SPECIAL FEATURE

It was a cold, cloudy day when 50 Dallasites gathered in the Art Room of the new Carnegie Public Library to form an organization with the intent of founding an art gallery for the people of the city. Thus on January 19, 1903, the Dallas Art Association was born. The DAA’s 120-year journey to become the DMA we know today has been filled with stunning exhibitions, beautiful acquisitions, amazing programs and events, and the wonderful people who made it all possible. It is impossible to condense 120 years into a few words, so as pictures are worth a thousand of them, here are 14 Museum history highlights as told through just a few of the thousands of photographs in the DMA Archives.

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This promotional photograph for Artfest ’76 positioned local personalities and performers around the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts' sculpture Ave by Mark di Suvero. The 500 Inc. presented this carnival-like weekend event, held around the Fair Park lagoon, to raise money to benefit Dallas cultural organizations, including the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (DMFA). Artfest included Learning Tents, performing arts, and 150 artist and craftspeople vendors.

Grace Leake Dexter was elected as the first president of the newly formed Dallas Art Association. She presided over a board of 21 trustees made up of civic-minded and artappreciating women and artists.

The DMA has been located in six sites over its 120-year history. The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts building in Fair Park is the longest-serving location, for a few more years anyway. This was the first purpose-built structure to house the DMFA, and it had its grand opening in 1936 in conjunction with the Texas Centennial Exposition. Despite an addition and a renovation, collection acquisitions and the desire to present larger exhibitions, like Pompeii A.D. 79, demonstrated the need for larger quarters, and the DMA moved out of Fair Park in 1983.

During World War II, the DMFA focused its wartime efforts on cultural programming to support the servicemen and -women stationed in the area and boost morale among the civilian residents of Dallas. The Museum League sponsored a weekly Sunday afternoon canteen in the Museum’s Lounge for members of the Armed Services. The canteen is noted as one of the most appreciated activities for those far from home.

Organized by the Museum League, the first Beaux Arts Ball was held on April 27, 1962. Promising to be “the cultural twist of the season,” the masked ball featured not only the customary dancing, entertainment, food, and freely flowing beverages, but also amateur art and tableaux vivants of great paintings come to life. Above, Pat and Tom Barr create Grant Wood’s American Gothic, and Ball Chairs Larry and Sally Hart are caricatured as Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait. The annual fundraising ball continues today as the Art Ball.

The 1976 exhibition Rugs Designed by American Artists featured 30 rugs designed by American artists and translated into handwoven rugs by the Zapotec weavers of Teotitlan del Valle in Mexico. The artists featured include singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell—pictured below with Boyd Elder (right)—Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, and Robert Wade.

Children consider one of the sculptures in the landmark exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art, on view at the DMFA in 1977. The exhibition documented the visual heritage and cultural contributions of Black American artists to the development of painting, sculpture, architecture, and crafts in the United States through 200 objects.

The DMA prioritized outreach beginning with Director Harry S. Parker III. One of the programs conceived during his tenure, and continuing to this day, is Go van Gogh. Established in 1978, Go van Gogh brings the Museum to schools so students can engage with art and make personal and academic connections. The first Go van Gogh vehicle was a bus in which activities would take place. The second vehicle was a standard van with activities held in the classroom.

Here, students from Roquemore Elementary School are shown with the second Go van Gogh vehicle.

In January 1979, the DMFA opened one of its largest exhibitions. Pompeii A.D. 79 marked the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction in and around Pompeii with over 300 objects excavated from the ruins. Installing this exhibition required the deinstallation of the collection galleries, and related exhibitions were held at other museums and organizations. Visitors to the exhibition purchased their tickets at the Fair Park Coliseum and took shuttle buses to the Museum. By the end of the three-month run of the show, over 371,000 people had seen Pompeii. This remained the highest-attended exhibition until it was surpassed by Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs in 2009.

A Pompeii A.D. 79 docent points visitors to the Museum’s planned location in the Dallas Arts District. The exhibition’s success and the promotion of the need for a new building to the crowds of visitors were the first steps in securing funds for the new museum in the November 1979 bond election.

The DMA acquired the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection in 1985. The paintings, furniture, rugs, sculpture, porcelain, glass, and iron work were packed at Villa La Pausa in the French Riviera and installed in the re-created rooms in the DMA’s new Decorative Arts Wing. But before the works were installed here, the collection was inspected in Paris and then transported by air to the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport. On arrival, the collection crates were removed from shipping pallets under the watchful eyes of U.S. Customs officials.

The Barrel Vault is the most iconic part of Edward Larrabee Barnes’s design for the new Dallas Museum of Art in the Arts District. In this construction view, we see the structural steel for the Barrel Vault set against the downtown skyline of the early 1980s.

Cookie Monster, who was in town for a Sesame Street Live performance, visited the DMA and tried his hand— paw?—at weaving. Cookie Monster’s visit on February 28, 1995, included a lesson in weaving from experts who were demonstrating the use of looms that were on display in the Gateway Gallery, now the DMA’s Center for Creative Connections, for the exhibition The Art of the Loom.