from the Herman Miller Consortium, and continues to develop its contemporary holdings with funds from the dma/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund and other gifts. In 2001 the bequest of Patsy Lacy Griffith transformed the collection with important twentieth-century works. In 2002 the acquisition of the Jewel Stern American Silver Collection provided the Museum with the most comprehensive and important collection of its type. The decorative arts and design program recently began acquiring jewelry, including modern and contemporary designs by Harry Bertoia, Bettina Dittelman, and other artists. Many of these works are gifts of Deedie Rose.
contemporary art Contemporary art, encompassing painting, sculpture, works on paper, and installation and media-based works, is one of the Museum’s major holdings. Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral, acquired in 1950, three years after its completion, is the cornerstone of the Museum’s contemporary collection. After the merger of the
dmca and the dmfa in 1963, the Museum’s collecting activi-
ties grew significantly with more than fifteen gifts of abstract expressionist masterpieces by Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and many others, all from Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated. This rich core of works led to further acquisitions of American art of the 1960s and 70s, including important pieces by Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Robert Rauschenberg, and others. During the 1980s and 90s, collecting activity grew thanks to the generosity of Elizabeth B. Blake, The Roberta Coke Camp Fund, The 500, Inc., Dorace Fichtenbaum, and the Foundation for the Arts. The Museum has particular strengths in German and Italian art, including the most complete set of Gerhard Richter’s editions in the world and important masterpieces by Anselm Kiefer, Piero Manzoni, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, and Thomas Struth. Additions of work by today’s established and emerging artists continue the
dma’s distinguished history of collecting the art of the present,
especially installation and new media works, including Chris Burden’s All the Submarines of the United States, Bill Viola’s The Crossing, and installations by Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Doug Aitken, and Ragnar Kjartansson. Works by Texas artists, including David Bates, Annette Lawrence, and John Pomara, have consistently been acquired, and include the recent gift of over forty works of contemporary Texas art from the Barrett Collection. In 2005 Dallas collectors Marguerite and Robert Hoffman, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, and Deedie and Rusty Rose announced that they had jointly pledged their private collections—which at the time
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