The Dallas Arts District is already the biggest city arts district within the US. Now, two key establishments inside that district, the Dallas Museum of Artwork (DMA) and Crow Museum of Asian Artwork, are collaborating on an formidable new enterprise. The Crow Museum lately opened a second location, with works on mortgage from the DMA, on the campus of the College of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) in Richardson, a suburb round 15 miles north of downtown Dallas. The brand new constructing represents the primary part of a deliberate 12-acre cultural district on the southeastern fringe of the UT Dallas campus.
Section one of many Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum—named after the Dallas philanthropists who donated $32m to construct it—opened to the general public on 25 September. The constructing greater than doubles the exhibition area of the Crow’s unique location. Designed by Morphosis, the structure agency behind Dallas’s Perot Museum of Nature and Science, a placing characteristic is its raised floor flooring, which permits guests to stroll beneath the constructing. The construction, made with white concrete and metal, has an inviting really feel due to its expansive glass panels.
The brand new constructing showcases a good portion of the Crow’s everlasting assortment, a lot of which had beforehand been saved in storage. Its works will not be organized chronologically or divided by nation. As a substitute, they’re offered in a non-linear style designed to “stimulate dialogue”, based on the museum—for instance, by putting sculptures of deities from completely different Asian religions collectively. The inaugural exhibition from the DMA’s everlasting assortment, From Texas to the World, consists of items by Georges Braque, Philip Guston and Cindy Sherman (till 14 July 2025). One other rotating show from the DMA will occupy the identical areas after the present closes.
“The formal relationship between the DMA and UT Dallas took form nearly a decade in the past,” Tamara Wootton Forsyth, the DMA’s deputy director, tells The Artwork Newspaper, “when the UT Dallas Edith O’Donnell Institute of Artwork Historical past opened a satellite tv for pc area in our museum, providing UT Dallas college students and school entry to curatorial initiatives, analysis and programmatic experiences with our international collections and exhibitions.”
Inside the brand new Crow Museum of Asian Artwork Photograph: ©Mauricio Rojas, courtesy the College of Texas at Dallas
That is solely the primary part of the Athenaeum challenge. Section two, which incorporates plans for a 680-seat efficiency corridor and music constructing, broke floor concurrently with the brand new museum’s opening. It’s anticipated to be accomplished by 2026. Section three will encompass a 3rd constructing—one other museum, this time devoted to the humanities of the Americas—in addition to a parking construction, each projected to be completed inside the subsequent three years. A grand plaza that includes a sculpture backyard may also be a part of this new cultural district.
“This intraspace can be essential to the lifetime of the cultural district as a spot to discover and expertise the UT Dallas artwork museum and the efficiency corridor past the partitions,” says Amy Lewis Hofland, the director of the Crow.
The Crow was based in 1998 by the Dallas real-estate developer Trammell Crow and his spouse, Margaret, to deal with the couple’s huge artwork assortment—amassed throughout their travels to China, India, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia beginning within the Sixties. In 2019, the Crow household donated their complete assortment to UT Dallas, together with $23m of help funding to ascertain a second museum location on campus. The unique area downtown will proceed to host rotating exhibitions, together with of loaned works in addition to these from the everlasting assortment.
The Athenaeum hosts the primary main artwork museum within the northern Dallas suburbs and, as its Historical Greek identify suggests, is supposed to be an area for studying—for each college students and most of the people. With roughly 30% of UT Dallas’s scholar physique being of Asian descent, and Dallas-Fort Value’s Asian inhabitants predominantly residing within the northern suburbs, the Crow’s enlargement into this space is a logical transfer. Entry to the museum is free for all.
The Crow has described itself as a “wellness museum”, and the Athenaeum is following swimsuit, providing mindfulness-based stress-reduction programmes to college students, school and employees.
“The Crow Museum recognises that in 2024, people are in want of instruments for arriving to our worlds and our work as a non-anxious presence,” Hofland says, “and I consider artwork is a path to that consciousness.”
