happen in the Arts District – it was so simple to walk across the street, teach, and walk back to my office.
How did you come to your position as Director of Education & Community Programs?
I grew up in the theater. My parents took me to theater and I’ve been a theater student my whole life. After I earned my graduate degree in directing, I was hired as one of two artistic directing interns at the Dallas Theater Center thirteen years ago. I was hired to work in the artistic office after my internship year, and I basically never left. I defected into the education department about halfway through my tenure, but that made sense because my undergraduate degree is in theater education.
What program/performance are you most looking forward to this summer?
We have a program called SUPERStage (SummerStage’s alter ego), where we have theater day camps for kids ages 4-14. I’m also looking forward to our summer production It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman. I’m so excited about having a mainstage show running concurrently with our SUPERtage program. Our SUPERStage students will have access to what we do in a primary way, and we’re going to enfold into the curriculum what is happening on stage so it becomes a learning lab of sorts. It’s going to be awesome. Superman – what can you say – there’s flying – it’s Superman!
Melissa Nelson
Manager of Teaching in the Community
It’s hard to believe that the 2009-2010 school year is already over. We will have our last Museum visits and Go van Gogh trips tomorrow, and we wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the highlights of the year with you.
Go van Gogh Classroom Outreach
Volunteers are at the core of our programs, and without their invaluable assistance, we would not be able to reach the number of students we do each year. A great big thanks to:
Go van Gogh volunteers work with local artist Ann Marie Newman
The year also brought new initiatives for the Go van Gogh program:
Go van Gogh volunteers work with local artist Ann Marie Newman
All in all, it was a great year. Go van Gogh volunteers, we appreciate your hard work and dedication to bringing fun and meaningful art experiences to North Texas students. Teachers, we thank you for bringing Go van Gogh into your classrooms.
Museum Visits
Our schedule has been jam-packed with Museum visits all year. Thank you to the students and teachers who visited the Museum, and thank you to our docents who make all of these tours possible.
Docent Denise Ford welcomes her group to the DMA.
We had many highlights during the year, including:
4th grade students examine the Pair of Lokapalas
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So there you have it, the highlights of thirty-two weeks of programs for the 2009-2010 school year. The 2010-2011 school year will be here before we know it, so we encourage you to start thinking about your DMA and Go van Gogh visits now. Be on the lookout for our postcard this summer, reminding you to visit our Web site on August 1st to schedule your programs. Have a wonderful summer!
Amy Copeland and Shannon Karol
Coordinators of Go van Gogh Outreach and Museum Visits
On Friday we will say good-bye to our McDermott Interns, Logan Acton and Justin Greenlee. Logan and Justin have been with us since September, and they have contributed in numerous ways to the work we do with students and teachers. We appreciate all of their hard work this year, and we will miss them more than they know!
Below are some of their thoughts about their internship experience this year.
Molly Kysar
Head of Teaching Programs
Logan: When the Hoffman Galleries were installed with works of art dealing with narrative and time, I was immediately drawn to Gregory Crewdson‘s photographs. I had numerous opportunities to share this interest with others, including leading activities in the UT Dallas honors seminar this spring. This year, the seminar included a lecture series with six guest speakers, including Gregory Crewdson. Not only were the students and staff able to attend the lecture, but we were also given the opportunity to meet with Crewdson for a personal question and answer session.
Justin: I loved going back to a school I’d already visited with Go van Gogh and recognizing kids from classes I’d taught weeks before. I’d get a high-five, or a “Hey, it’s that guy” reaction. Whenever I visited a school, I was their special event for the day — like recess, but not as predictable. The Go van Gogh staff received great thank you notes during the course of the year. My favorite: “You rock. I wish you came every day.”
What has been your most unexpected or memorable experience?
Logan: Something unexpected occurs almost every time I have an experience with students. On one tour, I pointed out Untitled (Perfect Lovers) by Felix Gonzales-Torres. Initially, many students were skeptical, though intrigued, at the idea of two wall clocks constituting a great work of art. One young lady became very engaged and vocal about the process of creating a piece of art like this. I asked her to describe how she herself might make a work of art about life or death. After thinking for a moment, she explained in considerable detail a dark room with a box in the middle that produced a thin but consistent stream of smoke. I asked her how she thought someone with no knowledge of her idea or intent might feel upon walking into that room. She smiled and looked at the clocks and said that they might not think it was art at all, and on second thought she really liked these clocks.
Justin: Driving the Go van Gogh van around Dallas has been an adventure. I’ve been all over Dallas, visiting the nooks and crannies of DISD. Even after six months in Dallas, I couldn’t get anywhere if it wasn’t on the way to an elementary school.
What have you learned as a result of your experience as a McDermott Intern?
Logan: I have spent hours in the galleries with students and teachers, and this has helped me grow in my own interests and abilities as an educator. Jumping in to work with an encyclopedic collection, I learned a lot about the works and the cultures that produced them, but also about myself and where my strongest interests lay. Although I had always enjoyed modern and contemporary art, I really fell in love with artists who I initially knew very little about like Trenton Hancock, Gregory Crewdson, and Matthew Barney. My time spent educating fed this passion as I was able to explore my ideas with other people. From these experiences I began to learn which ways of teaching worked best for me and how to adapt to different situations. I applied for this internship because it combined my passion for art and education; as my time at the Museum draws to a close, I feel more in love with both than when I began.
Justin: I’ve learned a lot from the people I’ve met in Dallas. I’ll miss TAG teachers, Go van Gogh volunteers, docents, Museum staff… I’ve really enjoyed sit-down conversations with many different types of people. I think I’ve become a better teacher, and I’ve gained a lot of respect for the hard-working teachers in DISD.
My time as a McDermott Intern at the Dallas Museum of Art is drawing to a close. Along with my seven fellow interns who began at the DMA in September, I will be walking the galleries with the McDermott title for the last time next Friday afternoon. I have had amazing experiences while working at the Museum and getting to know the collection, and even though I will only be moving up the road to UTD as I finish my Master’s degree this summer, I felt a ceremonial goodbye way in order, the best way I knew how. Here are a few of my favorite works of art at the museum and my loving tribute to them!
Emma-O, the Japanese Buddhist Judge of the Dead
Untitled (Perfect Lovers) by Félix González-Torres
Luba Arrow Holder with Head and Three Prongs
Rembrandt Peale's Porthole Portrait of George Washington
Emblem by Sam Francis
Hindu God Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance
Have you immersed yourself yet in the multi-sensory experience of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea? If not, let me tease you…
This is one of twelve individual sound designs created for works of art in the exhibition, and these individual sound designs represent only one layer of a three-part, synchronized sound installation. A global soundscape powered by two subwoofers is audible throughout the Coastlines exhibition and contains musical elements shaped by the natural sounds and rhythms of waves. Regional soundscapes emerge from ten ceiling-mounted speakers and respond to the thematic sections of the exhibition. The twelve local, or individual, soundscapes representing interpretations of selected works of art are delivered through Holosonics hyperdirectional speakers, which allow for a controlled design of the auditory space. Now that I’ve geeked out on the technology of the sound installation, let me tell you a little more about the making of this sonic experience.
The Coastlines sound installation was created by graduate students and faculty in the Arts and Technology program at the University of Texas at Dallas, in collaboration with undergraduate students in the School of Information and Communication and Media Engineering at the Université du Sud Toulon-Var (USTV), in Toulon, France. The project began in September 2009 with several planning meetings between UT Dallas and the Dallas Museum of Art focusing on exhibition themes and artworks, as well as technological possibilities. UT Dallas faculty and students presented a proof of concept demonstration in December 2009 for the multilayer sound design and use of hyperdirectional speakers. In January 2010, under the direction of UT Dallas professor Dr. Frank Dufour, students selected works of art in the Coastlines exhibition and began composing sonic interpretations for these works. Lead graduate students Michael Austin and Jason Barnett also began work on the conceptual and technical development of the overall multilayer sound design.
Professor Frank Dufour talks with French students via Skype.
Communications about the project between the creators occurred primarily through the Internet using Skype, a free web-based chat software, and a private social network that provided a forum for the exchange of ideas, images, and iterative sound designs. The exchange was bilingual, encouraging each set of students to work through language barriers. In addition, Michael Austin visited the USTV students in Toulon, France during project development to lead them in sound design workshops. One of the workshops included collecting sounds from the harbor in Toulon, France. Many of these were used in the individual sound designs created by students in Texas and France.
Michael collects sounds of the harbor in Toulon.
French students record the sound of water.
This project is an education initiative undertaken in part with the support of FRAME, the French Regional and American Museum Exchange. FRAME fosters exchanges between a group of American and French art museums committed to establishing long-term partnerships on common projects that make their respective resources available to a wider public. Several collaborating museums and universities involved with FRAME are focused on the relationship between music and art and support the work of young artists.
This Friday night at the Dallas Museum of Art Late Night you can support the work of young artists involved in the Coastlines sound design project. Visit the exhibition, then stop into the Theater in the Center for Creative Connections at 8:30 p.m. to hear Dr. Dufour and students from UT Dallas share insights about the project and their process.
Nicole Stutzman
Director of Teaching Programs and Partnerships
One of our outstanding curators here at the Dallas Museum of Art, Dr. Heather MacDonald, graciously took time out of her busy schedule to answer questions related to her job at the Museum. Continue reading for more information about Heather’s job and the exciting exhibitions that she is working on at the DMA. To learn more about Heather’s projects at the DMA, please click on the following link: ‘The Year of Heather’: Curating at the Dallas Museum of Art.
Name and Title: Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art
Years Employed at the Dallas Museum of Art: 4 1/2
Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of Eurpean Art
Describe your job here at the Museum: I work with the collection of European painting, sculpture, and works on paper (prints, drawings, and photographs) from the 15th century to 1945. Together with the Senior Curator of European and American Art, Olivier Meslay, I look after the permanent collection galleries as well as organizing temporary exhibitions. My job involves a lot of research and writing, but also collaboration with other departments in the museum on teaching and interpretation, managing multi-year projects, and on caring for the works of art. I travel a lot to see works of art, meet with colleagues, attend art fairs and professional conferences, and see important exhibitions. Being a curator is also being a teacher: leading tours, giving lectures, and training the docents who will help communicate your research and ideas to a wider public. You have to be as comfortable at the lecture podium as in the library or gallery.
What is the favorite part of your job? I think that for most curators the most enjoyable part of the job is installing works of art in the galleries, whether it’s the permanent collection or a special exhibition. It’s the fruition of many months, sometimes years, of planning, and a moment to think in very specific, physical terms about the encounter between a work of art and the viewer. There is a real magic to seeing paintings come out of their travel crates and go on the wall of a gallery that has been designed just for them. You have to cross your fingers that everything works the way you planned, and it is a great feeling when it’s even better than you could have imagined.
What is a challenge you face in your job? It can be a real challenge to find time for the most important parts of my work (research, thought, and writing) with the constant demands of email and meetings that consume so much of the working day. Understanding and interpreting works of art is a time-consuming activity, and a lot of that slow-paced and intensive work inevitably has to happen at night or on weekends, away from the office.
How did you decide you wanted to work in a museum? I thought I wanted to teach art history at the university level, but part way through graduate school I realized that career was not for me. Having at that point almost completed my PhD in art history, I thought I might as well try a museum job before leaving the field entirely, and I found the work much more engaging and rewarding. I feel very lucky that I was able to find this other career in my discipline.
If you weren’t working here at the Museum, what is something else you would be doing? Well, I have a lot of fantasy careers, of course, but I think most likely working in editing or publishing. I love books and the written word. I’m lucky that part of being a curator is working on the creation of exhibition and collection catalogues, which allows me to be involved with publishing in that way.
What are some upcoming exhibitions that will be at the Museum over the summer? This summer my exhibition Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea will be on view at the Museum. It features more than 60 paintings, photographs, drawings, and prints made between 1850 and today describing the landscape and human experience of the coast. We’re trying something new by presenting this exhibition with a sound installation that was created by faculty and graduate students from the University of Texas at Dallas. I’m really looking forward to hearing how people respond to this sound environment. It’s a new way of experiencing an exhibition, and I hope it will encourage people to look more slowly at the works of art and think about them in new ways.
The May 21 Late Night will focus on the closing of the exhibition The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 which was curated for the DMA by Heather. Visit the Web site for more information about this program.
Amy Wolf
Teaching Programs Coordinator
It’s the end of a long week, and we all deserve a laugh. I had the opportunity recently to revisit a series of video shorts that were created by a few oh-so-smart college students during a course led by my oh-so-smart colleague Molly Kysar. I love these videos. They are presented like commercials for a visit to the DMA and wonderfully represent our brand “Hundreds of Experiences. Have one of your own!” Enjoy the catchy tune and laugh hard.
Nicole Stutzman
Director of Teaching Programs and Partnerships
