Art Museum Visits

Lately I've been popping into museums.

The Dallas Museum of Art has instituted a new free-entry policy which I think is wonderful... and probably good business too.  Until recently there was a charge to just stick your head in any of the galleries of the permanent collection, plus an extra charge to see any traveling exhibits.  Now those traveling shows still require a ticket: a hefty $16 to view three, I think, shows... one of them of Greek statues from the British Museum however, so cheaper than the usual plane ticket to see the Discobolus.

But now the permanent collection is FREE.  A price anyone can afford.  Museums, supported as they are by civic money and centers of civic pride, really should be accessible to all citizens.

There did now seem to be more people in the museum than has been true.  (Once inside the door, I bet more end up paying for the traveling exhibits too.)

I took my intern 'round a few weeks back to see the DMA's furniture and decorative arts.  The DMA really is a great teaching aid!  Their furniture collection got a serious start with the Bybee Collection of early American furniture and for years they've been adding pieces from other periods and places.  Recently they revamped a room of Craftsman and Arts and Crafts objects that includes a spectacular Tiffany stained glass door and sidelights (almost) looted from Greene and Greene's Blacker House.

Now that these collections are free, folks like me or my student can afford to visit and revisit to really study these objects.  This past weekend - having a little extra time - I visited the Dallas Museum of Art just for fun and said hello to all my favorites.

Love, love, love the new free entry policy.


The most exciting traveling exhibit I've seen lately - for free yet - was yesterday at Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of American Art.  This museum has had an interesting development too, from its start with a collection of excellent Western art (The Old West, like cowboys), adding/building a serious photography collection, to its present impressive collection of American art (like N. American).  The permanent collection is well worth a visit.  And always free.

The traveling exhibit?

Poseidon by Romare Bearden - believed fair use as this is a review 

and for educational purposes, image found HERE.  Copyright, of course, Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.  Now I have to admit to a shameful ignorance of Mr. Bearden until almost ten years ago when the DMA had a show of his collages.  Since I make collages myself, I was absolutely fascinated with his work.  The colors!  The shapes!  The meticulous craftsmanship.

He goes about his art differently...  Where I use "found" pictures to create my narratives, he sometimes does that - usually to create human figures - but mainly uses cut/shaped colored paper in a Matisse-like, mosaic-like way.  One technique that intrigued me was that he sometimes sands the glued down papers to abrade and soften colors and edges.  The work in that show concentrates on the history and experience of African-American life, often with an urban flavor, and always with an emotional sound-track of jazz and blues... music which the artist said inspired his collage technique.

The show at the Amon Carter featured Bearden's ink drawings inspired by Homer's The Illiad and his images, both collage and later watercolor, for The Odyssey.  These are not exactly illustrations of Homer's story so much as a retelling of the legend, emphasizing and underlining elements that spoke personally to Bearden, who had long studied the story.  The first, most obvious, difference in interpretation is that Bearden has made the characters black and often specifically African, like his impressive Poseidon.  (All kinds of societal/historical commentary with that choice... also much bolder graphics, having crisp black cut-outs instead of wimpy pinky-tan ones.)  The Odyssey becomes here a metaphor for the African diaspora.  Another striking re-emphasis is the strength of all his female characters.

There is little use of found images, instead Bearden uses those strongly Matisse-like fragments of paper but in colors even Matisse might not have dared.  Gorgeous!

There's a quote in the explanatory film about use of color in Bearden's career: "He wouldn't let himself use color until he could use color 'that would walk around like the big men.'"

There are big men and women in his Odyssey.


The Smithsonian's explanatory film is a You Tube video HERE.

Holiday Hiatus

What with Thanksgiving and this and that, it's been hard to even get to my computer during the last week, much less to write anything.  I hope you all, Dear Readers, had a wonderful Day of Thanks.

(This is one of my top favorite holidays - so purely family, friends, and food.  A very happy Thanksgiving here, this year.)

So I've been busy outside the theater - here's the Recap:

FILMS: Skyfall, the latest Bond... and a very good one.  I loved M, Q, the actually frightening villain, and have now Officially Designated Daniel Craig as best Bond ever.

