 |
|
|
Today at the Museum |
|
About the Center for Creative ConnectionsThe unique 12,000-square-foot learning environment will provide interactive encounters with original works of art and artists for visitors of all agesOn Saturday, May 3, 2008, the Dallas Museum of Art premiered the Center for Creative Connections, a dynamic place for new interactive learning experiences that will offer visitors unique ways to engage with works of art and artists with a special focus on the Museum’s collections. Located at the core of the Museum on the first level, the Center for Creative Connections is intended to stimulate curiosity, inquiry, reflection, and creativity in guests of all ages as they connect more deeply with works of art. Designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects, the Center’s renovations were completed by Balfour Beatty Construction. “The Center for Creative Connections is a place to start your Museum experience and engage in experiences with works of art. We tend to look at works of art without seeing all of the clues left by artists that provide insight into the creative process and what an artist is trying to say,” says Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “Through our partnerships with the community and our special relationships with artists, the Center for Creative Connections provides interactions that encourage you to use your eyes and tap into your own creativity as you explore works of art. People will leave the Center able to make their experiences in the Museum’s galleries more emotionally and intellectually rewarding.” The Center for Creative Connections is a 12,000-square-foot facility designed for active learning programs. It will include exhibitions featuring the Museum’s permanent collection and artists’ and community partners’ responses to them; other spaces include the Art Studio, Tech Lab, Theater, and Arturo’s Nest, for the youngest visitors. In the future, the Center for Creative Connections will also be referred to as C3. To celebrate the opening of this unique learning space, the Dallas Museum of Art hosted an admission-free weekend with extended hours, sponsored by Target. During the two days there was a full program of activities held throughout the building, with more than 100 participating artists, while the Center for Creative Connections introduces its first exhibition, Materials & Meanings, on view until the summer of 2009. Materials & Meanings, an exhibition of eight master works of art selected by Dallas Museum of Art educators and curators from the Museum’s encyclopedic collections spanning 5,000 years, focuses on the material from which a work of art is made and on the meanings associated with those materials to both the artist and the viewer. Organized by Gail Davitt, The Dallas Museum of Art League Director of Education, and designed by Jonathan Ingram of i.design, the exhibition “is an invitation to interact with art, to have fun, to slow down and engage. By exploring the artists’ choices of materials and by considering their personal connections, we hope that visitors will leave with a heightened awareness of the role that materials can play in their viewing experiences.” The wide variety of materials found in the exhibition includes oil paint, wood, iron, gold, velvet, chocolate, soap, cardboard, and stone, and the works represent various aspects of the international collections from Africa, Greece, Mexico, France, and the U.S. The eight artworks chosen are:
The Center for Creative Connections is a national model for engaging audiences with works of art. It represents collaboration between the education, curatorial, and design staffs of the Museum working in partnership with community colleagues. Of further distinction, the Center will exhibit real works of art in its interactive gallery spaces, not copies, as is often done in other museums. As noted, the Museum invited community partners to contribute to the Center for Creative Connections, beginning with students and faculty from the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. They designed two walls that explore meanings associated with materials used by architects and interior designers to shape the spaces around us. The Center will present work by visual arts students from the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts later this summer. In addition to the exhibition spaces, the Center for Creative Connections is at the forefront of technology with its new Tech Lab, developed in partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas’s Center for Arts and Technology. In the Tech Lab, visitors can blog about, tag, and research works of art in the collections during daily Open Lab hours. They can also experiment with current technologies during special classes, workshops, and seminars. Classes are offered in this space and in the nearby Art Studio, a large room where visitors can explore their own creativity by creating their own paintings, collages, or sculptures based on their response to the ones on view both in the Center and throughout the Museum. In the newly renovated Theater within the Center for Creative Connections, visitors can view Community Voices on Materials and Meanings, a video of area artists, collectors, and curators sharing their passion for the arts with a special focus on the meanings of materials. This space will also be used for storytelling, performances, classes, and lectures. Arturo’s Nest is a special place for preschoolers to learn about art and engage in creativity with storytelling and classes with Arturo, the Dallas Museum of Art’s family mascot. In the Young Learners Gallery, children will be able to participate in interactive experiences and learning resources related to themes in the exhibitions. |
|
The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts. |
