Fair Park-South Dallas

The history of contemporary art in Dallas has its roots in the Fair Park–South Dallas neighborhood, the city’s first arts district and a lively destination for art and culture. From the mid-1930s this area was home to North Texas’ finest cultural institutions, innovative galleries and alternative spaces, and a thriving community of artists. In a bid for the State Centennial Celebration in 1936, the City of Dallas expanded and beautified the county fairgrounds in South Dallas. Practically overnight, the city gained more than 200 acres of parks and dozens of art deco–style buildings, completed in time to host the event (Fig. 1). As part of the Fair Park expansion, permanent buildings were added to the grounds for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra1 and the Dallas Art Association, governing body of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (DMFA) (Fig. 2).2 The Dallas Art Institute opened in the DMFA’s new building in 1938.3 In 1941, the official Museum School was established under the leadership of Museum director Richard Foster Howard, employing some of the state’s most recognizable artists as professors and offering classes in lithography, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, painting, and life drawing.4 The concentration of art and culture in Fair Park spilled into the surrounding neighborhood, attracting artists to live and work near the city’s cultural hub.

At its new home in Fair Park, the DMFA wasted no time in introducing the public to fine art. From the early 1940s through the 1960s, the Museum’s collecting and exhibitions reflected the interests of Jerry Bywaters, director beginning in 1943. Major exhibitions focused on Latin American contemporary art and local and regional art. Some exhibitions, including the landmark photography show The Family of Man5 and Some Businessmen Collect Contemporary Art,6 generated controversy in conservative McCarthy-era Dallas.

During peak periods, Fair Park was abuzz with activity, hosting stock shows, rodeos, horse racing, concerts, and football games. Attracting visitors was simply a matter of opening the Museum’s doors and advertising within the park, as events there helped increase attendance. Museum visitors were a diverse mix of area farmers, society women, and schoolchildren (Fig. 3), and the Museum did its best to accommodate its audience by gearing programming toward these groups. With the establishment of the Museum League in 1938, concerts, printmaking programs, children’s tours, and radio programs became a regular part of the DMFA, and in the early 1970s, members of The Assemblage, a young art collectors’ group, hosted Cowboy Brunches at the Museum before Dallas Cowboys football games to encourage the public to visit.7

The most exciting time of year in Fair Park was the annual State Fair of Texas (Fig. 4). During the month-long celebration, hundreds of thousands of people would see the work of artists from all over the state in juried competitions like the Texas Annual Painting and Sculpture exhibition. Hosted by the DMFA and considered an accurate survey of the arts in Texas, these exhibitions emerged as early as 1928 with the First Allied Arts Exhibition of Dallas County. By the 1940s, the Texas General8 and the Southwestern Prints and Drawings exhibitions9 had been established. These competitive shows helped artists advance their careers through the validation that came from internationally recognized jurors. They also enabled the Museum to expand its collections by acquiring many of the prizewinning works.10

Arts activity in South Dallas was not limited to Fair Park. By the early 1970s, artists began moving into buildings facing the Music Hall at 909 First Avenue, renovating raw warehouses and vacant homes into live-work studios, alternative galleries, and cooperative spaces. Artists Arthello Beck11 and Nathan Jones12 were among the first, opening the Fair Park Gallery of Fine Art in a small house at 815 First Avenue in 1970 (Fig. 5). The gallery was the bricks-and-mortar location for the Association of Advancing Artists and Writers, Inc. (AAAW), an artist-run organization formed in the spring of 1969 to promote the work of African-American artists and writers. The founding members included visual artists Bobby D. Norman, Taylor Gurley, Louis Ray Potts, and James Gray and poet Elihue Smith.13 “We organized the AAAW in 1969 out of frustration which confronted black artists in their efforts to exhibit their work,” Norman explained. “After we got organized, poets and designers, and musicians and dancers all wanted to be in on it.”14

Exhibiting opportunities for African-American artists in Dallas at the time were few and far between. An organization like the AAAW was crucial to encouraging and supporting these artists as they struggled to have their work shown in the still racially divided city.15 There were only a few local galleries, and they had rosters of predominantly white artists and were located in the historically white neighborhoods of Uptown and North Dallas. The problem of gallery representation persists to this day and goes beyond the lopsided gallery-to-artist ratio. As artist Vicki Meek explains, "African-American artists find themselves in a Catch-22 situation: If they are doing work that in any way expresses their ethnicity, they have placed themselves outside the mainstream. And what ‘mainstream' really means is ‘white, male art.’ Then you've got the other side, in that you don't have a strong black buying public. . . . There are few people on the black side who are willing to put the time and effort into it.”16

The AAAW staged exhibitions at Bishop College, the University of Texas at Arlington, El Centro Community College, and churches in the South Dallas and Oak Cliff neighborhoods (Fig. 6). The opening of the Fair Park Gallery in 1970 gave the expanding membership a permanent space to work and to exhibit performance, written, and visual art (Fig. 7).

