Dallas Museum of Art Acquires New Painting
in Honor of Outgoing Senior Curator Dorothy Kosinski

Jacques-Louis David’s Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe to Become Museum’s Newest Addition

Now on view in the European Painting and Sculpture Galleries on Level 2.

The Dallas Museum of Art recently acquired Jacques-Louis David’s dramatic work, Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe, through the Mrs. John B. O’Hara Fund of the Foundation for the Arts as the newest addition to the Museum’s permanent collection, it was announced by John R. Lane, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art.

An integral addition to the Museum’s collection of 18th-century European art, its acquisition is also a commemoration of outgoing curator Dorothy Kosinski, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art, and her many years of service to the Museum.

Rarely exhibited, Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe is one of David’s earliest works. It was completed in 1772 as the final test in David’s second bid to win the coveted Grand Prix, also known as the Rome Prize, which granted four years of advanced study at the French Academy in Rome.

The painting, currently on view in the Museum’s galleries on Level 2, depicts the scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which Latona orders her children, Apollo and Diana, to kill Niobe’s fourteen children in an act of revenge. Described by Heather McDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture, who joined Dr. Kosinski in proposing the acquisition, as a “stunning example of 18th-century art,” the painting enhances the DMA’s collection of art from the period and gives museum-goers a more comprehensive taste of the entire 18th century. “Considering most of David’s works are now already in museum collections, the acquisition of an important mythological painting by the artist is remarkable,” noted Dr. Lane. Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe has descended directly in the family of Dr. Andry, Louis XVI’s personal physician, and the first owner of the painting.

Dr. Kosinski has spent twelve of her nearly thirty years of curatorial experience at the Dallas Museum of Art. In December 2007, she was named Director of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and will assume her position there in May 2008. The acquisition of the painting is in honor of her dedication to and accomplishments on behalf of the Dallas Museum of Art.

“Both Dorothy Kosinski and the Foundation for the Arts have been important assets to the Dallas Museum of Art,” said Dr. Lane. “The acquisition of this beautiful painting by the foundation in her honor is a generous and much appreciated gift to us that will greatly enrich our already significant collection of French painting.”

The Foundation for the Arts is a nonprofit organization with an independent board of trustees purposed to hold and acquire art for the benefit of the Dallas Museum of Art. The foundation stewards the Mrs. John B. O’Hara Fund, created by Mrs. O’Hara in 1975 for the purpose of acquiring 18th- and 19th-century art.

Dallas Museum of Art Acquires Equilibres, a series of 82 photographs by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss

The Dallas Museum of Art announces the acquisition of Equilibres, a series of 82 photographs by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The European artists, described by ARTNews as “indisputably the best thing in Swiss art since Alberto Giacometti,” have been collaborating for almost 30 years and work across a wide range of media, including sculpture, installation, film and photography. In Equilibres, they created a number of precarious constructions out of everyday objects and then photographed them. This group of images, taken from 1984 to 1986, is an important addition to the contemporary art collection at the Dallas Museum of Art, one of the few major encyclopedic art museums in the world with a truly significant collection of modern and contemporary art.

“These slyly humorous photographs suggest how perishable the sculptures are, and make you think the same about sculpture itself, and maybe all art,” said Charles Wylie, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art. “In the way they can re-contextualize totally ordinary things into delightfully absurd or melancholically poetic sculpture, Fischli and Weiss have few equals.”
For Equilibres, Fischli and Weiss chose industrial and household items, like silverware, shoes and sausages, intertwined them, and placed them on various pedestals or in studio corners, giving them the full photographic treatment. Lighting casts shadows across a few back walls, furthering a sense of abstraction and drawing in space with light. Some of the set-ups are modest, while others look to be life-size if not larger. Some constructions appear stolidly ready to survive despite their inherent and obvious imbalances.

Among the most influential and widely exhibited artists working today, Peter Fischli and David Weiss began working as a team in 1979. Since then, their art has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in just the last ten years, including those at Kunsthaus Zürich and Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Tate Modern, London; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ICA Philadelphia; ICA Boston; and Walker Art Center. They represented Switzerland in the 1995 Venice Biennale, and later received the Golden Lion award at the 2003 Venice Biennale.

In 1988, the DMA presented the pair’s film The Way Things Go as part of its Concentrations series of project-based solo exhibitions by emerging artists. Equilibres is the photographic and still counterpart to this film, revealing a sophisticated yet unpretentious formal sensibility of concocting beautiful yet wry sculpture using the least elevated of materials.

Equilibres was acquired through the DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund and a partnership with Dallas private collectors Alden Pinnell, The Rachofsky Collection, Deedie and Rusty Rose, and Catherine and Will Rose.

Reinstallation

The Museum recently completed a multi-phase reinstallation of the American galleries. The year-and-a-half-long project, which was orchestrated by curators William Rudolph and Kevin W. Tucker, involved reinstalling nearly 13,000 square feet of space on Level 4.

The Museum’s collection of American art includes paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and works on paper spanning three centuries.

Particular strengths include the Faith P. and Charles L. Bybee Collection of American decorative arts, 18th- and 19th-century portraiture, late 19th-century landscape paintings, 19th- and 20th-century American silver, and American Scene painting of the early 20th century.

The reinstallation opened up the American galleries, forming a new, more intuitive pathway through the collections.

