Megan and Murray McMillan

Laura Owens, Untitled, 2004

A week in Dallas means trips to as many of the splendid area museums as we can talk our patient family members into accompanying us, starting, naturally, with the Dallas Museum of Art. Fault the DMA if you will for succumbing to the King Tut cash cow, but the Dallas institution will always have my heart: it’s my hometown museum and the first place I fell in love with art. And what fun to see one of my favorite LA painters, Laura Owens, (one of Christopher Knight’s “top 45 LA painters under 45”), now part of its permanent collection.

We also saw a surprising exhibition of Indian painting that kept us under its spell for far longer than we had planned. Chock full of narrative works that had much in common with contemporary graphic novels. Also, the Phil Collins three-part video installation, the world won’t listen, part of the DMA’s Concentrations series is slapstick funny and sad and profound all at once.

Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled, 1982-1983

Mark Handforth, Dallas Snake, 2007

Zaha Hadid, Bench, designed 2003, executed 2006

Of course, you can’t go to the museum without spending time in its gorgeous sculpture garden. When it’s 67 degrees a few days before Christmas, there’s not much better than taking in an Ellsworth Kelly from a Zaha Hadid bench in the bright winter sun.

Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting
November 18, 2007–January 27, 2008

Phil Collins: the world won’t listen
November 9, 2007–March 23, 2008

And here’s an excellent interview with LA painter Laura Owens.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Bronze Crowd, 1990-91

It’s only since we’ve been in Dallas this month that I’ve come to realize the extensiveness of the renaissance that’s happening in this city, particularly in the arts and cultural realm. Of course, this has been in process for a long time, but now that buildings are finished or heavily under construction and roads are re-routed and whole blocks have been removed, the difference is visceral. Dallas is an entirely different city than it was even ten years ago.

The arts district is one of the areas that is the most changed. The Nasher is open just a block away from the Dallas Museum of Art. The new opera house is nearing completion next-door to I.M. Pei’s Meyerson Concert Hall. My old high school, the arts magnet, just a few blocks from the museums, is shut down while it’s being renovated by the same firm that designed the Contemporary in St Louis.

That’s to say nothing of the proposed Calatrava bridge over the Trinity River. Or the just-built Victory Park with its postmodern digital “Kunsthalle.” This city has some serious momentum.

With all the change, it was really reassuring to visit some familiar faces at the same museum where I spent many teenage hours avoiding the heat and trying to stay off the radar of my demanding orchestra director.

Hello, Spanish Elegy, you old friend.

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic 108 (The Barcelona Elegy), 1966

James Turrell’s skyscape, Tending, at the Nasher Sculpture Center: one of the best places in Texas for a long conversation with an old friend.

Right now we’re in Dallas for a few weeks spending time with family. Our worldly belongings have moved ahead of us to Providence, we’ve turned in our keys to St Louis, and we’re leaving for London and Greece at the end of June.

Dallas is a great city for art-lovers. Great museums and galleries — the DMA, the Dallas Contemporary, Art Prostitute, and Angstrom, the Crow Collection, to name a few. Plus, it’s just a short drive to the first-class offerings of Fort Worth’s art district, like the Kimbell and the Modern. We’ll be posting about all these places and more in the next few weeks.

Then, there’s NorthPark Center. The ridiculously high-end mall with the equally high-end art collection. NorthPark is beautiful in every way: architecture and design, store design, landscape design, and artwork. It’s a collecting institution, and there is thoughtfully sited artwork everywhere you look. NorthPark is truly, even though it’s technically a “shopping center,” an art destination not to be missed.

We wrote more about NorthPark Center here.

Anna Gaskell, That’s All I Remember, 2006, stills [source]

Two weeks ago, I was able to sneak in a quick trip down to Texas to visit one of my favorite museums: The Modern in Fort Worth. Pretty Baby, the current exhibition, is a fascinating exploration of childhood from numerous lenses. From Catherine Opie’s nursing Self-Portrait to Miranda July’s audio interviews of children to Loretta Lux’s idealized and slightly subversive portraits, Pretty Baby is a thought-provoking, as well as simply provoking, investigation of a time-frame in human experience that so rarely finds itself under the microscope.

The exhibition runs through June 24 and isn’t scheduled to travel, so it’s worth a trip if you can swing it. Good exhibition non-withstanding, it’s hard to overshadow the Modern’s lovely Ando-designed building, which seems to float on a still pool of watery glass, or its mouth-watering permanent collection. Here are a few of my favorites to whet your appetite for a trip to Cow Town.

Gerhard Richter, Ferrari, 1964

Martin Puryear, Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996

Vija Celmins, German Plane, 1966

Ron Mueck, Untitled (Seated Woman), 1999

Pretty Baby
February 25–June 24, 2007
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
www.themodern.org