By Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 reporter.
Dallas, TX – Suzanne Sprague, Reporter: Dallas's elite have been collecting fine art since the city's early days, but the practice got a major public boost in the middle of the 20th century, thanks to retail magnate Stanley Marcus. Attorney George Lee remembers.
George Lee, Chairman, Foundation for the Arts: In the 50s, Stanley Marcus put together a show called "Some Businessmen Collect Contemporary Art" because at the time contemporary art was really frowned upon in the city and Stanley was really making an effort to show that businessmen around the country were interested in and committed to contemporary art.
Sprague: That exhibit and one that soon followed caused something of a scandal in Dallas because they featured the works of known communists, like Pablo Picasso. When the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts issued a statement declaring it didn't "intend" to support communist works, many local collectors were incensed. So they established their own Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art. In 1963, the two museums merged, becoming the Dallas Museum of Art, a city facility, and the Foundation for the Arts was born. The Foundation functioned not just as a receiver of gifts from local art collectors, but also?
Lee: ?to protect against the concept that there could be any censorship because of the city involvement and because of the rather conservative nature of the constituency in Dallas at that time.
George Lee is now the Foundation's chairman.
Lee: You have to say that the Foundation is an indication of what great collections were put together by dominant eyes and minds in this community.
Sprague: Eyes and minds like those of Jim and Lillian Clark, who donated, among other works, the 1920 marble sculpture "Beginning of the World" by Constantin Brancusi. It's a simple, cream-colored egg, about the size of a football, that rests delicately on a chrome plate and is considered one of the Romanian sculptor's masterpieces. The Clarks gave it to the DMA in 1977, when officials were struggling to obtain public funds for a new museum. European Art Curator Dorothy Kosinski remembers what Lillian Clark told her about the Brancusi after her husband died.
Dorothy Kosinksi: And she explained to me that he felt so strongly about this work of art. He loved it so much and felt that the Museum really had to have it at that delicate moment in its life when the bond issue had failed and the move from Fair Park to the downtown was in question. And he said that he wanted the museum to have it as a means of encouraging its future and its growth here in the Arts District.
Sprague: A similar desire motivated the Dallas heiress to the Dr. Pepper fortune, "Pepp" O'Hara, to leave $4.5 million to the DMA in 1975 to acquire 18th and 19th century art. The O'Hara fund has since grown and financed the purchase of art now worth about $16 million, including two large still-lifes by 18th century French painter Anne Vallayer Coster.
Dorothy Kosinski, European Art curator at the DMA: And it's a woman who was the great painter to Marie Antoinette and she does these sumptuous still-life paintings. She's still little known outside a field of specialists.
Sprague: But purchasing art like the Coster still-lifes represents the philosophy of the Foundation for the Arts, according to George Lee.
Lee: There are paintings that we could not afford to buy and the concept is that we try to buy wisely and maybe buy the most well-known name, but to buy really important artists that may not be quite as well-known.
Sprague: So, many of the pieces in the European Masterworks show are historically and intellectually important, even if they're not an immediate commercial success. Gail Davit is the head of school programs and gallery interpretation at the DMA.
Gail Davit, DMA School Programs and Gallery Interpretation: We know that people basically don't know what works are in our permanent collection, that people often come to see special exhibitions but they don't come to see the permanent collection. So, we thought here was an opportunity, really highlight them in a very special way and we wanted to do something that was more focused on engaging people in some new ways.
Sprague: The current show doesn't detail the history of many of the donated works of art. But it does strive to be more interactive than the typical exhibit. For example, in front of a Paul Gaugin painting set in the South Seas, there are several books about paradise that visitors can peruse. And, by Claude Joseph Verne's almost epic painting of a rainstorm approaching a mountainside, the DMA has set up listening stations. Again, Gail Davit.
Davit: We decided, 'Let's try to evoke that sense of the painting by listening to music as opposed to just reading the words on a label.' So we have provided a couple of chairs and some earphones and people can put them on?
[voice trails off as Beethoven's 6th Symphony begins to play]
Davit: What's going to be is that we're going to be evaluating all of these and finding out do people listen to the music at the Verne? What can we learn form this to enable us to do better the next time we install this work, or the next time we install any number of works in the museum?
Sprague: Museum officials also hope the exhibit will inspire the next generation of local collectors. George Lee says the Foundation for the Arts in part wants its acquisitions to complement what art it knows is already owned locally and likely to come to the Museum at some time. "European Masterworks" continues through April 10th at the Dallas Museum of Art. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.