Drawing on works from the DMA’s permanent collection, this exhibition presents the ways in which contemporary artists engage with landscapes, broadly defined, exploring how our natural and built environments intersect with our representations of ourselves and our communities. The landscape has been both a traditional art historical genre and a means of mythologizing the origins of American history and culture as a colonial product, creating an image of unclaimed terrain that erased the people who already inhabited it.
“America will be!” is the rousing closing line of the 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again,” in which Langston Hughes argues for a vision of America—and for what it is to be American—that includes the multiplicity of experiences at both the margins and the center, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or origin. This exhibition explores how contemporary “landscapes” might better reflect the full diversity of the peoples who inhabit North and South America.
Focus Installation
Admission is FREE.
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park No. 29, 1970, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Meadows Foundation, Incorporated
TR Ericsson, American Tragedy, 2017, graphite, resin, and funerary ash on muslin, Dallas Museum of Art, Laura and Walter Elcock Contemporary Art Fund, 2018.2, © TR Ericsson, courtesy Harlan Levey Projects
Shara Hughes, Gusto, 2018, oil and acrylic on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Fund, 2018.18, © Shara Hughes, courtesy Rachel Uffner Gallery
Thomas Struth, Dallas Parking Lot, Dallas, 2001, C-print mounted on Plexiglas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, 2002.51, © Thomas Struth, 2019
Amelia Bennet, Bars and Strips, 1929, cotton, denim, muslin, Discretionary Decorative Arts Fund and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Foundation © Amelia Bennett
Stephen Shore, Presidio, Texas, February 21, 1975, negative 1975, print 1977, color photograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Polaroid Foundation grant, © Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York
Sanford Biggers, Sirocco, 2016, repurposed antique quilt, spray paint, acrylic, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program, 2018.17. Photo by Todd-White Art Photography, courtesy Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong