the dallas museum of contemporary art 1956-1963

Dr. Russell Skinne The Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts

(1956 – 1963)

Kent L. Boyer

Spring 2014

Independent Study

Dr. Dianne Goode

Southern Methodist University

Kent L. Boyer: Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts

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Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 4 II. HISTORY OF THE DMCA: 1956–1959 ......................................................................................... 6 III. HISTORY OF THE DMCA: THE MACAGY YEARS (1959-‐1962) ......................................... 16 IV. HISTORY OF THE DMCA: THE MERGER (1963) ................................................................... 43 V. HISTORY OF THE DMCA: CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 49 FIGURES .................................................................................................................................................. 56

FIGURE 1. DOUGLAS MACAGY ...................................................................................................................... 56 FIGURE 2. 3415 CEDAR SPRINGS ROAD .................................................................................................. 56 FIGURE 3. SIGNPOSTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY INSTALLATION .......................................... 57 FIGURE 4. THE STORE INSTALLATION ........................................................................................................ 57 FIGURE 5. DMCA CHILDREN’S HOUSE ...................................................................................................... 58 FIGURE 6. INJUN POSTER ............................................................................................................................... 58 FIGURE 7. FLOWER ............................................................................................................................................ 59 FIGURE 8. CATHEDRAL ..................................................................................................................................... 59 FIGURE 9. PORTRAIT AND A DREAM ........................................................................................................... 60 FIGURE 10. BEGINNING OF THE WORLD ................................................................................................... 60 FIGURE 11. ORANGE, RED, AND RED ........................................................................................................ 61

TABLE 1. PERMANENT COLLECTION OF THE DMCA ................................................................ 62 APPENDIX A. SIGNPOSTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ........................................................ 66

FIGURE 1. PTOLEMY .......................................................................................................................................... 66 FIGURE 2. UNIQUE FORMS OF CONTINUITY IN SPACE ........................................................................ 67 FIGURE 3. TWO PENGUINS ............................................................................................................................. 67 FIGURE 4. MANTLEPIECE ................................................................................................................................ 68 FIGURE 5. MARIPOSA ....................................................................................................................................... 68 FIGURE 6. THE GREEN VIOLINIST ................................................................................................................ 69 FIGURE 7. APPARITION OF FACE AND FRUIT DISH ON A BEACH ..................................................... 69 FIGURE 8. GARE MONTPARNASSE (THE MELANCHOLY OF DEPARTURE) ................................... 70 FIGURE 9. ARTILLERY ....................................................................................................................................... 70 FIGURE 10. NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE #3 ................................................................................ 71 FIGURE 11. LEG .................................................................................................................................................. 71 FIGURE 12.THE SIDEBOARD .......................................................................................................................... 72 FIGURE 13. COMPOSITION (3) ..................................................................................................................... 72 FIGURE 14. FLEEING GHOST ........................................................................................................................ 73 FIGURE 15. SPOSALIZIO .................................................................................................................................. 73 FIGURE 16.THREE WOMEN (LE GRAND DEJEUNER) ............................................................................ 74 FIGURE 17. WOMAN WITH A HAT ................................................................................................................. 74 FIGURE 18. ANIMATED LANDSCAPE ............................................................................................................ 75 FIGURE 19. RECLINING NUDE WITH RAISED ARMS .............................................................................. 75 FIGURE 20. SQUARE COMPOSITION IN RED AND WHITE ................................................................... 76 FIGURE 21. BOY LEADING A HORSE ........................................................................................................... 76 FIGURE 22. GOTHIC .......................................................................................................................................... 77 FIGURE 23.THE OLD KING .............................................................................................................................. 77 FIGURE 24. NEW YORK .................................................................................................................................... 78 FIGURE 25. THE GREAT HORSE .................................................................................................................. 78