The AAAW also had a larger goal: establishing a cultural center in South Dallas that would broaden the exposure of African-American artists, writers, performers, and musicians. In 1971, the organization hosted a Black Arts Festival at the Fair Park Gallery as the first fundraiser for the proposed cultural center. Architect A. Warren Morey drew up plans, and for the next decade and a half, advocates continued to raise funds and awareness (Fig. 8, Fig. 9). But by the time the South Dallas Cultural Center opened in 1986, the AAAW had dissolved as a group.

In 1972, just down the street from the Fair Park Gallery, artists Richard Childers17 and David McCullough18 moved into a block of buildings at 842 First Avenue. Small businesses, bars, and restaurants occupied the street-level spaces, while the vacant second-level lofts offered thousands of available square feet (Fig. 10). Rent was low because the lofts usually had no modern amenities, so the artists had to install kitchen appliances, toilets, showers, air conditioning, and heating. But what these spaces lacked in comfort, they made up for in size and natural light.

Once Childers and McCullough completed the renovations in their space, more artists moved in to take advantage of the clean, well-lit galleries and live-work lofts. Known briefly as the 842 Collective, artists Gary Brotmeyer of New Orleans,19 Robin David of Atlanta, and Lanie Luckadeo and Andy Parks of Dallas, together with Childers and McCullough, worked in varying media and practiced transcendental meditation together as a way to move beyond individual egos and promote a spirit of collaboration.20 The 842s organized exhibitions that showcased their talents—including sculpture, performance, painting, and music—in their gallery, known as the AUM Gallery (Fig. 11). As the city’s first true alternative space, AUM filled a void in the Dallas art scene, as there were few exhibiting options available to artists not represented by commercial galleries.21

Before long, the energy surrounding the 842s spread to other local artists who were interested in developing alternative spaces of their own. For a short time, New York painter Irwin Tuttie lived in the second level at the corner of 839 1/2 Exposition Avenue, creating a space that operated more like a commercial gallery featuring exhibitions of local and regional artists (Fig. 12). Tuttie’s short-lived space was soon taken over when David McCullough decided to expand his own loft. McCullough renamed the location Oura, Inc., and with Dallas gallerist Ruth Wiseman, he launched a venue to stage exhibitions of his work and that of other emerging artists, notably James Surls (Fig. 13).22

Individual artists like George Goodenow,23 Alberto Collie,24 and Mac Whitney25 also had studios in the neighborhood, adding to the energy and activity in South Dallas in the 1970s. As a response to this burgeoning artists’ community, Richard Childers, with artists Gilda Pervin26 and Stephen Grant, organized First Saturday Art in December 1975. On the first Saturday of every month, artists paid a small fee to exhibit in the loft space of 842 First Avenue. They were allowed to sell directly to the public, sidestepping commercial galleries and art dealers. First Saturday Art, Childers explained, was “an open opportunity for professional artists to show their works that will create overall high-quality exhibits and stimulate greater production and appreciation for the arts in Dallas.”27

Exhibiting options in Dallas were limited when Childers introduced his concept. The DMFA had discontinued the annual juried competitions in 1976,28 and while a few local galleries, like Delahunty and Atelier Chapman Kelley, gave exhibitions to area artists, the art scene was still relatively small. Artists were taking opportunities into their own hands, and the popularity of the artist-run space continued to spread through other parts of town. Third Sunday, likely an inspiration for Childers’ First Saturday events, debuted in 1975 and enjoyed continued success in giving local photographers the opportunity to exhibit their work and sell directly to the public.29 A group of photographers interested in a venue dedicated to the promotion and display of photography organized the Allen Street Gallery in the Uptown neighborhood in 1975.30 Also in Uptown, eight artists established the Dallas Women’s Co-op (DW Co-op, later DW Gallery) in 1975 as an artist-run commercial gallery (Fig. 14).31 Rounding out this trend, Richard Childers and Will Hipps32 established what is now Texas’ oldest artist-run space when they purchased and renovated an old tire warehouse into a gallery/studio space. The 500 Exposition Gallery (later shortened to 500X) was established in 1978 on the far edge of Deep Ellum, just under the freeway from Childers’ longtime residence on First Avenue across from Fair Park.33

As local artists developed an active arts community outside the boundaries of Fair Park, DMFA director Merrill Rueppel and curator of contemporary art Robert Murdock34 worked together to develop the Museum’s contemporary collection by acquiring masterpieces by international artists while maintaining connections to the local Dallas base. Shortly after his appointment in 1970, Murdock organized the exhibition Interchange with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (Fig. 15). Three Dallas artists—George T. Green,35 Sam Gummelt,36 and Jim Roche37—were paired with three Minnesota artists—Jerry Kielkopf, Jerry Ott, and Carl Brodie—to “provide opportunities for a decentralization of New York and Los Angeles art production and enable artists from different regions to exchange ideas” (Fig. 16, Fig. 17, Fig. 18).38

Following a run of major museum exhibitions like the Pablo Picasso exhibition of 1967 and retrospectives of Mark Tobey (1968), Franz Kline (1968), David Smith (1969), and Richard Tuttle (1971), Murdock inaugurated a series of small exhibitions titled Projects.39 The idea was to give an individual artist the opportunity to transfer his or her studio practice to the DMFA galleries. Whether or not Murdock intended it, the short-lived series featured three artists who lived and worked in Dallas: David McManaway,40 Bruce Cunningham,41 and Raffaele Martini42 (Fig. 19, Fig. 20, Fig. 21).

While curator of contemporary art, Murdock oversaw the acquisition of several major works of art, including Jasper Johns’ Device, 1961–1962 (Fig. 22), which was a gift to the Museum by the Art Museum League, Margaret J. and George V. Charlton, Mr. and Mrs. James B. Francis, Dr. and Mrs. Ralph Greenlee, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. James H. W. Jacks, Mr. and Mrs. Irvin L. Levy, Mrs. John W. O'Boyle, and Dr. Joanne Stroud in honor of Mrs. Eugene McDermott. Other important works acquired during Murdock’s tenure include: Jules Olitski, Mojo Working, 1966 (Fig. 23); Lucas Samaras, Transformation: Mixed, 1967 (Fig. 24); Larry Poons, Untitled #22, 1972 (Fig. 25); Robert Morris, Untitled, 1965–1966 (Fig. 26); and Tony Smith, Willy, designed 1962, fabricated 1978 (Fig. 27).

After Murdock’s departure in 1978, the Museum found itself without a curator of contemporary art for the next three years. Director Harry S. Parker III continued Rueppel’s transformation of the regional museum by expanding international collections and staging major exhibitions.43 In an attempt to continue some interaction with the local art scene, Parker organized 12: Artists Working in North Texas by appointing as curators three established local artists who developed a group exhibition surveying the work of regional artists. Jeanne Koch,44 David McManaway, and Mac Whitney selected artists they thought best represented the state of the arts in North Texas (Fig. 28, Fig. 29).45 This group show was the first and last of its kind.

In 1981, Parker appointed Sue Graze as curator of contemporary art. As one of her first orders of business, Graze developed the exhibition series Concentrations, which presented the work of emerging and midcareer contemporary artists in small, tightly conceived exhibitions that were intended to “present the depth and range of an individual’s work, thus serving as an index to recent developments in contemporary art.”46 The inaugural exhibition featured work by Fort Worth–based artist Richard Shaffer.47 The series has continued off and on at the Museum up to the present. As of 2012, there have been 55 Concentrations exhibitions by local, regional, and international artists.

Despite all the activity in and around Fair Park, the area was a relative ghost town during the off-season. As low-income housing developed to the south of the fairgrounds and the demimonde culture of nightclubs and tattoo parlors developed to the northwest in Deep Ellum, the neighborhood of South Dallas became increasingly crime-ridden. Access to the Museum was a chief concern for many patrons and board members, who typically lived in areas north of Fair Park or in the suburbs. Getting to and from the Museum meant traveling through neighborhoods that provoked unease, particularly after dark.48 Aside from a major retrospective of African-American art—Two Centuries of Black American Art—in 1977,49 the DMFA failed to provide programming or regular exhibitions of work by artists who represented the demographic of the Museum’s immediate audience in South Dallas,50 as Dallas Morning News columnist Janet Kutner noted:

Located as it is in the midst of a black area, DMFA has, it seems to me, a major responsibility to open its doors (with effort made to attract other than school tours) to the inhabitants of its immediate environs. Whether this requires shows of special interest or simply a better effort to draw the neighboring community in by specific invitations or programs until such visits become less rare and more frequent is a matter to be decided. What does seem certain, however, is the DMFA has a community at its doorstep with which it has essentially no relationship whatsoever. Quite a different situation from that here in Houston and elsewhere in the country where patrons as well as museums are taking art to the people rather than waiting for the people to come to it.51

The DMFA had already expanded its Fair Park building once, during Merrill Rueppel’s directorship in 1965. Now the need for a larger facility was becoming more apparent, as both exhibitions and the permanent collection grew in size. Rather than expand the existing building, board members and DMFA administrators looked at options for a new building in a new, more accessible location. Using the slogan, “A Great City Deserves a Great Art Museum,” they campaigned to Dallas voters, who passed a $24.8 million bond issue in 1979 allowing the Museum to leave the increasingly undesirable Fair Park area for a new arts district being planned for the northeast corner of downtown. Today’s Dallas Arts District was born in 1984 with the opening of the Dallas Museum of Art,52 and the Dallas Symphony followed not long after.

The loss of a major cultural institution had a deep impact on the arts and culture in and around Fair Park and South Dallas. Artists who had lived and worked there relocated to other neighborhoods, and for some time, few commercial or alternative art spaces remained. Efforts to revive the area were unsuccessful until the South Dallas Cultural Center (SDCC) opened just outside Fair Park in 1986. Nearly two decades in the making and funded by a 1982 bond issue, the center was part of a city program to provide arts facilities for neighborhood and community organizations. Tapping into the audience that eluded the DMFA during its time in Fair Park, it gave African-American and other minority artists a venue for recognizing and nurturing local talent. Today the 34,000 square-foot, city-owned facility—expanded in 2007—boasts a 120-seat theater, a visual arts gallery, and studios for dance, music recording, and various visual art forms. Over the years, SDCC leaders have maintained the central mission to showcase the heritage of the African Diaspora and generate pride in the African-American experience.

