Welcome to Dallas! with Turon Travel expert, Nicholas Christopher
Dallas Arts District
Master Plan
DALLAS, FOUNDED AND NAMED BY JOHN NEELY BRYAN IN 1841, BEGAN AS A PERMANENT SETTLEMENT NEAR THE TRINITY RIVER AND ROSE TO HISTORICAL PROMINENCE AS THE GATEWAY CITY FOR THE OIL AND COTTON INDUSTRIES. TODAY, DALLAS IS HOME TO A COMMUNITY OF GENEROUS AND DEDICATED ART COLLECTORS AND PATRONS WHO SUPPORT THEIR CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MUSEUMS WITH A GENEROSITY AS BIG AS THE STATE ITSELF.
THOSE ATTENDING THE DALLAS ART FAIR, APRIL 6th (PREVIEW) THROUGH APRIL 12th, ARE SURE TO ENJOY A WARM WELCOME. THE CITY OF DALLAS FEATURES THE LARGEST CONTIGUOUS URBAN ARTS DISTRICT IN THE UNITED STATES AND INCLUDES FIVE CULTURAL CENTERS DESIGNED BY INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED ARCHITECTS I.M. PEI, RENZO PIANO AND NORMAN FOSTER AND REM KOOLHAAS.
DALLAS IS A GREAT DESTINATION ANY TIME OF YEAR AND THE LRFA BLOG IS DELIGHTED TO WELCOME TRAVEL EXPERT, NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL OF TURON TRAVEL, THE TRAVEL AGENCY TO THE ART WORLD, AS OUR GUIDE. THANK YOU, NICHOLAS!
https://www.turontravel.com/about-us
The 2017 Dallas Art Fair is enjoying its 9th year. This annual art event anchors the Dallas Art District, the largest arts district in the nation, spanning 68 acres and 19 contiguous blocks. The district is comprised of museums, performance halls, corporate offices, residences, restaurants, churches and even a school. The Dallas Art District has been a thirty-year plan in the making and now boast buildings by four Pritzker Prize winning architects within a span of several blocks and also includes significant buildings from as far back as the late 1880s, just 40 years after Dallas was founded.
The 2017 DALLAS ART FAIR, opening on Thursday April 6th and continuing through Sunday, the 9th, will feature prominent national and international art dealers and galleries exhibiting painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation by modern and contemporary artists. As with all successful fairs, Dallas’ arts institutes, galleries and museums put forth new and exciting exhibitions to complement the mission of the fair.
Dallas Art Fair
Preview Gala 2016
This makes for a full week around the Dallas Art Fair with the annual Preview Gala Benefit setting the stage. The Preview Gala benefits the Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center and Dallas Contemporary, and will offer art patrons and Dallas’ top collectors the opportunity to preview and purchase exhibited works prior to the public opening of the fair.
The Dallas Art Fair venue is conveniently set in a private park located across from the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center.
http://dallasartfair.com/visiting-the-fair/
The Dallas Museum of Art’s collection contains over 24,000 works of art from all cultures and time periods spanning 5,000 years of human creativity. The collection is dynamic; new acquisitions are being added all the time and the galleries are constantly changing. A particularly compelling current DMA exhibition for those attending the Art Fair is entitled Passages in Modern Art: 1946–1996.
Jasper Johns
Device
1961-1962
Taken from the DMA’s acclaimed contemporary collection, this exhibit is a great indicator of the dedication and support of the Dallas art community and includes recent acquisitions, rarely seen works, and newly conserved paintings and sculpture. Art by such iconic artists as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Philip Guston, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, and Mark Rothko is presented alongside their lesser-known contemporaries.
Yayoi Kusama
Accumulation
1962-1964
https://www.dma.org/art/exhibitions/passages-modern-art-1946-1996
Nasher Sculpture Center by Renzo Piano
The birth and growth of the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection started more than 50 years ago. In 1950, the Nashers traveled to Mexico, where they became interested in pre-Columbian art and bought the first works in what would become a sizable collection of objects from ancient Latin America. They soon bought other ethnographic and archaeological works and also acquired a number of important American modernist paintings and prints. Mr. Nasher often credits this early involvement with pre-Columbian and other tribal arts as having whetted the Nashers’ appetite for, and appreciation of, modern three-dimensional works.
Henry Moore
Piece no. 3: Vertebrae 1968
Nasher Sculpture Center
By the late-1960s, the Nashers had made their first significant acquisitions of modern sculpture. These included Jean Arp’s Torso with Buds (1961), two major bronzes by Henry Moore, Three Piece No. 3: Vertebrae (1968) and Two Piece Reclining Figure No.9 (1968, no longer in the Collection), and Barbara Hepworth’s large and powerful Squares with Two Circles (Monolith) (1963, cast 1964). In rapid succession, they went on to acquire works by, among others, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi.
Pierre Huyghe
La déraison, 2014
Concrete, marble, heating system, water, and plants, 36 ¼ x 97 ¾ x 51 in.
At the Nasher, don’t miss the remarkable installation of two works by Pierre Huyghe, 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate. Huyghe has profoundly expanded the parameters of sculpture through artworks encompassing a variety of materials and disciplines. As part of the celebrations surrounding Nasher Prize, the Nasher Sculpture Center presents two important works by the artist: an active marine ecosystem and a living sculpture.
Pierre Huyghe
Untitled, 2013
Live marine ecosystem, aquarium, resin shell
The Arts District is home to many other Arts Institutions all within walking distant of the fair. There is the Fashion Industry Gallery which also houses the Dallas Art Fair, along with The Annette Strauss Artist Square, the Belo Mansion/Dallas Bar Association, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Theater Center/Arts District Theater, Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, and the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art. Plenty to see and do during your stay in Dallas.
JOIN US FOR THE NEXT LRFA POST WITH NICHOLAS TO VISIT OTHER ART EXHIBITIONS AND HAVE A DELICIOUS BITE OR TWO ALONG THE WAY!
Leslie Rankow Fine Arts 