Dallas Museum of Art Uncrated

Archive Page 36

Let’s Get BooksmART!

Published December 21, 2016 Creativity , Family Fun 2 Comments
Tags: Arts & Letters Live, authors, books, BooksmART, Collection Connections, creative writing, families, Family, Family Friendly, family learning, First Tuesday, Workshops

Our literary and performing arts series Arts & Letters Live just announced the 2017 lineup of award-winning authors and performers, and we are just overflowing with excitement! Arts & Letters is the only literary series that is part of an art museum (that we know of!), and we love celebrating the connections between reading, writing, and art! Every year we host some wonderful children’s authors, and this year is no different. Get cozy with these books while the weather is still chilly, then come see us at the DMA to make some artful literary connections with the whole family!

Adam Gidwitz
Sunday, February 26, 3:00 p.m.

Adam Gidwitz is the New York Times bestselling author of the Grimm trilogy. He spent six years researching his latest book, The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, the Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, in which the adventures of three children take them through medieval France to escape prejudice and persecution. They save sacred texts from being burned, get taken captive by knights, face a farting dragon, and face a final showdown at Mont Saint-Michel. Learn more.

Before the talk, your family can embark on a scavenger hunt exploring works of art in Art and Nature in the Middle Ages.

Erin and Philip C. Stead
Tuesday, April 4, 11:30 a.m.

Erin and Philip Stead live and work side by side creating heartwarming stories such as A Sick Day for Amos McGee, winner of the 2011 Caldecott Medal. Erin’s forthcoming book Tony returns to themes of friendship and loyalty with the late poet Ed Galing’s tale of a boy and his horse. Philip’s latest, Samson in the Snow, highlights the power of simple acts of kindness to bring hope and light to even the coldest world. Learn more.

Following their talk at 3:30 p.m., join us for an illustration workshop (ages 6 and older) led by Erin and Philip Stead. Advance reservations strongly recommended as space is limited.

Kwame Alexander
Saturday, June 10, 2:00 p.m.

New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander kicks off summer reading with his latest book, The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life. A strategy guide written with middle grade readers in mind but motivational for all ages, The Playbook “rules” contain wisdom from inspiring role models such as Nelson Mandela, Michelle Obama, Lebron James, and more. The author of 21 books, Alexander received the 2015 Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor for his book The Crossover. Learn more.

See the entire lineup for the January-June season to see if your favorite author will be coming to town this year. Hope to see you there!

Madeleine Fitzgerald
Audience Relations Coordinator

Puzzle This!

Published December 21, 2016 Archive , Uncategorized Closed
Tags: crossword puzzle, Dallas Arts District, Dallas Museum of Art, Fair Park, mind games

The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution. – Stephen Sondheim

Finally, the holidays are here and rest is near! But don’t let your brain turn to mush, instead curl up by the fire with this puzzle and tell all else to hush. Test you DMA knowledge with this battle of wits and if you get tired the answer key is at the bottom so you can call it quits.

Good luck and happy Crossword Puzzle Day!

cross-word

ACROSS
2	Until the Tutankhamen exhibition in 2008-09, this 1979 exhibition held the record for the highest attendance (without the date)
5	This woman was the first president of the Dallas Art Association: Mrs. Charles L. / Grace Leake __________
8	This popular evening program was inspired by the 100 Hours event for the museum’s Centennial in January 2003, and was initiated the following year (2 words)
9	Title of a sculpture by Mark di Suvero installed on Ross Plaza
10	This is the name of the blue bird who is the mascot for the DMA’s children’s and family programs

DOWN
1	Title of a popular “frozen” landscape by Frederick Church, installed on Level 4
3	This former director was also a Dallas Morning News art critic, taught at SMU, and has art work in the collection
4	This collection is displayed in a recreated French villa
6	The museum was located in two different buildings here (2 words)
7	This animal, named Sir Lancelot and associated with the Wise Collection of Ancient South American Art, has appeared in three Uncrated blog posts

How did you do? Click here to find out!

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the DMA and Julie Henley is the Communications and Marketing Coordinator.

Twelve Days of DMA

Published December 20, 2016 DMA Store 1 Comment

Sleigh the Holidays with Shop DMA.

On the first day of DMA my true love gave to me a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the second day of DMA my true love gave to me two tea cups
and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the third day of DMA my true love gave to me three tube pens,
two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the fourth day of DMA my true love gave to me four calling phones,
three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the fifth day of DMA my true love gave to me five cats cuddling,
four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the sixth day of DMA my true love gave to me six dollies a playing,
five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the seventh day of DMA my true love gave to me seven socks a smelling,
six dollies a playing, five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the eighth day of DMA my true love gave to me eight magnets mewing,
seven socks a smelling, six dollies a playing, five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the ninth day of DMA my true love gave to me nine dinos dancing,
eight magnets mewing, seven socks a smelling, six dollies a playing, five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the tenth day of DMA my true love gave to me ten llamas a leaping,
nine dinos dancing, eight magnets mewing, seven socks a smelling, six dollies a playing, five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the eleventh day of DMA my true love gave to me eleven puzzles puzzling,
ten llamas a leaping, nine dinos dancing, eight magnets mewing, seven socks a smelling, six dollies a playing, five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

On the twelfth day of DMA my true love gave to me twelve shakers shaking,
eleven puzzles puzzling, ten llamas a leaping, nine dinos dancing, eight magnets mewing, seven socks a smelling, six dollies a playing, five cats cuddling, four calling phones, three tube pens, two tea cups, and a Pegasus in a periphery.

Julie Henley is the Communications and Marketing Coordinator at the DMA.

Gaming in the Galleries

Published December 19, 2016 Collections Closed
Tags: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA. gallery games, McD2017

When friends and family gather from far and wide over the holiday season, awkward moments tend to be inevitable. This year, however, be the conqueror of confrontation, the hostess with the mostest, and the vanquisher of uncomfortable silence. How, you may ask? Over winter break, visit the Dallas Museum of Art and arm yourself with this gallery game—believe me, it’s more fun than a stale round of Monopoly! Suitable for all ages, distant relatives, and potentially odd social outings.

Directions:

Print enough cards for each member of your party to have at least one (or if you don’t have access to a printer, you can easily draw your own icons!).
Cut out each individual icon and place in a plastic bag.
Bring your whole group to an exhibition or gallery of the Museum of your choosing.
Once in the gallery you selected, give your group 10 to 15 minutes to explore.
Bring the group back together, and then have each person in your group draw a card from the bag.
Each person leads the group to the artwork they chose to match their card.
While at each artwork, discuss your findings.
Try questions like
- Why did you choose that particular artwork? Does anyone feel differently?
- Who would you give this artwork to? Why?
- Where would you hang this piece?

Here’s what each icon symbolizes:

Download the symbols here to print at home.

After everyone in your group has gone, you can challenge yourselves to come up with your own cards, or go visit another part of the Museum to play again!

Expand your visit with the DMA app! Get to know the collection in a new way with the tours found in the “Explore” section. Download the app now!

Grace Diepenbrock is the McDermott Intern for Family and Access Teaching at the DMA.

Friday Photos: Imagination Station

Published December 16, 2016 Friday Photos Closed
Tags: community outreach, Go van Gogh, McD2017

Laura Owens, Untitled, 2004, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund © Laura Owens.

The Go van Gogh program brings the Dallas Museum of Art to Pre-K through 6th grade students in schools throughout North Texas free of charge. This week the Go Van Gogh team took one of their programs: Imaginary Worlds, to an after school program at the Salvation Army Pleasant Grove Center. The Students looked closely at works of art and created their own imaginary creatures, with their own worlds, inspired by Laura Owens’ Untitled.

The students really let their creativity and imagination shine and their creations were out of this world!

Go van Gogh is currently preparing for the spring semester of the school year. More information about how your class can enjoy the program can be found here.

Marta Torres
McDermott Graduate Intern for Visitor Engagement

Holiday Greetings from the Archives

Published December 15, 2016 Archive 2 Comments
Tags: Christmas, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA, Jerry Doyle, Texas Centennial

Traditionally, the fall and winter holidays are the time when we reach out to family and friends, often with a ubiquitous holiday card, sometimes enclosing new pictures of the family, or a letter trying to stuff in every notable thing anyone in the family has done since the last letter. When I was a kid, we taped the cards we received to a glass door in our living room, and we would try to guess how soon after Thanksgiving we would receive something from that one relative who always sent the first card of the season.

My dad was a graphic designer and had artist friends. Their holiday cards were always my favorites, and I could often guess who sent the card based on its creative style. Finding artists’ holiday cards in the DMA Archives always reminds me of that tradition, so I thought I would share a series of cards by cartoonist Jerry Doyle from the early 1930s.

Doyle family holiday card, c. 1933, from the Jack Nolan Scrapbook

Jerry Doyle (1898-1986) was the editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Record and Philadelphia Daily News, and was known for his political cartoons about the New Deal and World War II. And, if you are a cartoonist, you create holiday cartoons featuring your family.

Cover of the Doyle Family holiday card, 1932, Jack Nolan Scrapbook.

Cover of the 1932 Doyle family holiday card, from the Jack Nolan Scrapbook

Inside of the 1932 Doyle family holiday card, Jack Nolan Scrapbook.

Inside of the 1932 Doyle family holiday card, from the Jack Nolan Scrapbook

The Doyle Family holiday card for the 1931-32 season, served a dual purpose of holiday greetings and birth announcement, Jack Nolan Scrapbook.

The Doyle family holiday card for the 1931-32 season served the dual purpose of holiday greeting and birth announcement, from the Jack Nolan Scrapbook

You may wonder how the archives came to have holiday cards from a Philadelphia cartoonist. It’s a round-about tale, but makes sense in the end. Doyle sent the holiday greetings to Jack Nolan of Trenton, New Jersey. In 1936, Nolan was employed by Eastman Kodak and worked as a vendor at the Texas Centennial. He kept a scrapbook with ephemera from the Texas Centennial and the Great Lakes Exposition, as well as other traditional scrapbook fare like ticket stubs, invitations, identification cards, newspaper articles, and other small paper items, including the three holiday cards from Jerry Doyle. The archives acquired the scrapbook because of its Texas Centennial connection—the book itself even has a Centennial seal on the cover. I was happy to find that the scrapbook contained cool things that weren’t even related to the Centennial.

Happy Holidays!

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the DMA.

He(ART) History

Published December 13, 2016 Art & Teaching Closed
Tags: self-guided tours, teen programs, teens

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My name is Kenzie Grogan, and I am a senior at Lake Highlands High School. This year, I was accepted into the Professional Internship Program at my school. PIP is designed to give seniors experience in the career they are interested in pursuing in college. During my junior year, I ultimately decided that I wanted to focus on art history and see what a degree in it could lead to in the real world. Art has always been an area of interest for me, and history has always been my favorite subject in school. So, I figured why not give art history a try and see if I like it?

My internship began in September and I was extremely nervous. I was shocked when my teacher told me that I was placed with Teen Programs at the DMA – I wasn’t expecting to be placed at a museum. Throughout my internship I got to participate in a variety of programs, from helping paint a canvas for Dallas Pride and assisting with Family Workshops, to helping with Arts and Letters Live and getting to see Cary Elwes.

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Since I worked with Teen Programs, a lot of my time was spent helping prepare for Teen Tours on Thursday nights, and even assisting in writing a few of them. Researching the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck opened my eyes to the incredible symbolism in the painting. It was the first time in my life where I actually wanted to study something more. I ended up teaching part of the Renaissance tour, which was a little intimidating. Let me tell you, the teenagers who go on the Teen Tours know their stuff! It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them could get up and teach the tour themselves.

When I wasn’t working on Teen Tours, my time was spent working on my official research project: an interactive teen guide for the Museum. The DMA has a series of self-guided tours for families and adults, but it lacks one specifically for teens. What better way to make a tour for teens than to have one design it?

The Guitarist, Pablo Picasso, 1965, Oil on Canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Art Museum League Fund, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 1987.371

Since my internship has been all about art history, I wanted my teen guide to reflect that experience. Narrowing down the art I wanted to use was difficult, but I chose what I felt best represented a broad range: Renaissance, Impressionism, Cubism, American, and Surrealism.

The next step was researching and writing the informational parts that would go into the final tour guide. As I began writing, I saw a universal theme throughout the paintings: each painting represented a new genre that went against the popular art style of the time. Because artists rebelled against society in their own way, I decided to call the guide Rebels With a Cause.

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All of the tours at the Museum have some sort of interactive aspect about them, whether it be prompts for drawing or questions to answer. Since music and art are my favorite things, I decided I wanted to create a playlist that represents each piece in the guide. This way, teens are able to connect with the painting using two senses. For anyone without an electronic device, there are other ways to interact with the art, like taking a selfie with Frida Kahlo or using color swatches to notice new colors in a painting.

Participating in this internship has been the best experience of my high school career. I’ve learned so much in the short amount of time I was here, and I’ve gotten the opportunity to work with so many amazing people. I can now say I plan to study art history in college because I’ve seen first-hand all the different careers it can lead to. I’ve loved getting to come to the Museum, and I definitely plan to come back and volunteer as much as I can.

Be sure to check out Rebels with a Cause at the DMA this spring and check how other teens have left their mark at the Museum!

Kenzie Grogan
Teen Programs Intern

Sights, Sounds, and Smells

Published December 12, 2016 Behind-the-Scenes , Center for Creative Connections , Collections Closed
Tags: Center for Creative Connections, Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA, Pop-Up Art Spot

Recently, the DMA’s Center for Creative Connections team and our Manager of Access Programs, Emily Wiskera, put their heads together to develop a new Pop-Up Art Spot with sensory-based activities. On Saturdays in December, pop in to the Museum to see Passages in Modern Art: 1946-1996 for FREE in the Barrel Vault Gallery on Level 1 and enhance your art experience.

