Neighborhood Essays

Early in the research for DallasSITES: Charting Contemporary Art in Dallas, 1963 to Present, it was apparent that the history of the North Texas art scene is also a history of the city. Dallas became a central character in the overall narrative of contemporary art in our region, told through essays on six distinct neighborhoods, with an additional essay on university communities.

Organized in chronological order, this section begins with the Fair Park–South Dallas neighborhood, which many consider to be Dallas’ original cultural district. At its peak, it was a hub of cultural activity, attracting North Texans to the museums within the state fairgrounds as well as to the artist-run spaces that developed outside Fair Park. The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts grounded the neighborhood until it moved in 1984 to the official Dallas Arts District. Since then, the South Dallas Cultural Center and the University of Texas at Dallas’ artist residency program, CentralTrak, have become the area’s cultural anchors.

Starting in the early 1960s, the neighborhood now known as Uptown was the counterpart to Fair Park–South Dallas. With the addition of the short-lived Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts in 1959, Uptown blossomed into a true gallery district, as artists and gallerists moved there to be near the museum’s action. When the DMCA merged with the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1963, many were concerned that the loss of the neighborhood’s major contemporary art institution would have a negative effect on art activity there. The opposite was true, as artists and galleries filled the gap. For the next 40 years, Uptown was Dallas’ premier gallery district, with artist-run spaces thriving alongside established commercial galleries. In 1994, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary helped ground the neighborhood by focusing on the interests of area artists with a regular exhibition program devoted to the work of regional emerging and established talent.

Across the Trinity River, the enclave of Oak Cliff has always been a hotbed of creative activity. Early on, a sense of community was evident in spaces like the Creative Arts Center of Dallas, established in 1965 in the former home and studio of Dallas-based artist Frank Reaugh. Despite (or most likely because of) a dwindling economy and overall depression in the 1960s, area artists moved to Oak Cliff and established studios. The artist collective called the Oak Cliff Four put the neighborhood on the national radar with coverage in Newsweek, Artforum, and Art in America. Over the years, Oak Cliff has been the home of artists and creative types seeking an alternative to the more polished art neighborhoods of Uptown and the Arts District. The Ice House Cultural Center was transformed into the Oak Cliff Cultural Center and continues to offer arts programming to neighborhood residents. Oak Cliff locals revel in their status as outsiders, and its artists take pride in making and doing in a part of town that recognizes and nourishes their creative talent.

The Deep Ellum neighborhood has experienced several renaissances throughout its long history as an entertainment district. The major upswing occurred in the 1980s, when all aspects of Deep Ellum’s personality came together as a true destination for art, music, and nightlife. Galleries relocated to the neighborhood to take advantage of the raw warehouse spaces, a trend that artists had seen coming and taken advantage of for several years. Texas’ oldest artist-run space, 500X, calls Deep Ellum home and anchors the area as a place where mainstream and counterculture converge. In recent years, Deep Ellum has experienced another renaissance, with the established Barry Whistler Gallery maintaining a gallery district that welcomes spaces representing diverse options for artists and patrons.

The Arts District, located in Downtown Dallas, is a city dream several decades in the making. When the Dallas Museum of Art moved to the neighborhood in 1984, the dream was born. Today it is the nation’s largest contiguous arts district, with 13 cultural institutions and organizations in a span of 19 city blocks. Outside the Arts District, culture has always thrived in Downtown. Innovative and avant-garde galleries like Modern Realism and N. No. 0 introduced local audiences to the strange and unfamiliar, with exhibitions by famed international mail artist Ray Johnson and works by legendary cult film director David Lynch. Spurred by the activity surrounding the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Downtown Dallas is also home to annual events like the Dallas Art Fair and the Aurora New Media Arts exhibition.

At the turn of the 21st century, the Design District emerged as the city’s gallery district, with more than 10 contemporary art galleries or spaces. Historically a location for Dallas’ leading home designers and decorators, the neighborhood welcomed its first gallery when Nancy Whitenack’s Conduit Gallery moved there in 2002. As in nearly all of Dallas’ arts neighborhoods, low-cost available space spurred artistic development in the Design District. The addition of several new galleries and two nonprofit art spaces—the Dallas Contemporary and the Goss-Michael Foundation, both in 2010—helped the Design District shed its historical designation as a designer-decorator neighborhood.

Many of the art programs in North Texas’ university communities came into their own in the 1960s and 1970s. Teaching positions have attracted artists from all over the country to live and work in North Texas, adding to the wealth of artistic resources in our region. These communities also stimulated artist collectives, most famously the University of North Texas’ Good/Bad Art Collective, active in the 1990s, but also the lesser-known all-female collective WAVE at Texas Woman’s University and the millennial Oh6 collective from the University of Texas at Dallas. Many renowned artists have visited area campuses, connecting students to national and international contemporary art practices and demonstrating what it takes to make it as a working artist. Some of Dallas’ most recognized artists are alums of North Texas programs—including David Bates, Nic Nicosia, Frances Bagley, and Erick Swenson—and the future promises to produce many more.

Leigh Arnold
Research Project Coordinator