The Dallas Museum of Art’s 2023 exhibitions take audiences on a journey across the world and through time, from 15th-century Flanders to Mexico in the early 1900s to the artistic landscape of today. Among the year’s offerings is a first-of-its-kind survey of work by Mexican Modernist Abraham Ángel; solo presentations by Ja’Tovia Gary and Tiffany Chung, contemporary artists with Texas ties; and the final legs in the U.S. tours of Afro-Atlantic Histories and Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks. The season also showcases the strength and breadth of the Museum’s collection, including recent acquisitions, with presentations of work from its African and European collections. The full schedule follows below:
Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks
February 19–June 25, 2023
Organized by the Denver Art Museum in collaboration with The Phoebus Foundation, Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools explores the artistic styles and subjects that flourished between the 1400s and 1600s in Flanders—better known today as the Southern Netherlands. Flanders was home to revolutionary artists, including Hans Memling, Jan Gossaert, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Anthony van Dyck, who found new ways to depict reality, portray humanity, and tell stories that continue to resonate with viewers today. Featuring roughly 130 extraordinary works of art in a variety of media, from paintings to manuscripts, this exhibition presents objects that open a doorway into the past, telling the story of enterprising townspeople, prosperous cities, and an ever-developing society. They also detail stories about dreams and ambitions, fears and desires, and what it means to be human.
Talk of the Town: A Dallas Museum of Art Pop-Up Exhibition
Off-site exhibition at NorthPark Center
March 22–April 30, 2023
The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Fair, and NorthPark Center have partnered to present Talk of the Town: A Dallas Museum of Art Pop-Up Exhibition, on view at NorthPark Center. Coinciding with the 15th edition of the Dallas Art Fair, this group exhibition celebrates and explores the diversity of womanhood through a wide range of artistic perspectives. Talk of the Town assembles recent works by Sarah Awad, Sarah Cain, Johnny Floyd, Danielle Mckinney, Arcmanoro Niles, Maja Ruznic, Keer Tanchak, Evita Tezeno and Summer Wheat; all of the works were acquired by the DMA in the last six years through the Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program.
Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD
April 23–November 5, 2023
Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD brings together five artworks and related ephemera created by the Dallas-native filmmaker and visual artist over the past three years. Gary’s interdisciplinary practice uses film, installation, and language via a Black feminist subjective lens to challenge the supposed neutrality of archival sources and the historical record. Often employing intimate and politically charged subject matter, her work subverts the dominant narratives found in mainstream storytelling and visual culture. Showcasing a newly commissioned sculpture, glowing neon script, film sourced from the artist’s family archives, and paintings, the DMA’s multimedia installation of Gary’s work is an evocative memoir that celebrates the power of ancestral knowledge.
Picasso’s Muses: Between Inspiration and Obsession
April 29–October 29, 2023
A man often understood as synonymous with “modern art” itself, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) had an enormous artistic output throughout his long career, cementing his legacy as a household name even today. Picasso’s name and legacy are also undivorceable from the misogynistic or abusive behavior he demonstrated toward women. The artist was inspired by his lovers, who served as muses for his ever-changing style. These women were key to Picasso’s artistic success and fame, yet their contributions are often overlooked. Through works on paper from the DMA’s collection, Picasso’s Muses: Between Inspiration and Obsession celebrates the muses in Picasso’s oeuvre 50 years after the artist’s death.
Tiffany Chung: Rise Into the Atmosphere
August 4, 2023–August 3, 2025
The sixth iteration of the Museum’s Concourse mural series will feature an installation by Houston-based artist Tiffany Chung, who is internationally known for her diverse conceptual work and research-driven process dealing with sociopolitical issues. Contending with issues of conflict, migration, urban progress, and transformation in relation to history and cultural memory, Chung’s practice endeavors to document and discuss the micro, hidden histories—the memory and experiences of ordinary people—that counterbalance the grand narratives produced by the state.
Her commissioned mural centers narratives of migration and movement, especially those found within Dallas, in recognition and celebration of these lived experiences. This multi-sensorial and immersive installation seeks to engage guests with poetic, sonic, and visual possibilities in sharing the stories that people carry with them.
Abraham Ángel: Between Wonder and Seduction
September 10, 2023–January 28, 2024
An ambitious retrospective assembling all known surviving works by the artist for the first time in history, Abraham Ángel: Between Wonder and Seduction introduces U.S. audiences to the legendary artist in the first major survey of his work in over 25 years. During his brief three-year career, Abraham Ángel developed a unique artistic style that successfully captured the rapidly changing society and culture of Mexico in the early 20th century. Despite his reputation being defined by his mysterious death and homosexuality, Ángel’s contributions to Mexican modernism have exceeded his biography, cementing his status as an icon in the artistic canon in Mexico.
Backs in Fashion: Mangbetu Women’s Egbe
September 24, 2023–August 3, 2025
On view in the DMA’s African Art galleries, Backs in Fashion: Mangbetu Women’s Egbe explores the art of the egbe, a back apron garment created by upper-class Mangbetu women. This exhibition investigates the artistic process, essential function, and cultural role that egbe garments played in Mangbetu society.
Afro-Atlantic Histories
October 22, 2023–February 11, 2024
As the final destination in its U.S. tour, the DMA is proud to present Afro-Atlantic Histories, an ambitious exhibition that charts the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies in the African diaspora. Composed of around 100 works of art and documents produced in Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe from the 17th century to today, this exhibition engages visitors in a series of dialogues that reexamine histories and stories of enslavement, resilience, and the struggle for liberation from a global perspective.
Afro-Atlantic Histories is co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The following exhibitions will remain on view into 2023:
- Ha Įlè AR Sculptures (through March 31, 2023), augmented reality sculptures honoring the Indigenous peoples of North America and contributing to a cross-border dialogue through the shred iconography of petroglyphs and hummingbirds
- Octavio Medellín: Spirit and Form (through May 14, 2023), the first-ever museum retrospective for the influential Mexican American artist and teacher Octavio Medellín, whose work helped shape the Texas art scene for seven decades
- Guadalupe Rosales: Drifting on a Memory (through June 18, 2023), an immersive mural created by Rosales in collaboration with Dallas-based lowrider artist Lokey Calderon that evokes the iridescent surfaces of the customized cars on a monumental scale, with a sound element that replicates the experience of cruising through East LA
- Movement: The Legacy of Kineticism (through July 16, 2023), an exhibition featuring 80 works drawn from the Museum’s collection, exploring the power of kineticism through the work of artists from three historical eras
- Bamana Mud Cloth: From Mali to the World (through August 6, 2023), an installation of cloths from the DMA’s collection that explores the production of silk and silk textiles in Ghana, Nigeria, and Madagascar
- Jean-Michel Basquiat: Sam F (through August 13, 2023), a spotlight on a Basquiat painting with local ties, gifted to the DMA in 2021 as the first of the artist’s works to enter the Museum’s collection
- Focus On: Rashid Johnson (through September 10, 2023), a presentation of Johnson’s intense and intimate multimedia work The New Black Yoga Installation, which was gifted by the artist to the Museum in 2022