We reached out to our curators and invited them to shed light on significant and/or recent acquisitions that resonate with them during American Artist Appreciation Month. Find out more about the contemporary piece by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and 1930 Marsden Hartley painting that they picked!
Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Montana Memories: White Pine, 1989, mixed media on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2020.15
The paintings of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith—an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana—comment on the ongoing effects of US colonization and environmental destruction. Seen this way, the linear divisions of the ochre ground reference the US government partitioning of her natal land, while the foregrounded symbols enact a tension between settler and indigenous cultures.
Sue Canterbury, The Pauline Gill Sullivan Curator of American Art
Marsden Hartley, Mountains, no. 19, 1930, oil on board, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., 2008.24.McD
I see the colorful splendor of a New England autumn as an alluring characteristic particularly associated with America. It is the motif to which Hartley turned in 1930 to allay criticisms that his work was not sufficiently “American” in its subject matter. These paintings of the White Mountains helped turn the tide of his career.
We reached out to our curators and invited them to shed light on significant and/or recent acquisitions that resonate with them during American Artist Appreciation Month. From Diego Rivera to Marsden Hartley, find out what works they picked!
Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Montana Memories: White Pine, 1989, mixed media on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2020.15
The paintings of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith—an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana—comment on the ongoing effects of US colonization and environmental destruction. Seen this way, the linear divisions of the ochre ground reference the US government partitioning of her natal land, while the foregrounded symbols enact a tension between settler and indigenous cultures.
Mark Castro, Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art
Rivera’s works often depict aspects of Mexican culture that make the country unique. This flower seller acts as an avatar for Mexico’s indigenous peoples and cultural traditions. For Rivera, these communities had ancient histories that gave them a greater sense of authenticity and history than could be found in the United States.
Sue Canterbury, The Pauline Gill Sullivan Curator of American Art
Marsden Hartley, Mountains, no. 19, 1930, oil on board, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., 2008.24.McD
I see the colorful splendor of a New England autumn as an alluring characteristic particularly associated with America. It is the motif to which Hartley turned in 1930 to allay criticisms that his work was not sufficiently “American” in its subject matter. These paintings of the White Mountains helped turn the tide of his career.
After recently acquiring a piece of Caddo pottery by Chase Kahwinhut Earles, we reached out to the artist to hear about his practice and process. Listen to his introductory message and read his Q&A conversation with Dr. Michelle Rich,The Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of the Arts of the Americas at the DMA.
Chase: Kuha-ahat [Hello]. Kumbahkeehah Kahwinhut [My name is Kahwinhut]. Hello my name is Chase Kahwinhut Earles, and I’m a member of the Caddo Nation. I make traditional pottery and also contemporary pieces incorporating modern interpretations of our culture.
Chase Kahwinhut Earles, 2019. Photo by Travis Caperton, University of Oklahoma
Michelle:Can you describe the process by which you make your pottery?
Chase: I make pottery the ancestral, or traditional, Caddo way. I dig the clay myself from the banks of different rivers, mostly the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma. I process it to dry it and break it down into usable material. I collect and crush freshwater mussel shell to mix with the clay as a temper, which helps strengthen it so the vessels survive through the pit-firing process. All of my pieces are hand built using the coil method. I don’t use a wheel. After a piece dries, I burnish it with smooth stones to make it shiny. There’s no glaze. Then I pit fire the vessels. The final step is to engrave the design into the carbonized surface of the pots.
Photo by Travis Caperton, University of Oklahoma
Michelle:Pit firing is very different from kiln firing. Will you talk about that a little bit?
Chase: I fire my pots in a traditional pit fire. This is different than the modern kiln, which slowly heats the pottery until it gets to high temperatures. Our pit firing is started by stacking sticks and lighting an open ground fire. First, we heat the pottery near the fire to drive out moisture, and then they go right into the fire. I’ll add more wood, and the larger fire will get to a high enough temperature to vitrify the clay. You can see the pots start glowing! Sometimes things can go wrong, and if a pot gets overfired it will become fragile or might even spawl or crack. Large pieces, such as the Alligator Gar, can be fired in sections or with multiple fires.
