Megan and Murray McMillan

Barry Flanagan, Large Leaping Hare, 1982

NorthPark is a Dallas institution. As one of the earliest indoor malls in the country, it used to be notable simply for having Lord and Taylor and Neiman Marcus in one convenient location. But the secret to North Park’s success is that it’s owned by Raymond Nasher, a Texas businessman and art collector, who used NorthPark (and his other businesses as well) as high-end storage facilities for his extensive and highly valued modernist art collection.

Jonathan Borofsky, Five Hammering Men, 1982

Murray and I grew up with a changing display of Magdalena Abakanowicz, David Smith, Constantin Brancusi, and Jonathan Borofsky on our way to the GAP. We were so used to seeing art in our early, everyday lives that Murray remembers being surprised to see a slide in a freshman art history class of Barry Flanagan’s Large Leaping Hare.

That’s famous? he remembers thinking, but that’s at the mall.

Frank Stella, Washington Island Gadwall (from the Exotic Birds series), 1980-1981

A few years ago, the Nasher Sculpture Center opened, and most of the mall art moved to a lovely museum facility in the downtown arts district. We hadn’t been to NorthPark since the move, but while we were in Dallas over the holidays, we stopped by for a little Christmas shopping. We were pleased to find a remnant of the original collection still intact. It’s a real thrill to stand next to an Andy Warhol series while crowds throng around you, no guards in site — while most of the other shoppers are thinking more about the price of the Gucci purse across the way than about the value of the artwork they’re rushing past.