Lee Ann Torrans Looks at Art in Dallas and Fort Worth

Dallas Museum of Art Now Free

Dallas – Lee Ann Torrans

The Mustangs of Los Colinas are possibly the most beautiful statues in the DFW area!

Pioneer Plaza – Downtown Dallas

Dallas and Fort Worth are filled with world class art and Texas History. Texas was once a state that offered sanctuary from creditors — get to Texas — and start over! The original Texans were an aggressive and creative group – followed by the Wild Catters.

These were no genteel folk, the west was wild, and on the borders of Texas, today the cities are more dangerous than Afghanistan. The border of Texas is a dangerous place but Dallas is a long, long way from that border.

Come to Texas! Come to Dallas and Fort Worth – a world of difference.

Nasher and Museum Tower Update

The word on June 26, 2012, is that the Dallas Morning News report that litigation is imminent is not correct.

Public relations rep Katie Sibley on behalf of pension fund administrator Richard Tettamant said, “The Dallas Morning News article about pending litigation is inaccurate.”

See the Dallas Observer article:

Read More Here

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/06/dallas_police_fire_pension_fun_1.php

Luxury Condominiums in Dallas are common – and have been since the Warrington on Turtle Creek blazed that trail in the early 70′s.

There is but one Nasher Sculpture Center – and now with the Crow Collection removed from the Crow building and tucked away in a private and inaccessible office park, the Nasher becomes even more important.

A “CLOSED” sign appeared in front of the James Turrell Skyspace, Tending Blue. The sign attributed the closure to the the mirror glass clad Dallas Police and Fire Pension System Condominium known as the Museum Tower, a 42-story luxury condominium building, being erected east of The Nasher. It is obvious, The Nasher is not pleased.

Turrel’s work, located in the Nasher Garden, began a series of works that he describes generically as “skyspaces.” These are enclosed spaces – rooms or free-standing structures – open to the sky through rectangular or circular apertures in the roof. While they appear to be architectural in nature, these spaces exist solely to create the light effects and perceptual events that constitute Turrell’s art.

A skyspace, Tending, (Blue), was commissioned as a site-specific project for the Nasher Sculpture Center. To achieve his optical effects, Turrell coordinates a complex system of lights that run in concert with natural cycles of sunrise and sunset, and respond to constantly changing atmospheric conditions which has been altered by the Museum Tower’s reflection.

The Nasher noticed reflections that altered the indoor exhibit space from the $200 million tower covered in mirror glass which generates an obvious glare of light. Beams of light were also raising the temperature indoors and in the sculpture center’s outdoor gardens.

You can see the wonderfully diffused lighting effect on this work by Picasso now modified by the glare from the Museum Tower. Below you see the work before the Tower.

In the next image you see not only Rodin’s marvelous Age of Bronze but the lighting grid which makes the Nasher such an experiential treat.

I assume it was the glare of the tower which resulted in having to view Elliott Hundley: The Bacchae an exhibit between January 28 – April 22, 2012, basically in the dark. Ugh.

Dallas attorney and civic leader Tom Luce has agreed to mediate the dispute between the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Museum Tower.

One change suggested by developers in a published report calls for moveable screens at the Nasher that would block offensive light. A study by the Nasher suggests replacing the tower glass with less reflective glass or treating the tower glass with a diffusing film similar to what’s used to reduce glare on smart phones.

 

Here you can see, the tower begins behind the sculpture at the Nasher, and four months later you observe the progression.  Lee Ann Torrans.

Here is an image of Semiramis at the Dallas Museum of Art with the Museum Tower going up behind her, so clearly, the DMA will be impacted as well, thought the sculpture garden is on the southwest side of the museum while the tower is to the northeast.

 

The Old Red

Henry Moore at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Spring

Dallas Arts District

The Dallas Arts District is a 60-acre site on the northwest edge of downtown Dallas.

Van Gogh: Street at Saint Maries

Lee Ann Torrans DFW Art Tour!

Four architects of the Pritzker Architecture Prize are represented in the Dallas Arts District.

(See Architecture Page: Link Here.)

• Renzo Piano the Nasher Sculpture Center (Pritzker Awardee Architect)
• Rem Koolhaas the Wyly Theater Center (Pritzker Awardee Architect)
• Norman Foster the Winspear Opera House (Pritzker Awardee Architect)
• I.M. Pei – Meyerson Symphony Center (Pritzker Awardee Architect)
• Edward Larrabee Barnes the 1980′s Dallas Museum of Art,
• Allied Works designed the addition to the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
• Thom Mayne designed the Museum of Science and Nature

The Arts District opened in 1983. The twenty-five year development process has resulted in a diverse architectural district. Half of the land is in nonprofit or public ownership, and the other half consists of private development.

The Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art sit side by side.

The Nasher Sculpture Center is 55,000-square-foot building divided into five equal-sized, parallel pavilions. The Center contains a changing selection of works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection in both its indoor galleries and outdoor sculpture garden. (Prtizker Awardee Architect)

The Dallas Museum of Art moved to its new location in 1984. The collections doubled within seven years. Containing more than 17,000 objects, the museum is divided into five interdependent collections.

The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is in the heart of the Dallas Arts District. The 2,066-seat hall has a cool limestone exterior with a warm interior, paneled and topped with a canopy of wood and onyx which may be raised or lowered to adjust the sound. Designed by I.M. Pei, it opened in 1989 at a cost of $106 million. (Prtizker Awardee Architect)

The Winspear Opera House opened in 2009. It completed the physical blueprint for downtown’s arts row. More than $300 million in gifts made that happen. (Pritzker Awardee Architect)

Wyly Theater CenterThe 52-year-old Dallas Theater Center is an invigorated, more ambitious company under artistic director Kevin Moriarty, who led the move to the Arts District. The DTC’s annual budget has climbed by millions. (Prtizker Awardee Architect)

Fort Worth Cultural District

Amon Carter Museum

The Amon Carter Museum houses a collection of paintings and sculpture by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. It is devoted to American art. Additionally, it contains significant works of Geogia O’Keefe and a recent Mary Cassat addition.

Kimbell Museum

With a small collection of less than 350 works, the Kimbell Art Museum has become a byword for quality and importance at the highest level. The Museum’s holdings range in period from antiquity to the 20th century, including European masterpieces from Fra Angelico and Caravaggio to Cézanne and Matisse, and important collections of Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman antiquities, as well as Asian, Mesoamerican, and African arts.

Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art

The Collection consists of international developments in post–World War II art in all media with a permanent collection of nearly 2,600 objects. The museum is second in size only to the Museum of Modern Art in New York among museums dedicated to contemporary and modern art.

Sid Richardson Museum – Old Fort Worth

Filled paintings of Charles Russell or Frederic Remington. Delightful and charming part of Old Fort Worth with wonderful restaurants as well.

Other Points of Interest in the Dallas Arts District

The Crow Sculpture Garden

The sculpture has been replaced with large rocks. While the Crow Sculpture garden is nothing more than a commercial urban planting studded with rock the Crow Asian Museum remains.

The Asian Museum continues to be free of charge. Paintings, metal and stone, jade, scrolls and a sandstone facade from an 18th century Indian residence are included. Three galleries include the arts of Japan, the Chinese Galleries and a third gallery of Hindu sculpture and Indian architecture. The jade collection is noted from its carvings.

The second largest rock crystal sphere in the world sit on a silver stand engraved with images of two dragons.

The Trammel Crow Center is the tallest structure within the Arts District. Until February 2011, its gardens contained more than 20 bronze sculptures by Rodin, Maillol, Bourdelle, Wlerick and other French artists. They are now hidden away from public view, in a guarded and gated development located at the Old Southwestern Medical School.

The Arts Magnet High School provides special training in music, dance, drama and visual arts.

Also in the area are two interesting neo-gothic churches: the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe and St. Paul United Methodist Church.

The Belo Mansion is the only early Dallas residence in the downtown area. The classical revival mansion was built by Alfred H. Belo, a colonel in the Confederate Army and a prominent newspaper publisher. Today, it houses the offices of the Dallas Bar Association.

Lee Ann Torrans DFW Art Tour!

McKinney Avenue is filled with delicious restaurants and the historic trolley 3.6 mile route is free! The streetcar connects with a free M-line trolley bus which proceeds down Ross to the West End and up Main Street returning to the Arts District streetcar.

Santiago Calatrava. Trinity River Bridge.

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge will connect West Dallas and North Oak Cliff. It is currently under construction. This was intended to be the first of three “signature” bridges for Dallas, each with a unique design that combines distinct artistic elements with a functioning structure, employing unconventional materials and enhanced lighting. A second has been designed though funds are not available to build it. The third was never designed.

Steve Miller was a St. Mark’s School graduate in Dallas. Here is the Calatrava Bridge set to his music. Oops, his publisher does not participate in YouTube. So, no, not his music.

 

 

Lee Ann Torrans Looks at Things to See in Dallas and Fort Worth