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APPENDIX B. HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DMCA PERMANENT COLLECTION .............................. 79 FIGURE 1. WALKING FIGURE ......................................................................................................................... 79 FIGURE 2. PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER ....................................................................................................... 80 FIGURE 3. SENSES ............................................................................................................................................ 80 FIGURE 4. UNDER THE PANDANUS (I RARO THE OVIRI) ..................................................................... 81 FIGURE 5. A DALLAS NIGHT ........................................................................................................................... 81 FIGURE 6. NAZI INTERROGATION ................................................................................................................. 82 FIGURE 7. RED AND BLUE HARMONY ........................................................................................................ 82 FIGURE 8. JUNE NIGHT .................................................................................................................................... 83 FIGURE 9. IVY IN FLOWER ............................................................................................................................... 83 FIGURE 10. RAZOR ............................................................................................................................................ 84 FIGURE 11. WATCH ........................................................................................................................................... 84 FIGURE 12. INITIATION TO STUDY ................................................................................................................ 85 FIGURE 13. U.N. II ............................................................................................................................................. 85 FIGURE 14. SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE .................................................................................................. 86 FIGURE 15. UNTITLED (FRANKENTHALER) ............................................................................................... 86 FIGURE 16. UNTITLED (VICENTE) ................................................................................................................ 87 FIGURE 17. UNTITLED STUDY IN TRANSPARENCY ................................................................................ 87 FIGURE 18. UNTITLED (GREEK AND SEA LANDSCAPE) ...................................................................... 88 FIGURE 19. SPACE COMPOSITION .............................................................................................................. 88 FIGURE 20. 1936 (WHITE RELIEF) ............................................................................................................... 89 FIGURE 21. WHITE, BLACK AND GREY ...................................................................................................... 89 FIGURE 22. UNTITLED (NELSON) ................................................................................................................. 90

WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................................... 91


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I. Introduction

Two generations ago, a remarkable modern art museum in Dallas, Texas,

introduced the art of the twentieth century to a sometimes reluctant and

conservative Dallas public. In just seven short years, from 1956 to 1963, the

museum rose like a phoenix, but then succumbed to financial exigencies and merged

with the traditional museum. What rose from the ashes was the foundation for, and

promise of, a collection of modern art for the city of Dallas. The story is really three

tales: the story of outspoken Communist-‐fearing southern society conservatives, the

tale of regionalist Jerry Bywaters-‐led traditional Dallas Museum of Fine Arts

(DMFA), and the saga of fifteen society modern art lovers who gave birth to the

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA). While all three parts of the story are

fascinating, this paper focuses on the latter: the historical context around the DMCA

beginning, its glorious rise and splashy impact, and finally its carefully managed

merger in 1963 with the DMFA.

The short-‐lived DMCA helped to further Dallas’ reputation as an arts city by

attracting national attention with groundbreaking exhibitions and a well-‐connected

director. The 1963 DMCA / DMFA merger gave the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA)1

access to the DMCA’s burgeoning permanent collection and insured in the merger

contract that there would be future acquisitions of modern art. The story is now

almost sixty years old and most of the players have unfortunately passed. However,

one-‐time DMCA staff member Paul Harris wrote several brief essays recalling his

1 The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (DMFA) updated its name to the current Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) in 1984. 2 “Wall Label,” “Recollections,” “Notes,” and “Contemporary”


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involvement with the museum.2 In addition, in 2012, DMA intern Leigh Arnold

conducted two telephone interviews with artist and long-‐time SMU art professor

Roger Winter. Winter was one of the young local artists who worked for the

museum hanging exhibits and doing odd jobs during the DMCA years.3 Douglas

MacAgy, the only director of the museum, wrote about those years a decade later in

an exhibit catalog (MacAgy). Finally, the DMA serves as the archival repository for

DMCA records that provided much of the material used to research this paper. In

particular, additional primary sources such as contemporaneous newspaper stories,

permanent collection inventories, board meeting minutes, oral interviews, and the

merger contract between the DMCA and the DMFA have provided insight into those

years.

