dallas museum of art

dallas museum of art

Exploring the Evolution of the Dallas Museum of Art: A Comprehensive Study

1. Introduction to the Dallas Museum of Art

The core exhibitions that make up the Dallas Museum of Art are: Ancient Art, Asian Art, Arts of the Americas, European Art, Decorative Arts, Latin American Art, and Contemporary Art. The museum holds all of the known major categories of art at equally important levels, with top-ten national and international significance in collections of old master art, modern arts of the United States, Edo-period arts of Japan, Pre-Columbian, and Mayan arts of the Americas, as well as Indian miniature paintings and contemporary Latin American arts. There are more than 25,000 works of art in the museum’s collection, including over 15,000 items which are part of the general art collection of the museum. The museum’s grants and costs for acquisitions from 1985 to 2015 averaged approximately $40 million annually.

The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) has a long and distinguished history not only as a repository for extraordinary works of art but as an institution that has redrawn its parameters with each enlarged collection, mission, and facility. It began as a nonprofit educational institution in 1903. The institution that is now known as the Dallas Museum of Art owns one of the largest and oldest museum art collections in the United States. Located in the arts district of downtown Dallas, Texas, the museum’s collections span the history of the production of art from ancient times to the present and aims to inform and connect all cultures and artmaking practices in the present and future. The DMA was established as the Dallas Art Association that year and was formed as an art academy with a small museum and became the Occupying a high rise building in Fair Park until 1983. In 1984, the Dallas Museum of Art, overseen by an independent board of trustees, purchased 3.7 acres of land in downtown Dallas’s Harwood Street neighborhood for the construction of a new museum but did not commence building until 1998, subsequently completing the Renzo Piano-designed facility in 2003.

2. Historical Development and Architectural Evolution

This action marks the true beginning of the art museum as an institution separate from the Women’s Wednesday Club of Dallas. The museum continued to grow rapidly both in programs and structure. E. M. Kramer, President of the association in 1911 and 1912, for instance, is listed as actively promoting museum membership as of December 1912. The museum remained in the room in the Southland Life building through 1919, at which time fifteen members of the Ladies Gallery Club, including Amelia McClennan, a club president, purchased a parcel of land at 2915 Belgium for the museum’s use. The instrument which they used to take title to the land was a special warranty deed with the provision that these women and their heirs hold the property “in perpetuity” for “museum purposes only.” The land was given to the Dallas Art Association, Inc. in this especial fiduciary manner. Furthermore, the instrument outlines uses of the land specifically so that no part of the land could be “leased” or “used for commercial purpose.” This fact illustrates the continued notion that the museum was to be maintained with the help of private groups when resolving the building’s history.

In 1911, the Women’s Wednesday Club of Dallas established the art museum as an association with the Art Department of the club assuming the role of the museum. The intent of the project was to bring culture to the metropolitan area. One member of the group, Mrs. S. Benton Coulter, was especially instrumental in group tours to art galleries from which the nucleus of a collection came. Initial funding for the project came largely from contributions made by Art Association club members. As the club membership began to seriously outgrow the association, it was proposed in December 1911 that the city of Dallas take over the property of the association with an agreement that the city would carry taxes on the property. This action was indeed approved by a vote of the city council, and the Dallas Art Association, Inc. was created on January 19, 1911.

3. Curatorial Vision and Collection Highlights

The most comprehensive object and curatorial records were those kept by Paul and Mills. Yet, even in this case, the collection inventory book focuses more on permanent collection loans to the WPA and educational distribution efforts than acquisition history. A general gallery and collection management file contains some correspondence from 1947-1948, but this information still provided little data to further explain the story of other acquisitions made during the project’s earlier years. The lack of available ownership and acquisition records likely stems from two underlying issues. First, while vast improvements occurred in 1929, a far more rigorous professionalization and development of museum studies as a discipline did not happen until the 1950s. Second, the existing records, or lack thereof, were compounded by the fact that most of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts staff were also inadequately trained or overworked and had been appointed to temporary positions and/or did not possess experience or the means to take exhaustive acquisition records.

