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The Art Of The Big D
The Louis I. Kahn-designed Kimball Art Museum in Ft. Worth, top, is the first American collection to acquire a painting by Michelangelo. Above, the Dallas Museum of Art, part of the city’s Arts District. Kimball Credit: Kent Wang by Hilary Larson Did Dallas come to mind? I’ll bet not. The coasts, along with larger inland cities like Chicago, loom in the collective imagination as our repositories of culture. But over the past few decades, the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area has been quietly cultivating a passionate arts scene, replete with world-class museums, hit shows, and a grand scale that reflects Texan ambition. Texans may be best known for rodeos and oil, but Dallas and Ft. Worth invest in their art. And their architecture, as well: the crop of new museum buildings reveals a veritable roll-call of celebrity architects, transforming the skyline with stunning new forms that take advantage of the spacious Western aesthetic. From the freshly unveiled performing arts center in downtown Dallas to a stunning new sculpture collection, to the tens of millions of dollars’ worth of new acquisitions at the Dallas Museum of Art and the first Michelangelo in an American collection, there is enough to make sure a culture lover of any stripe could easily plan a long weekend here and never run out of stimulation. Jews feature prominently in the cities’ arts and philanthropic community. Close to 60,000 Jews call Dallas home, according to local statistics; more than a dozen thriving synagogues and several kosher restaurants serve the metropolitan area, leading one rabbi to joke about the “Bible Belt” effect. Religious commitment is no joking matter in Texas, of course, and Jews have been a significant presence since founding the Reform Temple Emanu El in Dallas in the late 19th century. Jewish historical memory is preserved at the Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance, which opened in 2005 in the West End district and is planning a larger facility downtown. A testament to the city’s civic spirit, the museum hosts more than 15,000 annual visitors and countless school groups. Its exhibitions connect the Shoah to present-day moral challenges around the world. Last month, the city of Dallas celebrated the completion of its long-planned Dallas Arts District by opening the AT&T Performing Arts Center. First conceived in the 1970s as a 19-block downtown complex that would bring together the city’s prestigious arts companies, the new center is very much of the 21st century. A series of eye-catching, futuristic theaters and concert halls are designed by such contemporary luminaries as Rem Koolhaas and Norman Foster. Resident companies include the Dallas Opera, the Dallas Theater Center, the Dallas Black Dance Theatre, the Texas Ballet Theater, and the Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico. A New York Jewish sensibility is evident in the cosmopolitan-yet-accessible programming for the center’s inaugural season. The acclaimed Broadway revival of “South Pacific,” the classic from Rodgers and Hammerstein, is slated for mid-December through early January at the Winspear Opera House. Comedian Billy Crystal’s one-man hit, “700 Sundays,” will run in mid-November, while the popular musical “Spring Awakening” is a winter feature. Nearby in the arts district is the Dallas Museum of Art, one of the first local institutions to make the move downtown years ago. Long a powerhouse collection, the DMA, as it is known, has lately ascended to the ranks of America’s top museums. In the past few years, it received major cash gifts from donors and the artworks from three major private collections — first-rate De Koonings, Twomblys and a Monet “Water Lilies,” among other gems. The DMA is celebrating the blossoming of the arts district with a series of exhibitions. “A Dream Come True: The Dallas Arts District,” even through January, chronicles the evolution of Dallas’ civic pride and ambition in the arts. “All the World’s a Stage: Celebrating Performance in the Visual Arts,” on view through February, is a more indirect tribute to the new performing arts center. It is also a tribute to the universal human instinct for creative expression: Here are more than 100 paintings, sculptures, photographs and objects that span two and a half millennia and five continents, including Degas’ ballerinas, Picasso’s guitarists and Italian Renaissance bacchanals. Also new in the arts district is the Nasher Sculpture Center, formed six years ago, whose gorgeous, glittering new building was designed by the prolific Renzo Piano. Sculpture is increasingly getting the attention it deserves as a powerful and accessible art form, rather than a poor relation to painting. The wild, weird and whimsical shapes of Miro, Calder and Giacometti, the craggy modernism of David Smith and the undulating curves by Richard Serra tell the story of 20th-century aesthetic currents in a most-enjoyable space. Mammoth Rodins and Moores loom over strollers in the lovely garden outside. Across the way in Ft. Worth, the famous Kimbell Art Museum just became the first American collection to acquire a painting by Michelangelo, thus solidifying its position as one of the top arts destinations in the American West. Famed mid-century architect Louis I. Kahn designed this iconic modernist space, whose collection is particularly strong in Asian, pre-Columbian and classical Greek and Roman art, as well as European paintings from the Renaissance through Picasso. Michelangelo’s early and important work “The Torment of St. Anthony,” acquired in May, is the centerpiece of a new exhibition. This winter brings a unique opportunity to see works by Rembrandt, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Matisse that usually decorate the living rooms of West Texas ranches and Houston oil-baron mansions. “From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern” opens on Nov. 22 and runs through late March. Conceived as a deliberate complement to the Kimbell, which is strongest in pre-mid-20th-century art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth displays works from the 1940s to the present. Like its counterparts, the Modern is as beautiful outside as inside: the breathtaking space consists of five glass-walled, Japanese-inspired “pavilions” on a lily pond. The American architect Philip Johnson, no slouch himself, designed the Amon Carter Museum, a showcase for American art. The collection includes works by John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keefe and Frederic Remington. Urbane in shimmering ivory, the building channels both Manhattan’s Lincoln Center (including Johnson’s David H. Koch Theater) and Jerusalem’s pale stone cityscape. Travelers’ Resources: Dallas Museum of Art: www.dm-art.org Kimbell Art Museum: www.kimbellart.org Nasher Sculpture Center: http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/ Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth: www.mamfw.org Amon Carter Museum: www.cartermuseum.org Dallas Holocaust Museum: http://www.dallasholocaustmuseum.org Jewish Federation of Fort Worth and Tarrant County: www.tarrantfederation.org.
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