MUSEUMS:  The traveling exhibit of art from the Phillips Collection now at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth is full of  goodies - wonderful art - that and the Kimbell's permanent collection (of which I've written before HERE) are well worth the drive.  Construction on Renzo Piano's addition to Louis Kahn's building is advancing: right now the poured concrete walls have tidy little plastic pup-tents on top to keep rain off of them.  There are models and an interesting film in the Kimbell's lobby about these buildings.  * Extra bonus: visit the KAWS sculpture outside the Modern Art Museum... a sort of giant, cartoon, heart-breaking, tragicomic figure that just appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as a giant balloon.

(Existential Angst in the Holidays?  That is traditional for many.)

A compare-n-contrast moment with the happy Mickey Mouse who followed him certainly.

KAWS Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade float - believed public domain

While in Fort Worth, don't forget to order the enchilada plate at Joe T. Garcia's .  And, if the fall weather and leaves remain as beautiful as today's, consider eating on Joe T.'s patio.  Or visit the Fort Worth Arboretum - its Japanese Garden is lovely now.

In Dallas, the new Perot Science and Natural History Museum opens soon.  It's designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne.  It looks fantastic so far - I'm looking forward to visiting.  HERE's the Dallas Morning News article.  I looked at it again while exploring...

PARKS:  I finally! got to walk through the new Bridge Park (Klyde Warren Park), built over Woodall Rogers Freeway, connecting the Dallas Arts District with Uptown.   I liked its small, even domestic, scale and variety of areas.  Cool playground.  Oddly, there seems no design emphasis on the "bridge" part of the park's function; everything seems oriented lengthwise, ignoring the symbolically important across-the-park-n-across-parts-'o-town-ness that is its reason for being.  Puzzling.  But there were plenty of people enjoying the park on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  The street cars serving it were standing room only.  Maybe it's a hit!  More park info HERE.

THEATER:  Don't forget to buy tickets to Kitchen Dog's (and my own!) The Beauty Queen of Leenane which is gathering rave reviews.  To totally rip off the best quip about it: "Come see the family in Beauty Queen... then love your own family so much better!"  This is truly a holiday special.

Compare and Contrast, kiddies, Compare and Contrast.

Set Designer's Busy Weekend

This past weekend was chock full o' artsy goodness.

Saturday morning was start of the Build for The Beauty Queen of Leenane.  I showed up to help place walls.  Sure, a drawing shows that (the Plan and it's important), but because this set is trying to look like the kind of ad hoc, by-golly-this'd-work-here rural cottage that uses old bed springs as a fence and has a dead tractor in its front yard, we're going with an ad hoc, by-golly method of building too.  Drag in stuff, stare at it, then say, "By-golly..."

Fun!  But the designer had better be on hand to stare.

Saturday night was the opening of Ghost Writer at Circle Theatre, so that afternoon was spent in Fort Worth, visiting museums and eating waaaay too many enchiladas at Joe T. Garcia's.

There are two terrific art shows:

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art has an exhibit from the Phillips Collection "To See as Artists See."  Amazing!  One of those exhibits like a good cocktail party: you keep recognizing faces across the room and say, "I can't believe it! You're...  I know you!"  Many famous images.  The Amon Carter's own collection is interesting too.  They made their reputation on Western art, but have a lot more, including a serious photography collection.

Next door is the show "The Kimbell at 40."  Superb pieces, arranged in order of acquisition, which is not the most visual display logic.  

You can see more of the ongoing construction of the Kimbell's addition as it grows taller than its construction fence.  (There's a good over-look from the plaza of the Amon Carter.)  Inside the Kimbell are models and a video about the Kahn and Piano buildings.

That evening (after enchiladas!) came the play: Ghost Writer went very well.  I like this script.  It's subtle with a lot of emotion bubbling underneath.  Beautifully acted.

Sunday was more construction at Kitchen Dog.  My personal highlight had to be when I helped collect a vintage refrigerator for the set: a gorgeous Fall afternoon, a few quiet blocks of tree-lined streets, where the very first yellow leaves were beginning to fall, and... I got to ride in the back of a pickup truck!

I'm in theater for the thrills.

Believed public domain images messed with