By 1941, artist and art critic Jerry Bywaters was appointed director of the DMFA, which coincided with the establishment of a permanent space dedicated to the exhibition of works from the permanent collection. As a result, the museum was in an incredibly strong position to expand its holdings and solidify its curatorial vision. Likely as an extension of Jerry Bywaters’s leadership and curatorial acquisitions, the collection is particularly strong in early and mid-twentieth century American art, including works from both the Taos and ecstasy colonies in the Southwest. Although the collection was off to a strong start by 1945, representing the paintings of strong Texas artists like Julian Onderdonk, Frank Reaugh, Alexandre Hogue, and Bywaters himself, Hornbeak’s project brought to light that relatively little information was available about the provenance and acquisition history of the artworks in the collection.

4. Community Engagement and Educational Initiatives

Serving more than 50,000 students as part of its educational outreach each year, the museum also provides a lower-stress entry point to the fine arts world as a whole. Unlike many museums of art, the DMA reaches out in an ongoing manner to create relationships with the wider public community and city leaders and present engagement and education as activities which the overall arts establishment should value highly. Additionally, the museum is free of charge again, specifically so that all visitors feel welcome and encouraged to return as often as they like. Museums have often been perceived—or at the very least given the impression that they were not meant for certain races or categories of people. As they develop, they continue to appeal to broader demographics, to ensure that their programs and exhibitions also consistently reflect the greater diversity they are nurturing.

Throughout its history, the DMA has strived to engage with the broader Dallas community. It is the only museum of art in the nation to offer free general admission, often attributed to its mission “to provide educational opportunities to all.” The museum offers free programs and classes for students and teachers, and targets the city’s 18-and-under population by enabling it to access the museum’s galleries and programs at no charge. Many of the classes, programs, workshops, and special exhibitions are designed to promote participation in the museum from students, teachers, and families from Dallas’s many diverse schools, neighborhoods, and backgrounds as well as male or female and students of color.

5. Future Directions and Impact on the Art World

As individuals visit the present Dallas Museum of Art of the future, learn from its exhibitions and collections, attend public programs, or visit its website, they can use the information from this study to go on to the next step in creating a new and enriched understanding of museums, educators, and the art world at large. Future investigations of museum evolution can build upon the comprehensive methodology of this study which employs a multi-disciplinary and broad approach from the fields of history, art history, cultural studies, preventive conservation, archival science, museum studies, and the social sciences. Future directions can also focus upon individual, paint by paint, sculpture by sculpture, decorative arts object by decorative arts object, or print by print, exploration of each work of art in the Dallas Museum of Art and its history of ownership, circulation, conservation, and interpretation. Many popular exhibitions, work on permanent collection galleries, and some books on single works have been produced, but there is much more that can be done. While not every object in the museum can be related to artists of the period of our exploration, American art history appears to be rich and vast for substantial future research efforts. This breadth of approach will permit extraordinary leeway for discovery and innovation. Indeed, how many blank canvases covered with painted dots or such sculptures of reconfigured bunny rabbits need be produced? Too much of the repeated attempts to produce contemporary art for dealers and collectors still dominate the contemporary arts world. Studying and understanding the past can provide important insights to critical scholars for the present and future. Studies such as these will be able to expand upon the future findings of this important institutional history to sharpen readers’ own comprehension of art and the entire educational process.

In conclusion, this institutional history has set the stage for many future investigations into art museums. Indeed, this study has explored general museological methodologies, examined the Dallas Museum of Art and its complex development, and brought forth a host of significant people not only in the art world, but those who have made profound impacts in community life as well. It has firmly established the significance and contributions of the Dallas Museum of Art on both national and regional levels and has looked to the future on its ongoing influence on museum practice, art scholarship, and society.