Does the Dallas Museum of Art need a $175 million overhaul?

That's what it plans. Details from Strategic Government Insider:

The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) has launched a two-stage global competition to find architect-led multidisciplinary design teams to lead the $150 million – $175 million expansion and redesign project. The goal is to enable the Texas institution to set the standard for 21st-century museums. 

leadership envisions additions that would yield flexible gallery spaces, a reorganization of the DMA’s circulation and entrances and a “holistic reapportioning of internal space.” They would like to add an auditorium, event spaces, staff facilities, dining and retail spaces. 

The first stage of the competition will involve a presentation. Competitors will be required to show their overall approach and experience. At a minimum, teams must include a lead design architect, landscape architect, exhibition designer and engineers. 

Five teams will be selected in the spring to move into the second phase. They will engage with the museum and prepare concept designs that will be displayed at a public exhibition during the summer. Each finalist will receive a $50,000 honorarium for their concepts along with up to $10,000 for expenses. 

Funding for this project is set to launch late this year. The deadline to enter the competition is March 15.

Interesting.

More in a Dallas Morning News story.

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Linked within it, a 2022 News piece discusses the first DMA mentions of expansion plans, and whether the footprint would expand vertically, horizontally, or a bit of both — or launch a separate "satellite" campus at its original home in Fair Park — as well as calls for it to be better about reaching out to minority communities.

That piece also discusses other issues that have grown in volume in the 21st century. Foremost is where major donors to any museum have gotten their money from. Military contracting and fossil fuels extraction are just two of the prickly areas.

Related? Some of the "Fast Forward" art donors have sold some of the items that were in their original bequests to the DMA. Maybe it doesn't need to expand as much as it claims.

Speaking of that, Mark Lamster also notes that the DMA has a small endowment compared to Houston. Interestingly, he doesn't look over to Cowtown and ask about the Kimbell (surely larger) or the Amon Carter. (A Yelp reviewer of the Kimbell says it has the nation's second largest art museum endowment after the Getty. If so, no wonder that other than King Tut tours, most the "A list" traveling art shows go to the Kimbell, not the DMA, when they hit the Metromess.)

As for space? There's also the option, as at a place like Indianapolis, of cleaning house. Art museums in San Antonio or Austin might be buyers. Or, in a smaller place like Waco, getting Baylor's art museum to expand. Or Denton, right up the road, where the Patterson has room to expand and could be beefed up. If stuff weren't sold to it, items could be sent there on a rotational basis.

Personally, I think they could get rid of a fair amount of their "Americana" stuff, especially the furniture. And, the side room with the one founding donor family's "heritage" material or whatever could also be gotten rid of, or if that's not legally possible, put in storage or something.

Within classic dead white males European art, most of it is not close to A-list. Get rid of it.

The DMA does beat the Kimbell on New World art, both North American pottery, and the occasional rug, and South American goldwork. Getting rid of a fair amount of other stuff might let them play that up more, as well as their sub-Saharan African collection. Also, they beat the Kimbell on Greco-Roman antiquities. So, consolidate and get rid of as much shit as you can that you're not obligated to keep because of current endowment strings. Then, build on your strengths. In addition to the above, you have a lot of Muslim art rotating in from Keir Collection stuff. Build on that. Get more in the way of modern American Indian items. More sub-Saharan African. Etc., etc.

Has American culture really moved past philistinism in the arts?

 That's the subthesis of "Picasso's War," reviewed below.

Picasso's War: How Modern Art Came to America by Hugh Eakin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Simply fascinating book. The title is a pun, covering both the "war" to get Picasso accepted by philistine Americans, even in NYC, and even on the board of MOMA to put up a Picasso-focused exhibition and buy his paintings, and the Spanish Civil War, which led Picasso to Guernica, which broke the ice.

The first half of the book is also a mini-bio of John Quinn, a man of whom I'd never heard before, and arguably the United States' top pre-1920 acquirer of Picasso, along with many other A-rank modern artists such as Matisse. But, I had heard of the Armory show, of which he was an organizer

There was no MOMA at this time. Quinn pushed for one, using the analogy in Paris of the Luxembourg to the Louvre as a push. Unfortunately, he died of colon cancer in his 50s, in the early 1920s. From there, the book picks up with the eventual creation of MOMA.

Among the ironies is that, 20 years before it was built, Americans were calling Picasso et al, but especially him, "degenerate art," as in exactly the phrase the Nazis used. (Stalin didn't use such a phrase in calling for "Soviet realism," but the idea was there, too. Pre-authoritarianism, Kaiserine and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia, were actually the top two countries in the world, overall, to appreciate modern art pre-WWI, even more than France.)

That's plenty to whet the appetites of any general modern culture lover let alone art history person.

And, illustrated with many plates.

View all my reviews

In reality, color me skeptical, and I'll speak of classical music as well as the main plastic arts. 

I've lived within 125 miles or so of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex 3/4 of the past 25 years and within 90 miles or so 2/3 of that time. 

I'm a regular visitor to the Kimbell, Amon Carter and Dallas Museum of Art. I went once or twice to the McKinney Avenue Modern in Dallas. I've peeked through the glass windows at the Fort Worth Modern and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

On music, I am a former Dallas Symphony Orchestra season-ticket holder. I have been to various chamber performances on both sides of the Metromess.

In the art world, there may be truly exciting things deeper inside the glass windows at the Nasher and Fort Worth Modern. The DMA has interesting mobiles-like art at times, as well as multimedia stuff.

But, while the Kimbell has shown stuff like Rauschenbergs out of its collection, and had the great late-life Monet a few years ago, I've never seen something like a touring Cubism exhibit. The DMA did have a small exhibit of Dali's illustrations of a large-scale "Alice in Wonderland" beyond its house collection in Surrealism several years ago, but that was it. Among living or recently-deceased artists? I've never seen anything close to Serrano's "Piss Christ."

The DSO? Don't get me started. It's NEVER played a serialist work, whether by the New Vienna Trio, a later semi-serialist like Ernst Krenek, or late-life serialist Stravinsky. It's never played any of the more avant-garde modernist composers, not even biggies like Penderecki or Schnittke.

I got classical radio station WRR to play one of Alf's shorter pieces on its then-programmed Sunday listener requests time 15-plus years ago. And, have heard him played "voluntarily" once since then. Never heard, say, Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" played on Aug. 6.

So, no, contra Eakin's implication, it's still wall-to-wall Philistines in at least this portion of the heartland.