collection highlights
TOWERING INSTALLATION By Katy Yut
Every year since 1998, the O’Donnell Foundation and the Dallas Museum of Art have presented the Young Masters exhibition. Selected by a panel of arts professionals, the works of art in Young Masters are created by Advanced Placement® Studio Art, Art History, and Music Theory students from Dallas-area high schools participating in the O’Donnell Foundation’s AP Arts Incentive Program. Because the 2016 exhibition coincides with the inauguration of the Eagle Family Plaza, Artifacts invited a 3D Design finalist to respond to the DMA’s selection of British sculptor Rebecca Warren to create a site-specific commission, Pas de Deux (Plaza Monument), to grace the new north entrance. What makes art, art? Who makes that decision? Is it at the discretion of the viewer or the creator? Rebecca Warren contributes her voice to this discussion by creating amorphous, abstract works, encouraging viewers to interpret and challenge their understanding of what art should look like or mean. Her towering installation will greet visitors as they arrive at the DMA, imbuing them with wonder before they even enter the doors. As I pass this work of art, I will be awed with the knowledge that the piece was selected to replace the work of Henry Moore, one of the most prominent, renowned male artists of the 20th century. The visibility of Warren’s piece will engender future artists with similar goals and aspirations. To feature her work at the entrance of a world-renowned museum is to validate female artists everywhere. As an emerging female sculptor, I am motivated and inspired by the presence of other female sculptors. Seeing Warren’s work, which pushes the boundaries of art, empowers me to be more expressive in my own work. In my Young Masters piece, Global Warming, I use my work as a vehicle for social awareness, drawing attention to the global environmental crisis. After viewing Warren’s work, I find goals we both share: provoking a reaction and engaging the viewer, broadening our understanding about what art is, and encouraging viewers to interact with it and question it.
—Katy Yut is a senior at Coppell High School and one of the sixty AP Fine Arts students selected for the 2016 Young Masters exhibition.
The commission was made possible by the DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund and The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation.
images: Rebecca Warren, Pas de Deux (Plaza Monument) (detail), 2016, hand-painted bronze on artist’s plinth, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery, © Rebecca Warren; Katy Yut, Global Warming (detail), ice, plants, and letter tiles digitally documented in time-lapsed photographs