When artist Vicki Meek became the center’s manager in 1997, she focused on improving its connection with the community. “A lot of people came and thought this was the parole office because the parole offices down the street didn’t look much different,” Meek recalls. “You know, cinderblock building, nothing to really distinguish it. And more importantly, the community didn’t have any real engagement in this building as far as the programming.”53 To help bridge the gap, Meek initiated programs like Late Night Jam, which featured local jazz musicians from midnight until 3 a.m., and a visual arts program aimed at young students from the community.

The South Dallas Cultural Center thrives as the hub of the Fair Park–South Dallas neighborhood in 2013. Over the years, several commercial galleries and alternative spaces have occupied the storefronts below the old 842 and Irwin Tuttie galleries. Spaces like Eugene Binder (1988–1993, Fig. 30); David Quadrini and Elliott Johnson’s Angstrom Gallery (established in 1996, Fig. 31); Dina Light and Steven Cochran’s gallery: untitled (established in 1997), and Jason Cohen’s Forbidden Gallery and Emporium (established in 2000, Fig. 32), kept the area fresh with activity into the 21st century. Just south of Dallas’ City Hall, Joe Allen’s Purple Orchid Gallery (2000–2002) and Randall Garrett’s Plush (established in 2000) occupied a warehouse on South Akard Street that also included artists’ working studios. Although they were separate ventures, both galleries were named Best New Gallery by the Dallas Observer in 2001, presumably due to their shared address.54

In 2003, the Southside Artist Residency program introduced visiting artists to the neighborhood, and many of them kept studios there after their residencies had concluded.55 When the program was reintroduced as CentralTrak, the University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency, it continued the spirit of the live-work studios and exhibition spaces that existed in the neighborhood some 30 years earlier. Through artist-run spaces and established anchors like the South Dallas Cultural Center and CentralTrak, the Fair Park–South Dallas neighborhood remains a vital part of the Dallas art macrocosm, sharing attention and activity with its neighbor, Deep Ellum.

From the 1930s until 1989, the Dallas Symphony performed both at McFarlin Auditorium on the Southern Methodist University campus and at the Fair Park Music Hall. From 1973 to 1989, when it relocated to the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in the Dallas Arts District, the Music Hall was its permanent home. Theodore Albrecht, “Dallas Symphony Orchestra,” in Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas Online (viewed on April 8, 2013).

The DMFA returned to Fair Park in 1936 after occupying several locations around town. The other locations of the Dallas Art Association were: Dallas Public Library, Commerce and Harwood Streets, 1903–1909; Textile and Fine Arts Building, Fair Park, 1909–1928; Majestic Theatre Building, Elm Street, Second Floor (formerly the Halaby Gallery), 1929–1932; Dallas Power and Light Building, Ninth Floor, 1933–1935; and the new building in Fair Park (new wing added in 1965), 1936–1983. See the DMA website for further information on the history of the DAA, its board of trustees, and past directors.

The Dallas Art Institute was established in 1926 by local artists Kathryn Hail and Olin Travis. It was originally located in downtown Dallas at 1215 1/2 Main Street before moving to the grounds of the Civic Federation at 2419 Maple Avenue in 1931. By 1935, the institute required more space and moved into a larger location at 2503 McKinney Avenue. In 1938 it moved into the DMFA, where it remained until 1941, when the board of trustees decided to establish an official Museum School. Its final location was back in the downtown Dallas area at 1912 1/2 Main Street. The school closed not long after this final move, in 1945. The Dallas Art Institute was the first school in Dallas that provided art instruction in several fields: painting, drawing, sculpture, commercial art, and fashion drawing. It employed some of Texas’ best-known artists, including future DMFA director Jerry Bywaters, Alexandre Hogue, William Lester, Everett Spruce, Florence McClung, and Lloyd Goff. See Kendall Curlee, "Dallas Art Institute," in Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas Online (viewed on April 8, 2013).

Richard Foster Howard was Museum director from 1936 to 1942. Artist professors included Otis M. Dozier, Olin Travis, Everett Spruce, Coreen M. Spellman, Evaline C. Sellors, Octavio Medellin, Roger Winter, and David McManaway. Many Texas artists recall their studies at the Museum School. It closed in 1970 under director Merrill Rueppel, who cited the emergence of university art departments in the area as serving the need it had filled. For a history of the Dallas Art Institute and the DMFA Art School, see Jerry Bywaters, Seventy-Five Years of Art in Dallas: The History of the Dallas Art Association and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1978). See also Kendall Curlee, “Dallas Art Institute,” in Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas Online, (viewed on April 8, 2013); Harry S. Parker III, "Dallas Museum of Art," in Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas Online (viewed on April 8, 2013).

