Dallas Museum of Art - Collections

Collections

The museum's collections include more than 24,000 works of art from around the world ranging from ancient to modern times. They are conceived as a celebration of the human power of creation.

• The Dallas Museum of Art collection of ancient Mediterranean art includes Cycladic, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Apulian objects. Highlights of Egyptian art is a painted limestone Relief of a Procession of Offering Bearers from the Tomb of Ny-Ank-Nesut from 2575-2134 BC. The more extensive Greek collection includes a marble Figure of a man from a funerary relief from 300 BC, bronze sculptures, decorative objects, and gold jewelry. The art of ancient Rome is represented by a Figure of a woman from the 2nd century AD and a marble sarcophagus carved in high relief with a battle scene, c. 190 AD.

• The museum’s collections of South Asian art range from Gandharan Buddhist art of the 2nd to 4th centuries AD to the arts of the Mughal Empire in India from the 15th to the 19th century. Highlights include a 12th century bronze Shiva Nataraja and a 10th century sandstone representation of the god Vishnu as the boar-headed Varaha. The arts of Tibet, Nepal, and Thailand are also represented.

• The Dallas Museum of Art’s collection of European art starts in the 16th century. Some of the earlier works include paintings by Giulio Cesare Procaccini (Ecce Homo, 1615–18), Pietro Paolini (Bacchic Concert, 1630), and Nicolas Mignard (The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus & Remus to His Wife, 1654). Art of the 18th century is represented by artists like Canaletto (A View from the Fondamenta Nuova, 1772), Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (The Abduction of Europa, 1750), and Claude-Joseph Vernet (Mountain Landscape with Approaching Storm, 1775). The loan of the Michael L. Rosenberg collection brings an added depth to the museum’s 18th century French collection. The 19th and 20th century collection of European art also stands out. Among significant works in this collection are Fox in the Snow by Gustave Courbet (1860), The Seine at Lavacourt by Claude Monet (1880), I Raro te Oviri by Paul Gauguin (1891), Beginning of the World by Constantin Brâncuşi (1920), Interior (1902), and Les Marroniers ou le Vitrail (1894) by Edouard Vuillard. The collection of works by Piet Mondrian is also particularly noteworthy (with works like The Windmill (1908), Self-Portrait (1942), and Place de la Concorde (1938–43).

• The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection. In 1985 the Dallas Museum of Art received a one-of-a-kind gift from Wendy Reves in honor of her late husband, Emery Reves. The Reves collection is housed in an elaborate 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m²) reproduction of the couple' home in France, Villa La Pausa, where the works were originally displayed. This villa was originally created by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in 1927, and some of the original furniture is kept in its context. Among the 1,400 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper Emery Reves had collected are works from leading impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modernist artists, including Paul Cézanne, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh. An extensive accompanying collection of decorative arts works includes Chinese export porcelain; European furniture; Oriental and European carpets; iron, bronze, and silver work; European glass; and rare books. Memorabilia of the Reveses' friendship with English statesman Winston Churchill is housed in the wing as well.

• Objects in the Dallas Museum of Art’s African collection come from West Africa and Central Africa. The objects date primarily from the 16th to the 20th centuries, although the earliest object is a Nok terracotta bust from Nigeria that dates from somewhere between 200 BC to 200 AD. Some works in the collection were created as symbols of leadership and status, while others express concepts related to the cycle of life. Highlights of the collection include a Benin plaque of copper alloy over wood depicting a warrior chief, a carved wood Senufo rhythm pounder from southeastern Mali, and a Congo standing power figure studded with ritually embedded iron nails or blades.

• The Dallas Museum of Art has significant holdings of ancient American art. The collection covers more than three millennia, displaying sculptures, prints, terracotta, and gold objects. Among the other highlights are gold objects from Panama, Colombia and Peru and the Head of the god Tlaloc (Mexico, 14th-16th century).

• The American art collection includes paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the United States from the colonial period to World War II, and art from Mexico, and Canada. Among the highlights of the collection are Duck Island (1906) by Childe Hassam, Lighthouse Hill (1927) by Edward Hopper, That Gentleman (1960) by Andrew Wyeth, Bare Tree Trunks with Snow (1946) by Georgia O’Keeffe and Razor and Watch by Gerald Murphy (1924, 1925). One of the most important pieces in the collection is The Icebergs (1861) by Frederic Edwin Church. This painting had long been referred to as a lost masterpiece. The painting was given to the museum in 1979 by Norma and Lamar Hunt. The Dallas Museum of Art also has one of the most thorough collections of Texas art. This is in great part thanks to Jerry Bywaters, director of the DMA from to 1943 to 1964, who was also one of the Dallas Nine, an influential group of Texas artists. In addition to paintings by Bywaters, the DMA has works by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, Julian Onderdonk, Alexandre Hogue, David Bates, Dorothy Austin, Michael Owen, and Olin Herman Travis.

• The expansive collections of decorative arts and design feature over 8,000 works mostly from Europe and America in various media including furniture, ceramics, glass, textiles, and metalware. Among the earliest works in the collection are 16th century Spanish textiles, 17th century Chinese export porcelain, and European metalware, including the Hoblitzelle Collection of English and Irish silver. Two exceptional early silver objects are a cup and cover (1742) by silversmith Paul de Lamerie and a massive wine cistern (1761-62) by Abraham Portal for Francis Hastings, the 10th Earl of Huntingdon. American 18th century furniture forms the core of the Faith P. and Charles L. Bybee Collection, featuring seating and case pieces from Boston, Connecticut, New York, Philadelphia and other regions. The internationally renowned 19th and 20th century American silver collection is among the very finest of its type, with major examples by the leading firms of the last two centuries including Tiffany & Co., Gorham Manufacturing Company, Reed & Barton, and International Silver Co. In addition to a unique solid silver dressing table (1899) made by Gorham for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 other highlights include a Gothic revival bed (c.1844) made for Henry Clay, a Herter Brothers sideboard (c. 1881-82) for William Henry Vanderbilt, a pair of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows (c.1885-95) depicting an undersea scene and a collection of Arts and Crafts movement and early modern designs by Gustav Stickley, Charles Rohlfs, Christopher Dresser, Louis Majorelle, Frank Lloyd Wright and others. The contemporary design holdings include exceptional works by Ettore Sottsass, Zaha Hadid, Richard Meier, the Campana brothers, and a newly formed collection of jewelry.

• Many important artistic trends since 1945 are represented in the Dallas Museum of Art’s vast collection of contemporary art, from abstract expressionism to pop and op Art, and from minimalism, and conceptualism to installation art, assemblage, and video art. Contemporary artists within the collection whose reputations are well established include Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson. Among photographers represented in the collection are Cindy Sherman, Nic Nicosia, Thomas Struth, and Lynn Davis. When the current Museum facility opened in the mid-1980s, several artists were commissioned to create site-specific works especially for the Dallas Museum of Art: Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Richard Fleischner, and Claes Oldenburg with Coosje van Bruggen. In recent years, the museum has shown a strong interest in collecting the work of contemporary German artists such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Anselm Kiefer.