Included in the installation is a gallery dedicated to the Museum’s superlative holdings of 19th-century American silver, as well as a light-drenched sculpture corridor, a rotating installation devoted to early Texas art, and an intimately focused new gallery of Spanish colonial art. The installations also feature new acquisitions and loan pieces.

The Museum’s iconic painting The Icebergs by Frederic Edwin Church has been newly redisplayed to emphasize its scale. It is also shown with landscapes that complement the work.

Paintings by John Singleton Copley and John Smibert are highlighted, as are a Spanish colonial cabinet, a monumental Gothic revival bed that was destined for the White House, and an elaborate silver dressing table made by Gorham for the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Cylindrical vessel with sacrificial scene
The Museum’s Maya objects form one of the most significant groupings within the pre-Columbian collection, but the last major acquisitions in this area were made in the late 1980s. The cylindrical vessel with sacrificial scene complements the cylindrical vessel with ritual ballgame scene, which is one of the most frequently illustrated pre-Columbian works of art in the permanent collection, and brings a sense of action—high ritual drama and dance—to the ancient American galleries.

The cylindrical vessel with sacrificial scene, which portrays a human sacrifice in great detail, is notable for its elegant use of color and line, its unusual black background, and its dramatic composition, which is rich in symbolic imagery.

The focal point of the scene is the nude body of a sacrificed man, who stares directly at the viewer. As his body lies across a stone altar, an executioner dances beside the victim, holding an instrument for heart excision in one hand and a giant macaw in the other. On the other side of the victim a king dances holding a jaguar, and like the executioner, he wears blood-splattered white garments.

In the Maya culture, human blood was considered the most important offering that human beings could make to the gods. The gift of human life was the supreme sacrifice. This graphic scene may refer to the founding of a dynasty, the defeat of a rival kingdom, or the dedication of a stela.

A key to the meaning of the scene may lie in the nature of the dance or in the role of the animals, which represent animal spirit companions, which are associated with the dark forces manipulated by sorcerers. The victim’s face is rendered frontally, an unusual position in Maya painting, in which profile faces are dominant.

The acquisition of the cylindrical vessel with sacrificial scene was made possible by the General Acquisitions Fund, The Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Fund, and The Roberta Coke Camp Fund.

Image:
Cylindrical vessel with sacrificial scene, Guatemala or Mexico, Maya culture, c. A.D. 600–850, ceramic, Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund, The Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Fund, and The Roberta Coke Camp Fund

Tunic with profile heads and stepped frets
The tunic with profile heads and stepped frets ends a long search for a tunic from the Huari (Wari) culture to fulfill the Dallas Museum of Art criteria: vibrant color, classic design, and excellent condition. The tunic—an untailored garment made with two long rectangular panels of tapestry-woven cloth with an opening for the head and arms—is one of the most-fitting works of art to represent the Huari culture.

The Museum’s tunic features of vivid red and bright pink, along with light blue (relatively rare in Huari tunics) and purple. The composition pairs a stylized profile head and a stepped fret or spiral, considered to be among the most classic designs. The basic design block is repeated throughout the textile, but with inversions, reversals, and color substitution that add variety and complexity.

The use of white stripes or lines to outline key elements of the design is characteristic of Huari tunics in this style, but it is particularly precise in the Dallas Museum of Art’s new acquisition.

The quality of the weaving and the sophistication of the design suggest that the tapestry tunics were worn by men of high rank or status on special occasions, but most show signs of wear consistent with everyday use, perhaps by ordinary men.

Ultimately, tunics functioned as burial goods, often as the outer covering for mummy bundles.

Huari, in the central highlands of Peru, is one of two imperial cities that had widespread influence on Andean art between A.D. 600 and 1000. The other is Tiwanaku (or Tiahuanaco), in Bolivia. These cities are often called the first Andean empires.

The acquisition of the tunic with profile heads and stepped frets was made possible by The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc.

Image:
Tunic with profile heads and stepped frets, Peru, probably south coast, Huari (Wari) culture, c. A.D. 650–800, cotton and camelid fiber, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., in honor of Carol Robbins’ 40th anniversary with the Dallas Museum of Art

Crown with deity figures
This remarkable work in sheet gold portrays three images of the Staff God, the primary Chavín deity. The iconography of the crown links it to the ancient ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar, where a famous and influential image of this deity was engraved on a granite slab.

Symbols of powerful predators—jaguar, harpy eagle, cayman, and serpent—define the image of the Staff God. The large head features a snarling mouth with feline fangs. Serpent heads emerge from the figure’s head and waist. Heads in profile accent elbows and legs. Talons mark fingers and toes. Rows of teeth with pointed incisors form a vertical band on the torso and the upright staff in each hand.

The sculptural clarity of the forms and the dramatic use of negative space distinguish the crown among the known examples of Chavín goldwork.

This acquisition further enriches the broad representation of ancient American gold in the Museum’s Nora and John Wise Collection, acquired in 1976, with tremendous strengths in gold from the Sicán culture of Peru (A.D. 900–1100), Colombia, (500 B.C.–A.D. 1500), and Panama (A.D. 700–1500).

The acquisition of the crown with deity figures was made possible by The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc.

Image:
Crown with deity figures, Peru, north coast or highlands, Chavín style, c. 900–200 B.C., gold, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc.