What's New

Cowboys: On the Range Between Art and Life

A new installation opening October 31 on Level 2

Cowboys: On the Range Between Art and Life is an exploration of the different ways visual artists of the modern era have depicted the image of the cowboy. On display through July 1, 2010, Cowboys includes 19 paintings, photographs and works on paper drawn from the collections of the DMA. Ranging in date from the 1880s to the 1980s, and made mostly by native Texans, the artworks include several major gifts to the Museum from its acclaimed Hoblitzelle Collection and the Barrett Collection of Texas art. 

Cowboys are synonymous with Texas, and, like Texas, the cowboy has a legacy. In the popular imagination, they represent a desire for adventure and recklessness while pursuing the romantic ideal of heroism and a pioneering spirit. Artists find the cowboy’s way of life an endlessly fascinating subject. Images of cowboys consistently challenge a single interpretation, and there is a rich tension between the romantic ideal of what the cowboy embodies and the reality of a life that, for some, continues today. 

Highlights of the installation include Frank Reaugh’s painting Plains, Thomas Hart Benton’s hectic imagining of a famed gunslinger in his lithograph Jesse James, Bank Langmore’s photograph Portrait of Old Cowboy, Erwin E. Smith’s photographic documentation of life on the trail, and Perry Nichols’ painting Fight in the Corral, which romanticizes the experience of the cowboy, invoking the rugged physicality of manliness and individualism.

An Installation of Work by Peter Doig, amfAR's 2009 Honored Artist

On View in the Hoffman Galleries Beginning October 18, 2009

The Dallas Museum of Art is pleased to present a focused exhibition of works, drawn entirely from Dallas collections, by internationally renowned artist Peter Doig. As part of October’s Two x Two for AIDS and Art benefit gala at The Rachofsky House, Peter Doig will receive the 2009 amfAR Award of Excellence for Artistic Contributions to the Fight Against AIDS in recognition of his generosity and continuous support of amfAR’s programs. Doig’s installation at the Dallas Museum of Art will include two paintings and four drawings and will be on view beginning Sunday, October 18.

Peter Doig is recognized as one of the most accomplished and inventive painters working today. His works explore oppositions between abstraction and representation, and description and invention. Doig takes his inspiration from pictorial sources such as personal snapshots, movies, art history and advertising. The artist transforms these into scenes that can resemble dreams or memories, evoking occasions for perception and contemplation that take us outside the realm of our normal daily experience.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1959, Peter Doig was raised in Canada before returning to the United Kingdom in 1979. He lived and studied for many years in London before moving to Trinidad, where he now lives and works. In 1994 he was nominated for the Tate’s Turner Prize and is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the prestigious Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Society for Modern Art, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Doig is a professor at the renowned Düsseldorf Art Academy, a post he has held since 2005.

In 2008 Tate Britain organized a major survey of the artist’s work from the past 20 years. This widely acclaimed exhibition—the most in-depth and comprehensive overview of Peter Doig's work to date—traveled from London to the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. Prior to the Tate exhibition, Peter Doig participated in the Carnegie International, the Whitney Biennial and SITE Santa Fe. Peter Doig: Works on Paper was presented at the Dallas Museum of Art in the fall of 2005, and his works can be found in important public collections such as Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Image: Peter Doig, House of Pictures (Carrera), 2004, Promised gift of Gayle and Paul Stoffel to the Dallas Museum of Art

The Center for Creative Connections: Community Partner Response Installation to Materials and Meanings

University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design
July 10–December 2009 

Fifteen students and their professor from the New Media program at the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design premiere six new media installations this summer in the DMA’s Center for Creative Connections. For this community partner response installation, they considered ideas about materials and their meanings and the interactive nature of the space. Their works use a variety of electronic and digital equipment—including computers, monitors, webcams, wiring, sensors, and Arduinos (electronic platforms based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments)—as their primary materials and as the means for expression to reflect on the meaning of popular symbols, our physical relationship with the space around us, and ideas about paranoia and perception. 

For example, the visitor becomes a material part of the design because each work is dependent on the viewer’s presence via movement, vibration, and curiosity to activate it. In one composition, visitors control animated stories in custom-designed doll houses. In another piece, the wind generated by human breath impacts the mood of a digital wind chime. 

Faculty and students involved in the project include Max Kazemzadeh, Associate Professor, Matt Brooks, Brent Bullion, Caitlin Christian, Christina Day, Eric Flye, Jesse Gomez, Joe Holland, Melody Lopez, Donna Lord, Harold Mateos, Tiffany McCrea, Justin Pierce, Eric-Sharif Rabah, Arash Sahba, and Sean Welch.

These student artists will participate in a panel discussion during the “Late Night Art Bytes” program on Friday, July 17, at the DMA’s monthly Late Night. From 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. in the Theater in the Center for Creative Connections, these tech savvy creators will share the ideas and artistry behind their electronic and digital works currently on view.

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.

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