Contemporary Art + Design presents recently acquired paintings, installations, jewelry, furnishings, and design objects. Featuring artists from 11 countries—including artists based in Texas and emerging painters and designers—the exhibition samples new directions for the growth of the DMA’s collection. The painters’ inventive treatments of organic forms show contemporary approaches to landscapes and still lifes. These forms resonate with the unique shapes of the surrounding design works, from the experimental and functional sculptures by Ron Arad and Misha Kahn to the elegant and whimsical jewelry by Robert Baines, Bruno Martinazzi, Jiro Kamata, and Kiff Slemmons.
Freedman’s Field (1990–1994), by the late artist and longtime Dallas resident Tracy Hicks, is one of the most recent acquisitions featured in the exhibition. Created using artifacts that resurfaced during the construction of the Dallas Arts District, on land that was once part of an African American community founded by formerly enslaved people called Freedman’s Town, the work exemplifies Hicks’s practice of collecting and preserving and is an important reclamation of a demolished past.
Focus Installation
Admission is FREE.
Contemporary Art + Design: New Acquisitions is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture.
Images: Firelei Báez, Untitled (Central Power Station), 2019, acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2019.91. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York; Tracy Hicks, Freedman's Field, 1990-1994, wood table, pottery shards, broken bottles, old watch parts, fragments of porcelain dolls, coins, buttons, oxidized silverware, and rusted metal, Dallas Museum of Art, Charron and Peter Denker Contemporary Texas Art Fund, 2020.14; Nicholas Weddell, Bethany, designed 2019, made October 2019, wool, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Friedman Benda, 2019.88. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and the artist; Marjorie Norman Schwarz, untitled (accidental vagrant), 2018, water-soluble oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Charron and Peter Denker Contemporary Texas Art Fund, 2020.23. Courtesy of the artist and 12.26; Misha Kahn, Tingle Tangle Mingle Mangle, designed 2017, made 2019, bronze, edition of 8, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2020.10.A-B. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Misha Kahn; Chris Ofili, Afro Love and Envy, 2002-2003, acrylic, oil, glitter, polyester resin, map pins, and elephant dung on linen, with two elephant dung supports, Dallas Museum of Art, The Rachofsky Collection Acquisition Fund, 2019.5.A-C, © Chris Ofili; Shara Hughes, My Natural Nyctinasty, 2019, oil, acrylic, and dye on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Rachofsky Collection Acquisition Fund, 2019.92, © Shara Hughes; Earrings, Fulani peoples, 2006, gold, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Deedie Potter Rose, 2019.77.3.A-B