Michelle:What inspired you to make Caddo pottery?
Chase: My parents took us to the Southwest when we were young. I loved and was inspired by the beautiful Pueblo pottery and wanted to make those beautiful pots. And I did learn how, but realized there was something not right about that, and I came to understand the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. That pointed me in the right direction—to look at my own tribe. I mean, why wouldn’t I have? But I didn’t expect to find anything. Lo and behold, we have one of the biggest pottery traditions in the country, but not many people know about it! Then my purpose was obvious. I dove in, obsessively learning everything about our tribe, our pottery tradition, and our techniques. Jeri Redcorn, a Caddo elder who revived Caddo pottery, helped me get started.
Photo by Travis Caperton, University of Oklahoma
Michelle: The words “contemporary” and “traditional” carry a lot of weight when describing Indigenous arts made in a customary fashion. Where do you situate your work?
Chase: The question of contemporary and traditional is complicated with Native American art, where these words are used to describe the difference between something that’s made in a modern manner or something that’s made exactly how we’ve made things forever. My work up to this point has been primarily trying to save our ancestral and traditional ways of making pottery, so it’s a very ancient style, method, and technique. The present-day definition of “contemporary” is that you’re a living artist. So, in fact, we can be contemporary and traditional at the same time—I’m a living artist producing fine art. But I thought it was important to learn and reestablish our ancestral way in order to have a base to move forward, evolve our work, contribute to Caddo culture, and develop a modern narrative.
Michelle: Are there any works in the DMA’s collection that resonate with you, and why?
Chase: The ancient Caddo pottery resonated with me. It’s always bittersweet seeing our ancient work in museums because these are cultural belongings. Caddo pottery is in museums all over the country, and also overseas. It was sought after and prized! It was a prolific tradition—I was once told by an archaeologist that there are probably between 60,000 to 80,000 Caddo pots in museums. But so few people know about Caddo pottery. Seeing it on view for the public to learn from makes me happy. Our history and our culture is not gone, and we, the Caddo people, are still here too.
Chase Kahwinhut Earles, Batah Kuhuh Alligator Gar Fish Effigy Bottle, 2018, Caddo, ceramic, Dallas Museum of Art, The Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Fund, 2020.9
Michelle:What does it mean to you to have the DMA acquire your work?
Chase: It means the world to me. When I set out to make pottery and art, specifically our tribal art, it was clear that not many people knew about the Caddo, even though we were once a huge, great society. And no one knew about the pottery, and the tradition kind of got forgotten. Having my work in institutions and museums like this is the ultimate goal—to share our beautiful artistic traditions with people and educate them about our identity, our culture, and our continued presence. So, on the scale of importance, it’s up there at the top!
Michelle: What do you envision to be the lasting impact of your ceramic practice?
Chase: When I first started, I had this grand vision to promote Caddo culture and pottery to everyone in the world, or at least to everyone in the country who is interested in Native art! I soon found out that is a daunting and overwhelming task for one person. So, I do my best. There are a couple of things I’m trying to accomplish now, one being to educate people about our tribe, our culture, our art, and our beautiful, unique pottery. It’s different than any other tribal pottery. The other goal is to show our young Caddo, and even the adults, that this is our cultural identity, and that they can do this. The young ones can grow up and produce Caddo pottery or our tribal arts and make something of themselves, and make a living doing it. I’m trying to carve a niche for our Caddo people, and to make it easier for others by having an established place in the art world.
Also, I can’t thank the DMA enough, especially for this opportunity. It goes a long way to educate people about the importance of Native American artwork in the context of American art. I applaud that effort and am very thankful for it.
In fall 2019, Sandra Cinto’s large-scale mural Landscape of a Lifetime was brought to life in the Museum’s Concourse by the artist, along with the help of some DMA staff and a team of artist assistants from around Dallas. The team spent roughly three weeks working on the 153-foot mural, which features 24 shades of blue shifting from night to day, intricate pen drawings of celestial elements such as stars and clouds, and low-level audio of crashing waves, rustling leaves, birds, and crickets.
Sandra Cinto and team working on the mural
To coincide with the recent launch of our virtual tour of the mural, we reached out to some of the participants who helped bring this work of art together and asked them to reflect on their experience. Here’s what they had to say:
“Learning Sandra’s simple drawing vocabulary of dots and lines, which we deployed in the cavernous Concourse in the form of stars, bridges, mountains, and clouds, created a link to an ancient human past of painting cave walls, tombs, temples, canyons, and shelters with an extended family that speaks a common language of art.” —Tino Ward
Sandra Cinto: Landscape of a Lifetime at the Dallas Museum of Art
Cinto working with an artist assistant
“Being an artist is a selfish pursuit. Even when it comes to a mural, helpers are treated as a necessary evil, paycheck players brought in to meet a deadline. Sandra Cinto is a magical exception to that rule. Her mural, Landscape of a Lifetime, allowed us lucky few to feel truly invested as this piece took shape, while Sandra deftly handled the key elements. Rather than keeping us at arm’s length, she built a nest in the clouds and drew us in. I was given the job of drawing stars. Up close, they seemed tedious and mundane, but when taken in from a distance, they shimmer—not unlike Sandra herself. I had the privilege of being part of a project that was communal in the best sense of the word—an enterprise of the spirit. Thank you, Sandra.” —Russell Sublette
“Working on Landscape of a Lifetime was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. The opportunity to learn from such a successful artist was an honor. I made many meaningful connections that I am eternally grateful for.” —Meena Valentine
Meena Valentine contributing to the mural
“Sandra Cinto firmly believes that everyone can draw. The elements that you see throughout the mural are composed of simple marks—the stars are lines radiating from a center point, the mountains quick penstrokes—but with many people drawing, they come together in a multitude to form a harmonious whole. That is another component of Sandra’s philosophy: communities of people can be an incredible source of love, care, and creative potential.” —Hilde Nelson
What items would you take with you if you had a few hours to prepare for a weeklong trip? If you’re like me, you might drag your suitcase down from the storage shelf in the garage and lay out a few outfit options with a pair of good walking shoes, the necessary toiletries, phone charger, and books. But let’s imagine for a moment that we didn’t have a few hours to prepare, and our weeklong trip was actually a permanent move. What items would you choose if you were leaving your home forever and you could only take what you could carry? What if your move wasn’t your decision, and it was forced upon you? Or maybe your move was your decision and you are hoping for a better life with more opportunities?
This is the heartbeat of the exhibition My|gration, which is a play on words describing the personal journey of migration experienced by our community and by artists throughout history. As a graphic designer at the Museum, I was very excited to have the opportunity to take the lead in designing the environmental graphics for this exhibition. Working closely with the Interpretation, Education, and Exhibition teams, we wanted to create an exhibition that encouraged the visitor to experience the world from another person’s perspective, and in particular how life and art are affected by immigration or displacement.
As we started designing, we thought about the natural journey of the earth as it travels around the sun, bringing us day and night, dusk and dawn. We mirrored that with the idea that many people take similar journeys throughout their lives, with periods of light and dark, clarity and ambiguity. These thoughts informed our earthy and atmospheric color palette.
I started to create graphic elements that would help tie this metaphorical journey with the physical journey of movement and migration. I illustrated a compass rose that represented the many directions life could take us, both emotionally and physically. We used suitcases and luggage tags to suggest the idea of items you might journey with. Then I started working with an illustrated map of Dallas, zooming in and making it the color of earth—a rusty, warm bronze. I laid it out at the bottom of the entry walls with a sunset gradient fading into a starry night sky.
As a focal point of the exhibition, DMA Head of Interpretation Dr. Emily Schiller provided facts about Dallas’s immigrant population to highlight the diversity in our own community. I used the illustrated map of Dallas here as well in this bilingual infographic.
The exhibition space was organized into sections featuring artwork that fell into three categories: Arrivals (artists who immigrated to the US), Departures (artists who emigrated from the US), and In Transit (art reflecting our connected world). For these section headers, I designed circular blade signs that mimicked ones you might see on the road or at a train station while traveling.
The circle used for the blade signs repeats itself throughout the graphics in the space. I used it frequently to suggest multiple meanings: (1) the rose compass, (2) the “you are here” icon on a map, and (3) the metaphorical idea that circles are continuous, much like the personal journeys of our lives.
Summer is a popular time for birding. Binoculars optional—all you really need to do is look and listen and you’ll see that birds are everywhere: working, singing, crafting. However, some birders know that they have to consider their own safety and security while viewing birds, not because of the dangers of wildlife but because of racism. With the recent viral video of the false police report made by a white woman against an African American man birding in Central Park, birding has become part of the national dialogue around race. Within 48 hours of the birder’s video post, which took place on the same day that George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, an enterprising group of nature enthusiasts, ecologists, and science educators joined forces to create the first ever Black Birders Week to bring awareness to issues of race and the outdoors. I spoke to three organizers of the group about the video, birds, art, and more.
From left: Nicole Jackson, Kassandra Ford, Ashley Gary
Nicole Jackson, Program Coordinator at The Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, told me that such incidents of racism directed at Black birders and outdoor enthusiasts “is something that happens more often than people realize.” Kassandra Ford, a PhD candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, echoed this, saying, “I wish I could say I was surprised by [the video], but I wasn’t at all.” Ashley Gary, a freelance Science Communicator also known as The Wildlife Host, remarked, “It is exhausting to be a Black person because there are so many things you have to worry about.”
Although Black Birders Week was formed to address racial inequities, its aim is also to highlight the positive impacts of African Americans in birding, environmental work, and the STEM fields. I decided to ask these three founding members of Black Birders Week to weigh in on some works in the DMA’s collection depicting birds, since birds’ relationship to human society is nothing new, and in fact goes back millennia.
Pendant: bird-man, Tairona, 1200–1500, Tumbaga, Dallas Museum of Art, the Nora and John Wise Collection, bequest of Nora Wise, 1989.W.474
The first piece, a bird-man gold pendant, would have been worn around the neck by elite men in what is present-day Colombia. The piece may reflect the Tairona belief that religious leaders could temporarily leave their human form to embody animals and gain knowledge from them. This pendant shows a bird of prey in somewhat of a dual human-animal form as the bird wears earrings and perhaps a garment. I asked Kassandra for her insights on birds of prey. “Birds are just,” Kassandra then paused, “excuse my language—but they’re badass. They’re intense, they’re ferocious, especially birds of prey. They have an aura of pride and power in the way that they hold themselves, in the way that they dive-bomb prey. That kind of attitude is like a warrior.” Indeed the piece may very well have been worn with that same aplomb.
Dance headdress, Igbo peoples, mid-20th century, wood, paint, metal, and fiber, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., 1975.27.McD
This dance headdressby an artist of the Igbo of present-day southeastern Nigeria would have been worn in dynamic display during a masquerade. The carving depicts a seat for the spirits, of which the birds may be indicative as messengers to the spirit world. Ashley found the bird figures in this piece to be observing the activity from all angles, suggesting omniscience. She compared it to Edgar Allan Poe’s infamous Raven, who silently watches and knows all, as the poem goes: “the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core.”
Double-spout strap-handle vessel depicting a falcon, Paracas, 500–400 BCE, ceramic and resin-suspended paint, Dallas Museum of Art, The Nora and John Wise Collection, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jake L. Hamon, the Eugene McDermott Family, Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, and Mr. and Mrs. John D. Murchison, 1976.W.85
The double-spout vessel depicting a falcon is a funerary object from Peru’s Paracas peninsula. Many two-spouted vessels were musical devices that whistled when poured. Bird imagery is common in Paracas art, and music was also a crucial element of life, including in burial rituals, festivals, and ceremonial communications with ancestors. Since birds are among the most magisterial song makers in the animal kingdom, it seems fitting that a culture highly valuing music would also esteem an animal known for impressive sounds.
Bird calls play a major role in how birders learn to locate and learn about a bird’s life. Ashley noted that birds have the unique ability to sing two notes at once, since birds produce sounds from an organ called the syrinx, a two-sided voice box in their chest. According to author David Sibley,birds sing to communicate and mark territory. They can read their audience too, as they sing differently to mates than to rivals, and some species have over 200 songs in their repertoire. To find out more about bird behaviors, tune in to our Arts & Letters Live event with David Sibley, available now through July 28.
All three birders we interviewed spoke of the meditative aspect of birding, how it quiets the mind and fuels the spirit. The vast array of artistic depictions of birds, Nicole speculated, may reflect the dichotomy between the ubiquity of birds in our lives and their simultaneous mystery. “Birds are everywhere,” Nicole observed, “but there’s the dynamic that we don’t know everything about them. It’ll be a lifetime before you’re close to knowing everything about birds.” In a time when many people are aiming for social change, Nicole’s final observation struck me as a potent lesson to learn from the only surviving dinosaurs: “Birds are very resilient and very adaptable.”The intersection of nature and society also struck a note for me in one of Kassandra’s effusions about the pleasures of birding: “Birds can be unapologetically themselves without worrying about being judged. We as humans can learn from them.”
Dr.Carolee Klimchock is a Program Manager for Arts & Letters Live at the DMA.
We reached out to Break Bread, Break Borders, one of our community partners for the My|gration exhibition, and invited them to share a favorite recipe from their kitchen, as well as provide some background on their organization. Follow these steps to learn how to make a Syrian-style chicken kabsa dish, and find out more about this local nonprofit that “caters with a cause” in their message below.
Chicken Kabsa: Syrian Style (feeds 4 people)
Syrian Style Chicken Kabsa
Ingredients:
2 cups basmati rice
1 whole chicken cut into pieces or 4 thighs
1 medium size onion
5 pieces of minced garlic
1 green pepper
2 green chili peppers
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup tomato sauce
Handful of raisins (can skip)
Nuts (almonds) for decoration (can skip)
Spices and herbs:
Salt
Black pepper
Juice of 1 lime
2 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves
3 cloves
5 cardamom pods
1 teaspoon of “7 Spices” mix
1 teaspoon kabsa spice mix
1 teaspoon ground ginger powder
Parsley for garnish (optional)
BBBB Community Cooks Khuloud Sultan (image left), and Rania Alahmad (image right)
Preparation:
Chop onions and pepper finely
Add oil in pot
Add onions first; when it turns a bit brown, add garlic
Add the rest of the veggies and mix
Add tomato sauce
Add salt and all spices
Lower heat and let it cook for about 5 minutes
Add washed chicken pieces to the mix
Mix for a little bit and then add water until chicken is covered
Let it cook and boil until chicken is fully cooked
Wash rice very well
Put rice in a pot; add the chicken stock to the rice (for every cup of rice, add a cup and a half of the chicken stock)
Let it boil and then lower heat under it
Add some raisins to the rice 7-10 min before it’s fully cooked
Don’t mix the raisins, only cover the rice and let it cook
Bake chicken in the oven at 275 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown
Roast nuts in pan until golden brown
Before serving the rice, mix it lightly with a bit of ghee
Serve rice in serving tray and add the chicken, nuts and minced parsley on top
Enjoy!
BBBB Community Cook Rania Alahmad, serving her father’s recipe of Chicken Kabsa
June was first declared World Refugee Awareness Month in 2001. Since then, June has been a time to acknowledge the strength, courage, and perseverance of millions of refugees who live around the globe. By definition, a refugee is someone who fled his or her home and country owing to “a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” according to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention. Many refugees are in exile to escape the effects of natural or human-made disasters. These are the heroic journeys that inspired the show My|gration at the DMA, and our organization, Break Bread, Break Borders, is honored to be a participant in this community project.
Based in Dallas, Texas, Break Bread, Break Borders (BBBB) is a “catering with a cause” social enterprise, economically empowering women from war-torn countries by teaching them how to earn a living by honing their cooking and entrepreneurial skills. Professional chefs, restaurants, caterers, and culinary consultants mentor refugee women apprentices, who earn food service industry licenses and certifications. BBBB’s women also learn to share their powerful stories with diners, creating a unique cultural exchange.
Jin-Ya Huang founded Break Bread, Break Borders in 2017 to honor the legacy of her late mother—chef, restaurateur, and community leader Margaret Huang. Through food, culture, and powerful storytelling, we break bread with the community, breaking down borders at the same time.
BBBB has served more than 10,000 people, catering events for clients including the City of Dallas, Texas Women’s Foundation, George W. Bush Institute, Texas Lyceum, Toyota of North America, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, Social Venture Partners-Dallas, and many more. We have been named among Dallas’s Top 50 Most Innovative Social Enterprises by Dallas Innovates. BBBB is part of a cohort of social enterprises at The Hunt Institute at Southern Methodist University. Airbnb International has featured BBBB as a social impact experience partner. Our founder Jin-Ya Huang was selected as a 2019 Food Leader of the Year by Slow Food USA. In 2020 Huang was selected for the prestigious Presidential Leadership Scholars Program, allowing her the chance to work with former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on community projects to create lasting social change.
Standing on the side of freedom, Break Bread, Break Borders proudly educates on the ideas of equity, anti-racism, and eradication of xenophobia. One bite at a time, we will continue to share the taste of hope, compassion, and transformation to the world. Enclosed here is a recipe from one of our BBBB Community Cooks, Rania Alahmad. Please enjoy her Chicken Kabsa Syrian Style with your families, neighbors, and loved ones. Happy cooking, y’all!
Jin-Ya Huang is the founder of Break Bread, Break Borders, a social enterprise developing a culinary training program to help refugee women from war-torn countries find food service job opportunities by sharing their storytelling through food and culture. She is a member of Orchid Giving Circle and a fellow of the 2020/21 Presidential Leadership Scholars Program.
Among the treasures in the DMA Archives are four letters exchanged in the summer of 1941 between artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi and the Director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Richard Foster Howard. For more than 40 years, these letters were the only works by Kuniyoshi housed in the DMA. Since 1988, Museum visitors have become acquainted with him through Bather with Cigarette. This star of the American art collection is currently on view in My|gration in the Center for Creative Connections.
Displayed alongside works by artists and designers including Hans Hoffman, Peter Muller-Munk, and An-My Lê, Kuniyoshi’s painting represents one of the 14 immigration stories shared in the exhibition’s “Arrivals” section. The 1941 correspondence between the 51-year-old artist and the DMFA director sheds light on the challenges and discrimination Kuniyoshi experienced in the US.
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, from the Archives of American Art, photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son
Kuniyoshi arrived alone in Spokane, Washington, as a teenager in 1906. Although he initially planned to stay only a few years, by 1910 his artistic talents had led him to New York City. There he enrolled in a series of schools and entered the circle of leading figures in American art.
Bather with Cigarette was completed in 1924—the same year Congress effectively banned immigration from Asian countries. Kuniyoshi had already witnessed the government’s discriminatory policies. His marriage to fellow artist Katherine Schmidt in 1919 caused her to lose her citizenship. In 1922 the Supreme Court ruled that Japanese people were not the same as “free white persons” and thus did not have the same rights to naturalization.
Fast forward to the summer of 1941. Headlines about naval attacks and international conflict fueled racism and xenophobia in the US. Kuniyoshi, like many American artists, wanted to travel the country in search of new inspiration. Unlike most of his peers, he could not embark on a trip without being hyper-aware that his appearance and national origins could be perceived as threatening. To mitigate the risk of police detention, he asked regional arts leaders to provide letters verifying his profession. The DMA Archives holds Kuniyoshi’s initial request to Howard (May 22, 1941), the director’s two-part response (here and here, May 26, 1941), and the artist’s thank you (mailed mid-journey from Colorado Springs, July 9, 1941).
Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s original letter to Richard Foster Howard. Click HERE to expand.
In December 1941, Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the US declared war. Kuniyoshi was not among the 120,000 people of Japanese heritage who were forcibly moved to internment camps in early 1942. He was, however, declared an “enemy alien.” Federal authorities impounded his bank account and confiscated his binoculars and camera as potential spy equipment. Despite this maltreatment, he spent the war years working for the federal government as a graphic artist and radio broadcaster (valued for his fluency in Japanese). Following WWII, Kuniyoshi became the first living artist to be honored with a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1948. Although he had identified as an American and lived in the US for over 40 years, immigration laws prevented him from becoming an American citizen before his death in 1953.
Emily Schiller is the Head of Interpretation at the DMA.
It’s always fascinating to see which objects in the DMA’s collection artists are drawn to because it can be a window into what is on their mind and how they think about their own work. For the last three years, the DMA has partnered with the local arts nonprofit Arttitude to celebrate the work of LGBTQ+ visual and performing artists in Dallas through programs like State of the Arts and our annual Pride Block Party. Since we are unable to tour the galleries with local artists for Pride Month this year, we reached out to two artists who exhibited in Arttitude’s recent MariconX show and invited them to find and respond to an object in the DMA’s collection that resonates with their own work. Here is what they had to say:
Armando Sebastián is a Dallas-based painter whose work draws on Mexican folk art and his own life experiences to explore themes of gender and identity. Sebastián describes his style as akin to magical realism, and he is particularly interested in referencing the traditional Mexican folk art genre of ex voto paintings depicting divine interventions into human misfortunes.
Here are a few recent paintings from Armando Sebastián. You can see more of his work on his website and on Instagram.
Images: Armando Sebastián, Los Amados / Live in Harmony, 2020; I know who I am, 2020; The Dreamers, 2019
Unknown artist, Christ as Savior of the World (Salvator Mundi), late 18th century, oil on canvas,Dallas Museum of Art, The Cleofas and Celia de la Garza Collection, gift of Mary de la Garza-Hanna and Virginia de la Garza and an anonymous donor, 1994.37.1
“The angels above are conspiring to the master plan on earth. The trinity holds flaming hearts, perhaps the interpretation of humankind. On the ground you see the depiction of evil, a beast eating a fruit. The ladder to the heavens is full of obstacles that makes it impossible for anyone to climb. I personally appreciate narrative in art, the possibility to convey complex ideas and hidden meanings through your work.”
Olivia Peregrino is a Dallas-based photographer working in portraiture and documentary photography. She began her career as a photojournalist, and her work has expanded to include uplifting portraits of women and Latinx LGBTQ+ communities, event photography, and documentary filmmaking.
Here are a few recent photographs by Olivia Peregrino. To see more of her work, follow her on Instagram or visit her website.
This slideshow contains nudity.
Images: Olivia Peregrino, Omar, El Salvador, LGBT Immigrant, ongoing project, 2020; Rafael, Colombia, LGBT Immigrant, ongoing project, 2020; Wandel, Dominican Republic, LGBT Immigrant, ongoing project, 2020; Melissa, Natural Bodies, 2018
“Robert Mapplethorpe is one of my favorite artists for the beauty of his portraits and his mastery of light and composition. Ajitto’s portrait perfectly reflects Mapplethorpe’s recurring obsessions in his photographs. The representation of the human body through the female and male nude is a theme that I, as an artist, also seek to show in my portraits, but from a feminine and contemporary perspective.”
As a museum, the DMA has not concentrated, historically, on collecting widely in the fields of medieval European art nor Islamic art. There are interesting works in the collection, however, that connect with Spain and its Islamic past. One of these is a serene work by the American painter Paul Cornoyer (1864–1923), Afternoon Madison Square.
Paul Cornoyer, Afternoon Madison Square, 1910, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase, 1914.1
A spectacular tower in the painting, one of New York’s early skyscrapers, reflects the rays of the setting sun in winter. Built at the corner of 26th Street in 1890, it formed part of the Madison Square Garden built by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. Stanford White (1853–1906), the principal architect, built himself an apartment in the tower that must have provided extraordinary views of the city. The tower was inspired by one of the finest architectural survivals from the 12th century worldwide, the minaret of the Almohad mosque in the city of Seville, Spain, known as La Giralda.
Commissioned by the powerful Almohad caliph Abu Ya‘qub Yusuf (r. 1163–1184), who was based on the European side of his cross-continental empire encompassing much of North Africa, the minaret formed part of a superb new congregational mosque. It was one of the few buildings in the medieval Islamic world for which the names of the succession of architects responsible were recorded: Ahmad b. Basho, ‘Ali al-Ghumari, and Abu Layth al-Siqilli. Its original height—some 220 feet—was so tall that it was constructed so that a muezzin, the official who performs the call to prayer, could ascend its interior ramp mounted on a horse. In the 16th century, long after Seville had been conquered by the Castilians and the mosque converted to the city’s cathedral church, a Renaissance bell tower and turret was added, surmounted by a sculpture that turned in the wind, giving the tower the popular name of La Giralda, or the “Revolved.” One can just make out the weather-vane sculpture that is mounted at the summit of the tower in Paul Cornoyer’s painting, a gilded figure of Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens that is now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Apart from its other historical details, Cornoyer’s painting represents a lost New York vista. The tower was demolished in 1925.
Left: Rug, around 1525–50, wool, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.93; Right: Rug, around 1550, wool, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.108
The DMA also has an extraordinary collection of Spanish carpets originally collected by Hungarian publisher Emery Reves and now forming part of the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection. The Reves Collection is displayed, in part, in the wing of the Museum that re-creates the couple’s home in the South of France, Villa La Pausa. These carpets belong to a long tradition of carpet weaving brought to the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century, possibly by Turkmen families from Central Asia. Spanish carpets are woven, unusually, with knots over single warps, a technique otherwise known principally from the ancient cultures of the Tarim Basin in Western China. By the 16th century, the period to which most of the DMA carpets date, the art of carpet weaving had shifted, in part, from a culturally Morisco (Muslims forced to covert to Catholicism around 1500) cottage industry with designs transmitted from mother to daughter, to one that appears to have been more workshop-based.
Rug, around 1525–75, silk pile, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.87
The most unusual Spanish rug in the collection is one made entirely of silk. Only one other silk fragment from this period is known, now at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. The design of the DMA carpet tends toward the Renaissance, with its classicizing swags in the border and floral bouquets in the field forming a lattice pattern. Its colors are now faded—the background would have been a rich red. Most Spanish carpets from this period are made of wool and are believed to have been woven in the region of Murcia and Alicante in southeastern Spain. The expensive silk fibers used in this rug link its commission to the region of Granada, where silk had long been cultivated by Muslim farmers (later Moriscos) in the mountainous Alpujarra region, and possibly to a very high level of patronage.
Dr. Heather Ecker is The Marguerite S. Hoffman and Thomas W. Lentz Curator of Islamic and Medieval Artat the DMA.