Jack Lane, the director of the DMA in the first decade of the 21st century

called the story of the DMCA a story about “the spirit of those Dallasites who,

beginning in the 1950s, cared deeply enough about modern and contemporary art

to launch and nurture a venue devoted to it” (7). The arts community of Dallas grew

in stature during the period of the DMCA; and, in the end, a parochial, regionalist,

city-‐owned museum germinated into a professionally-‐directed modern institution

housing the beginnings of a 20th century art collection.

2 “Wall Label,” “Recollections,” “Notes,” and “Contemporary” 3 “Winter 1,” “Winter 2”


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II. History of the DMCA: 1956–1959 As the story of the DMCA begins, it serves us to recall the conservative political

climate that had taken hold in the United States. The 1950s was the era of McCarthy

hearings and a widespread fear of Communists secretly infiltrating our government

and our culture. Artists, performers, and writers who didn’t have the “proper”

political leanings were particularly suspect and their patriotism was often

questioned – the innuendo sometimes ruining careers. America had a former

military general as President, and a Vice-‐President who had utilized “red-‐baiting” to

win his 1950 Senatorial campaign. The government required anti-‐Communism

oaths from federal employees. A conservative Southern city like Dallas was an

exemplar of these prevailing attitudes.

In 1955, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts was still housed in a building in the

Art Deco Fair Park complex that had been built for the 1936 Texas Centennial

Exhibition. The museum held special annual exhibitions to tie in with the State Fair

of Texas each fall. Director Jerry Bywaters, a Texas regionalist painter and WPA

muralist, had led the Museum since the early 1940s. He had expanded the public’s

exposure to Texas regionalism by hosting annual art contests and shows such as the

Texas Crafts Exhibition, the Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, the Dallas

County Exhibition of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture, and the Southwestern

Exhibition of Prints and Drawings. Bywaters had recently begun to bring traveling

exhibitions to Dallas – shows that had been curated by other larger (usually east

coast) museums. The DMFA had just two modern artworks in its permanent

collection, both gifts: a 1949 Calder mobile, Flower (see fig. 7), and a magnificent


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1947 Pollock drip painting, Cathedral (see fig. 8) (Brettell 1; Pitman 18). The fact

that the DMA did not have a curator for contemporary art until 1970 speaks to the

lack of emphasis on modern art during the Bywaters years (“Contemporary Art”).

In March of 1955, a group of Dallas society women called the Public Affairs

Luncheon Club, sponsored by conservative and wealthy Dallas oilman H. L. Hunt,

issued a resolution to the museum and the press. The resolution said they believed

the DMFA was “overemphasizing all phases of futuristic, modernistic, non-‐objective

painting and statuary,” and alleging that the Museum was “promoting the work of

artists who have known Communist affiliations to the neglect of . . . many orthodox

artists, some of them Texans, whose patriotism . . . has never been questioned.” The

resolution demanded that the museum “correct their policy of sponsoring the work

of Communists” (Carraro 173).

These accusations created an unwelcome (and somewhat unwarranted)

public dialogue in Dallas for the next four years. The attacks, however, were never

specific; rather, they were composed of innuendo and generalities. Thirty years

after the events, Bywaters was interviewed about those years and “struggled to

describe the nature of the attacks on the museum. ‘It’s like trying to make a piece of

sculpture out of smoke,’ he explained as he gestured. ‘It isn’t there, it isn’t there, you

can’t pin it down’” (Carraro 174). Nevertheless, the controversy raised by these and

other “patriotic” groups in Dallas was featured in numerous national news stories,

including a live remote broadcast of NBC’s Today Show after the removal of a

Picasso piece from display at the Dallas Public Library on the grounds that he had

Communist leanings (Carraro 202). These allegations and the resulting press


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represented a continual source of distraction and headache for Bywaters and the

DMFA board for several years, and contributed to the attitude nationally that Dallas

was not a very cosmopolitan city.