The Family of Man, on view at the DMFA October 7–December 4, 1955, exposed the Dallas audience to international movements in photography. The massive exhibition was organized by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and included more than 500 photographs by artists from around the world. It traveled to 37 countries over eight years. Edward Steichen, The Family of Man, 30th anniversary ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1983).

On view at the DMFA April 6–27, 1952, Some Businessmen Collect Contemporary Art (SBCCA) was organized with the help of Stanley Marcus, president and later chairman of Neiman Marcus and a member of the Dallas Art Association board. In an attempt to educate a conservative Dallas audience about international contemporary art, the exhibition brought together works from the collections of prominent business leaders like Joseph Pulitzer Jr., Henry Dreyfus, and Walter P. Paepcke. Staged at a time when modern and contemporary art were associated with communism, the exhibition was considered controversial. Anticommunism was sweeping the country, as Sen. Joseph McCarthy threatened to censor the arts and blacklist artists and entertainers. With its extreme conservatism, Dallas was a hotbed of anticommunist sentiment. SBCCA was a success in terms of attendance and reviews, but it did nothing to educate Dallas about modern and contemporary art and their relation to communism. In 1955, the Museum again faced the pressures of its conservative public when The Family of Man was censored for nudity. In 1956, Sport in Art provoked the biggest uprising the Museum had ever experienced. The board of trustees was divided, and the most liberal-minded left to form the Dallas Society for Contemporary Arts in 1956. See Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Some Businessmen Collect Contemporary Art: An Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings by American and European Artists from Private Collections of American Professional and Business Men (Dallas: 1952), University of North Texas Libraries, Portal to Texas History (viewed on May 9, 2013).

The Dallas Cowboys played in the Cotton Bowl stadium in Fair Park from their first season in 1960 until 1971, when the franchise moved to Texas Stadium in Irving. The Assemblage was formed in 1970 amid the DMFA administration’s growing concern that too few young Dallasites were involved in the arts. Likely a means to cultivate future major benefactors, the group had a loose affiliation with the DMFA but its own charter, bylaws, and board. Activities planned by The Assemblage included tours of important local private collections, studio tours with local artists, and guest speakers including museum professionals like Robert Murdock, the DMFA’s curator of contemporary art, and artists like Claes Oldenburg. At the height of the group’s activity it had about 400 members, mostly married couples in their 20s and early 30s. The Assemblage continued with regular meetings through the mid-1980s but distanced itself from the Museum during the tenure of director Harry S. Parker III (1974–1987), as it seemed redundant with the development of new membership levels like the Junior Associates. See the Dallas Museum of Art Archives for more information on The Assemblage, including minutes of the July 15, 1970, meeting, which describes typical activities.

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, The Texas General Exhibit (pamphlet, Dallas: 1940).

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 2nd Southwestern Exhibition of Prints and Drawings (Dallas: 1949), University of North Texas Libraries, Portal to Texas History (viewed on May 9, 2013).

For a list of acquisitions, see Texas Art Exhibitions at the DMA. 

Arthello Beck (1941–2004) was a Dallas native who attended Lincoln High School, where he received his only formal art training. As a painter, his subjects included children, religion, and human interaction, and he is best known for his series from the 1960s dealing with the American civil rights movement. Along with his involvement in the Association of Advancing Artists and Writers, Inc., Beck was a member of the Southwest Black Artists Guild (active in the 1970s and 1980s) with other Dallas artists Frank Frazier, James Dunn, and Carl Sidel. After the Fair Park Gallery of Fine Art closed in the mid-1970s, Beck relocated his studio to the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. The Arthello Beck Gallery opened in 1974, operating out of Beck’s studio space at 2803 Ramsey Avenue. For the next two decades, the gallery became the centerpiece for African-American artists in Dallas. In 2007, the South Dallas Cultural Center honored Beck by establishing gallery space in his name.

Nathan Jones (b. 1942, Shreveport, Louisiana) moved to West Dallas with his family when he was young. He attended James Madison High School. Jones began painting at age seven and carried this interest with him through high school and college, attending Texas Southern University, Columbus College of Art and Design, and the University of Texas at Arlington, where he earned a BFA in painting. Jones had his first museum exhibition in 1975 at the Midland Museum of Fine Arts and continued to have success showing his work throughout the state of Texas. Jones’ works depict human subjects with deep emotional realism. In 1981, his portrait of Dr. Charles Drew was chosen for a U.S. commemorative postage stamp.

AAAW members were primarily visual artists based in Dallas, and many were self-taught painters. Founder and president Bobby D. Norman was a Dallas native and self-taught artist. In interviews, Norman has described his work as in the style of “mystical symbolism” (John Nelville, “Sunday’s Exhibits Offer Varied Fare,” Dallas Morning News, February 18, 1968, 4). He was actively involved in political and civil rights organizations like the Greater Dallas Community Relations Council and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. See Doug Domeler, “Variety Marks Probe Committee,” Dallas Morning News, October 28, 1972, A17; Roy Hamric, “BCJLO Leader Urges Majority to Speak Out,” Dallas Morning News, May 31, 1971, A8.     