With these Sensory Squares, you can explore what works of art might feel like if we were allowed to touch them. Look at nearby works of art as you feel each square and consider which works you think relate to each texture.

Check out a bag of scent bottles and a ring of art cards. Sample the scents and reflect on what memories or images come to mind when you smell them. Find each work of art on the cards provided and compare the scents to the artwork. Which scents do you connect with each work of art?

Interested in origami? Pick up a piece of paper and try your hand at figuring out the folds Dorothea Rockburne made to create the form in Locus Series #6.

Jessica Fuentes is the Manager of Gallery Interpretation and the Center for Creative Connections at the DMA.

Sensory Sensation

Published December 9, 2016 Behind-the-Scenes , Center for Creative Connections , Education , Exhibitions Closed
Tags: cats, Dallas Museum of Art, Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt, DMA, education, sensory

At the DMA, you can currently visit Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt, featuring works from the extensive holdings of the Brooklyn Museum. The appeal of an exhibition about both cats and ancient Egypt seemed like the perfect opportunity for the DMA to experiment with a multisensory interpretive space within an exhibition setting, essentially creating a satellite, smaller-scale Center for Creative Connections (C3). While C3 is an experimental space focused on innovative and diverse ways of interpreting a selection of DMA artworks, the Divine Felines Creative Connections Gallery is intended to contextualize the exhibition through a variety of interpretive interactives. In this space, visitors can step up to a listening station and hear tales of the Egyptian deities, sniff incenses that would have filled ancient temples, or see a real mummy and watch a film about mummification.

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This diagram shows the layout of the 1,600 square feet of gallery space at the back of the Divine Felines exhibition.

This educational gallery also provides DMA staff with insight into our visitors’ interests and preferences. The more we know about our visitors’ expectations and interests, the more equipped we are to provide them with meaningful gallery interactives. First, we keep track of the number of visitors who enter the Divine Felines Creative Connections Gallery and compare it to the total number of visitors to the exhibition. In October, nearly 70% of visitors to the exhibition entered the Creative Connections Gallery. And, interestingly, Thursdays saw the highest percentage of visitors entering the space.

Additionally, three days a week for two hours at a time, we observe visitors in the gallery to determine which activities they interact with and how long they engage within the space. To structure our observations, we created a tracking sheet (see image above) where we note participation in specific activities and the total duration of their visit to the space. Our system of tracking notes depth of engagement within an activity. For example, in relation to the short film about mummification we are curious to know if the visitor:

Reads the label outside of the film room.
Enters the film room.
Sits down on the bench.
Watches the whole film.

Finally, we ask half of the visitors we observe if they are willing to take a quick survey on an iPad. The questions we ask relate to visitors’ motivations for entering the educational space and what components visitors would like to see in future educational spaces.

So far, we’ve noticed a few interesting trends. In October, for example, the majority of observed visitors spent time looking at the mummy or Thoth sculpture and visited the scent bar. Here is the breakdown of how many visitors participated in each activity in October.

Other data points to date:

Visitors spent an average of 10 minutes in the space.
Over 70% of visitors entered the gallery with a group; 30% were alone.
On average, visitors smelled 8 out of the 10 fragrances at the scent bar.
On average, visitors listened to 2 out of the 5 stories at the listening station.
Slightly more visitors picked up the all-ages self-guide than the family guide.

*Note: Visitors were able to choose more than one response.

We would love your feedback, too. What educational tools would you like to see at the DMA?

Jessica Fuentes is the Manager of Gallery Interpretation and the Center for Creative Connections at the DMA. Andrea Severin Goins is the Head of Interpretation at the DMA.

Friday Photos: Message Received

Published December 9, 2016 Friday Photos 1 Comment
Tags: Center for Creative Connections, Dallas Museum of Art, visitor response

Earlier this fall, the Center for Creative Connections installed various communication devices that span several decades of the 20th century. By displaying these works of art together, we encourage visitors to consider the ways that communication has changed over the years and to notice the design ideas that have remained the same.

Recently, we added a writing activity at a nearby table so that visitors would have the opportunity to put down their smartphones and take a moment to hand-write or type a letter. Visitors of all ages have been especially taken by the typewriter. It’s been fun to see the look of joy come over faces of visitors who are sitting down to use a typewriter for the first time, or revisiting an old, familiar experience.

The typed responses we’ve received so far are often cryptic and intriguing like these:

The Minotaur Pumpkin

Though my favorite response has been this hand-written jewel by a 9-year-old:

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Stop by the Center for Creative Connections during your next visit to the DMA and take a moment to share your thoughts or write a letter to a friend.

Jessica Fuentes
Manager of Gallery Interpretation and the Center for Creative Connections

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