Taylor Gurley was a portrait painter, also based in Dallas, who remained active in the AAAW and continued to exhibit his work at the Arthello Beck Gallery in Oak Cliff. Little information can be found on remaining members Louis Ray Potts, James Gray, and Elihue Smith, but Potts and Gray continued to exhibit their work at the Arthello Beck Gallery.

Quoted in Helen Callaway, “It’s An Artist’s Haven: Shabby House is an Arts Gallery for Blacks,” Dallas Morning News, March 14, 1971, 16.

The formal desegregation of Dallas public schools began in 1961, but the process took the city several decades to complete. See Staff, “School Desegregation Timeline,” Dallas Morning News, October 31, 2002, 13A.

Quoted in Shermakaye Bass, “A Netherworld in the Art World: Black Artists Are Caught Between Ethnic Trendiness and Ethnic Obscurity,” Dallas Morning News, May 10, 1992, 1C.

Richard Childers is a Dallas native who attended W. W. Samuell High School, taking art classes from Dallas artist and gallery owner Chapman Kelley. Early on, Childers showed in regional competitive exhibitions, as well as with Kelley’s gallery, Atelier Chapman Kelley. His early work was in the style of color field painting, with swaths of color applied to large canvases. Staff, “Dallas Student Takes Honors in Contest,” Dallas Morning News, May 9, 1965, 13.

David McCullough was born in Massachusetts and attended the Kansas City Art Institute and California Institute of the Arts before arriving in Texas in the early 1970s. He showed his work in regional competitive exhibitions, taking home several honors and prizes in the early 1970s. McCullough was never formally attached to a specific gallery, but chose to make opportunities happen by establishing his own live-work studios in the neighborhoods of Oak Cliff and South Dallas. He has worked in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, and performance art. McCullough lives and works in Dallas and is currently represented by Kirk Hopper Fine Art.

Gary Brotmeyer (b. 1946) has work in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Working primarily in photographic collage, he uses 19th- and early 20th-century portrait photographs as his source for whimsical collages that create fantastic characters with wings, enlarged bobble eyes, horns, and other features. He is currently represented by the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York.

David McCullough, conversation with Leigh Arnold, December 16, 2011. See also Janet Kutner, "New '842' Gallery Launched by Group," Dallas Morning News, October 27, 1972, 13.

The entrepreneurial spirit continues at 842 First Avenue with Studio DTFU, established in January 2012. The address is home to a gallery and live-work space run and occupied by local artists Justin Hunter Allen (b. 1988) and Lucy Kirkman (b. 1986), who practice independently as well as under a collective. These artists, while always networking and seeking traditional forms of recognition for their art, are like many today who have taken advantage of the efficiency of online publishing and the speed of social media communications to keep their names in the press and spread the word of events and happenings.

Born in East Texas in 1943, James Surls graduated from Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University) in 1966 and went on to the Cranbrook Academy of Art, graduating in 1968. From 1969 to 1976, Surls taught sculpture at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. Considered one of Texas’ most successful and recognizable artists, Surls works primarily in sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. He has also curated exhibitions, notably Fire! in 1979, a massive exhibition of work by Texas artists to benefit the flooded Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston.

George Goodenow (b. 1942, Galveston, Texas) earned a BFA from the University of Mississippi in 1971 and an MFA from the University of Dallas in 1972. From 1971 to 1972 Goodenow attended the Experimental Contemporary Art Program at the Northwood Institute in Cedar Hill. Like Childers and McCullough, he exhibited work through regional juried competitions before organizing exhibitions of his own through spaces like AUM Gallery and later Allen Street Gallery and DW Gallery. Goodenow works primarily in photography and light sculpture, with his early works described as “kinetic color paintings accomplished through photographic techniques.” See Janet Kutner, “A New Hub for Local Artists,” Dallas Morning News, December 14, 1976, A17.

Venezuelan artist Alberto Collie (b. 1939) attended Harvard University, where he developed technology for what became his signature magnetic floating sculptures. In the early 1960s, his work was seen by Dallas artist and gallerist Chapman Kelley, who recruited Collie to Dallas to show at his Atelier Chapman Kelley. Collie’s sculptures combined art and technology—floating anthropomorphic objects over magnetic bases, described by art critics as Brancusi taking flight. While in Dallas, Collie was appointed director of the short-lived Experimental Contemporary Art Program at the Northwood Institute in Cedar Hill, where he furthered his interests in blending art with technology, working with scientists and engineers from the Dallas-based Texas Instruments. Collie currently lives and works in Venezuela.

Mac Whitney (b. 1936, Manhattan, Kansas) moved to Texas in 1969 after completing BFA and MFA degrees in Kansas. Known primarily for his large-scale abstract sculptures made of steel and found objects such as farming equipment, Whitney has been making sculpture for commission and public art projects since the 1970s and continues to work in his studio near Ovilla, Texas, outside of Dallas.

Gilda Pervin’s early work included thickly encrusted three-dimensional wall reliefs, sometimes utilizing found objects like broken glass and gaudy colors. Pervin earned degrees from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pittsburgh and moved to Dallas in the 1970s, teaching at Richland College from 1975 to 1981. By the end of 1981, Pervin had relocated to New York City, where she continues to live and work.

Quoted in Janet Kutner, “Dallas Artists Sell Directly to Public,” Dallas Morning News, January 4, 1976, 4.

The Texas Painting and Sculpture exhibition was last held at the DMFA October 27–December 26, 1976. The Southwestern Prints and Drawings exhibition was last held October 8–November 23, 1975.

Third Sunday Photography exhibitions were sponsored by local photographers Carol Neiman, George Goodenow, Jack Caspary, Gary Bishop, and John Mahoney. Janet Kutner, “Photography Seen as King of Arts,” Dallas Morning News, November 23, 1975, 3.

The Allen Street Gallery was administered by the nonprofit Center for Visual Communications and showed work by local photographers through group exhibitions like Third Sundays (every third Sunday of the month beginning in 1975), Coming Out (1976), and the Texas Women’s Photography Show (1979). Allen Street also exhibited other media, including local artist David Bates' MFA thesis show for Southern Methodist University (1976) and The Myth, a thematic group exhibition of works in all media by more than 30 local artists (1976).

The Dallas Women’s Co-op was established in 1975 by artists Linda S. Surls, Linnea Glatt, Juliana Heyne, Carole Scholder, Molly Terrill, Norma McManaway, Barbara Bell, and Jeanie Hamel. Janet Kutner, “First Co-op Gallery Opens,” Dallas Morning News, December 2, 1975, 17. For more information about the DW Co-op and other galleries in the Uptown neighborhood, see the DallasSITES essay on Uptown.

Will Hipps, a Massachusetts native, completed his MFA at the University of Georgia and was appointed visual arts chair of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, following a year as an NEA-funded fellow. He moved to Dallas in 1975 when the University of Texas at Dallas invited him to develop a visual arts program for the School of the Arts and Humanities. Hipps stayed in Dallas until 1982, when he moved to San Francisco.

For more information about the 500X Gallery, see the DallasSITES essay on Deep Ellum.

Merrill Rueppel was appointed director of the DMFA in 1964 following the merger of the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) and the DMFA in 1963. As a condition of the merger agreement, DMFA director Jerry Bywaters stepped down; the new director would be selected and appointed by the combined board of trustees. Murdock was appointed curator of contemporary art in 1970.

George T. Green (b. 1947, Paris, Texas) earned his MFA from the University of Dallas where he studied with fellow artists Jim Roche and Jack Mims. With Roche, Mims, and Robert Wade, he was a member of the Oak Cliff Four, an artists’ collective active in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff from 1969 to 1974. While at UD, Green produced abstract sculpture based on the female form. Following graduate school, he lived in Oak Cliff and discovered linoleum tile as a medium for sculpture. Using sheets of linoleum in pastel colors, he began constructing his urinal and fountain series as a nod to Dadaist Marcel Duchamp. During his time as an active artist in Dallas, Green was represented by Delahunty Gallery. 

Sam Gummelt (b. 1944, Waco, Texas) studied art at North Texas State University and Southern Methodist University. He was discovered by local gallerist Janie C. Lee in the 1970s and was given several solo shows at her Dallas-based gallery. His early work is described as sewing-machine-stitched minimalist abstract “drawings” that he tacked to walls. By the mid-1970s, his work had transitioned into large-scale graphite drawings composed of layer upon layer of cut-up and reassembled paper squares. The minimalist aesthetic continued throughout Gummelt’s career and is present in his current work, which features layers of oil and turpentine applied to square canvases. Gummelt lives and works in Dallas.

Jim Roche (b. 1943, Marianna, Florida) earned his MFA from the University of Dallas (UD), along with George Green and Jack Mims, fellow members of the Oak Cliff Four (an artists’ collective active in the Oak Cliff neighborhood from 1969 to 1974 that also included Robert Wade). While at UD, Mims considered himself a ceramicist, producing what he called his “Mama Plants,” phallic-shaped, brightly painted ceramic sculptures that were typically topped with clusters of ceramic female breasts. After leaving UD and without access to a free kiln, Roche reinvented his artistic practice in more conceptual work. His house in Oak Cliff became his largest work, with drawings all over the floors and walls. In 1973, Roche accepted a teaching position at Florida State University in Tallahassee, but he continued to show his work with Delahunty Gallery in Dallas for several years. After 40 years, Roche has retired from teaching, but he continues his conceptually based art practice.

Interchange was on view at the DMFA, July 26–September 4, 1972, and traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, December 17, 1972–January 28, 1973. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, “Dallas-Minneapolis Interchange” (news release, 1972), University of North Texas Libraries, Portal to Texas History (viewed on May 9, 2013).

Projects I: David McManaway, March 19–April 27, 1975; Projects II: Bruce Cunningham, August 27–September 28, 1975; Projects III: Raffaele Martini, December 10, 1975–January 11, 1976.

David McManaway (1927–2010) was born in Chicago, received his degree from the University of Arkansas, and in 1959 arrived in Dallas, where he remained for the rest of his career. McManaway’s early work could be categorized as painting and was primarily two-dimensional. Gradually, he shifted to three-dimensional assemblages of found objects, which he called Jomos. Like the creators of wunderkammer, or cabinets of curiosities, McManaway saw the beauty in everyday objects and materials frequently mistaken for trash. He worked as a preparator at the short-lived Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (1956–1963) and exhibited his work at galleries around Dallas, notably Atelier Chapman Kelley, Delahunty Gallery, and Pillsbury Peters Gallery. He has had exhibitions at the DMFA, the DMA, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the Menil Collection of Houston.

Bruce Cunningham (b. 1943, Bayonne, New Jersey) attended Baylor University and the University of California at Berkeley before arriving in the Dallas–Fort Worth area to be an instructor of art at the University of Texas at Arlington. Cunningham worked in large-scale drawing installations in a similar manner to New York conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.

Raffaele Martini (b. 1947, Rome) moved to Dallas in 1971. As a sculptor, Martini works in a variety of media, including aluminum, plaster, wood, and found objects. While in Dallas, Martini showed his work with Delahunty Gallery.

Merrill Rueppel left the DMFA in 1973 to become director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Harry S. Parker III, vice-director for education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was appointed director in 1974.

Jeanne Koch earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives and paints in Dallas. Early examples of her work were in the abstract, geometric mode, with shaped canvases and reflective paint. Following a trip to Guatemala, Koch’s paintings turned to the figure, as she represented scenes of Guatemalan women and children. Koch has enjoyed a long career exhibiting art in Dallas, having her first solo exhibition at the Atelier Chapman Kelley in the early 1960s. She has shown with the Adams-Middleton Gallery and Edith Baker Gallery.

The 12 artists chosen by Koch, McManaway, and Whitney were Linnea Glatt, Vicki Halliday, Debora Hunter, Bill Komodore, Doug MacWithey, Scott R. Madison, Manuel M. Mauricio, Linda Ridgeway, Rick Maxwell, Danny C. Williams, Philip Van Keuren, and Nicholas W. Wood. The exhibition was on view at the DMFA September 26–October 28, 1979.

Sue Graze, Concentrations 1: Richard Shaffer (pamphlet, Dallas: 1981), University of North Texas Libraries, Portal to Texas History.

Richard Shaffer (b. 1947, Fresno, California) earned degrees at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1969), the New School for Social Research (1969–1971), and Stanford University (1975). While living in Fort Worth, Shaffer taught at the University of Texas at Arlington and exhibited his work at the DMFA and Eugene Binder Gallery in Deep Ellum. Shaffer’s paintings are generally regarded as realistic, but the works are presented through the subject lens of the artist’s eye. 

See Francis Raffetto, “More Protection Suggested at Fair Park by Councilman,” Dallas Morning News, August 11, 1964, 6.

Two Centuries of Black American Art was the first major definitive survey of the black contribution to American art history. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the exhibition traveled to Atlanta and Brooklyn and included work beginning with anonymous slaves and continuing through artists of the mid-20th century. The exhibition was on view at the DMFA from March 30 to May 15, 1977. The DMFA’s first exhibition of exclusively African American artists was American Negro Art, April 30–May 6, 1939. 

“Statistics show that from 1970 to 1980, the population of South Dallas/Fair Park dropped from about 72,000 to 51,000 as segregation relaxed and better housing in other areas of the city became more accessible to African Americans. An inner-city ethnic stronghold, South Dallas/Fair Park is 95 percent black, mostly poor. The 1980 census placed the area’s average annual household income at $9,000.” Norma Adams Wade, “Fighting to Survive: S. Dallas/Fair Park Struggling to Keep Revitalization Alive,” Dallas Morning News, September 4, 1989, 29A.

Janet Kutner, “Black and Community Merger,” Dallas Morning News, September 18, 1971, 6.

The Museum's name changed from the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1984—coinciding with the move from Fair Park to downtown—to reflect the expanding collecting focus.

Vicki Meek, oral history interview by Leigh Arnold, March 21, 2012, History of Contemporary Art in Dallas Oral History Collection, Dallas Museum of Art Archives.

"Best of Dallas 2001: Best Art Gallery," Dallas Observer, September 20, 2001 (viewed on April 8, 2013).

The Southside Artist Residency project was organized in 2002 by the University of Texas at Dallas and headed by Karen Weiner until it closed in 2005. For more information, see www.youtube.com/embed/z4j02QrPOhI (viewed on June 11, 2013) and the Karen Erxleben Weiner Collection, Dallas Museum of Art Archives. In 2008, UT Dallas reinvigorated the program in a new location on Exposition Avenue. Renamed CentralTrak, it provides live-work lofts to six artists and a gallery for exhibitions, lectures, and artist talks. For more information, see http://centraltrak.com/ (viewed on April 8, 2013).