Whether the Luncheon Club resolution was the spark that birthed the DMCA

is a matter of speculation; however, it is unequivocal that the first meetings of the

Dallas Society for Contemporary Arts (DSCA) occurred shortly thereafter. Both

Dallas daily newspapers4 wrote about the new Society in the early summer of 1956.

Rual Askew, the art critic for the Dallas Morning News (DMN) until his resignation in

1964, chronicled the DSCA from the time of its first meeting of fifteen citizens. In a

June 1956 column, Askew notes that the Society, led by Dallas sculptor Heri Bert

Bartscht had been “voted into existence” (“Keep Art Living”). On July 1, 1956, Askew

editorialized about the new group as a “move long over-‐due in the right direction”:

There’s no hiding the fact that Dallas caters to persistent anemia in its

diet of the arts. Some appetites even suffer recurring dyspepsia over

the rather meager dole they do get. The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts,

for example, does only so much with its exhibition policy. It most

likely could do much more, but for reasons of its own, it is content to

travel the route of “high spots.” (“Take Up Slack”)

By “high spots” he probably meant the traveling loaned exhibits Bywaters

sometimes brought to the museum. He continues, “what the Dallas Society for

Contemporary Arts hopes to fill is a vacuum of aggressive leadership in the field of

exhibition . . . . the society has also made clear what it is not. It is not a haven for 4 At the time, Dallas was served by two daily newspapers, the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times-‐Herald.


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mediocrities or Sunday painters” (Ibid.). Bywaters and the DMFA often acquiesced

to civic pressure from amateur arts and culture groups, giving them precious

museum exhibition space for their arts and crafts, flower arrangements, and the like.

Early membership in the DSCA included Dallas civic leaders with

recognizable last names like Marcus, Meadows, Murchison, and Kahn as well as

other academics, artists, lawyers, and doctors – members of Dallas’s cultural elite

who appear to have felt their interest in modern art on a national and international

scale wasn’t being met by the DMFA’s occasional loan shows. Nevertheless, the

DSCA’s constitution carefully stated that the Society “proclaims its interest and

willingness to cooperate with all artistic activity in the city of Dallas or elsewhere

and is not designed to supersede any existing institution or association” (“Keep Art

Living”). Indeed, some of the board members for the new group had been DMFA

board members in the past and some families (such as the Marcus family) had

members serving on both boards. A careful reading of the press from this time

shows a particular restraint on the part of the DSCA from ever criticizing Bywaters

or the DMFA.

The group wasn’t shy, however, about responding to political controversies.

In November 1956, the Friends of the Library sponsored a Dallas Public Library

showing of artwork that featured paintings by Picasso, Miró, and Leger and an

exhibition of contemporary artist-‐designed rugs from Galeri Chalette in New York.

Artists such as Ernst, Picasso, Miró, and Calder had designed the rugs. A week after

they were hung, however, the Library Director ordered the Picasso works taken

down after what the Morning News reported was “a deluge of protests” over


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Picasso’s Communist leanings. The DSCA leaders promptly issued a press release

condemning the action, writing that they deplored:

the suppression of art which has taken place. As citizens and

taxpayers, we believe that the banning of any art is an insult to the

intelligence and discernment of the whole community. People can

judge for themselves – if they are permitted to do so. (“Library Ban”)

It’s difficult now to imagine these artists’ works as political or controversial, but this

was the atmosphere in which the DSCA became a force for change.

The Society’s original plan was to hold small shows in the lobbies of local

theaters, and they did just that from their founding in 1956 into 1957. One of the

theater locations of these lobby shows was The Courtyard Theater on Oak Lawn

Avenue (“Wall Label” 1). By November of 1957, however, the group was readying

their first permanent museum on Northwest Highway in the tony new retail

location, Preston Center, where they had rented 1600 square feet and changed their

name to the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) (“New Museum”).

Askew’s November 3, 1957, column discusses the new space and notes:

The museum is being financed through underwriting by interested

business people and through several categories of membership. In

time there will be a salaried permanent director. For the present, the

only paid staff member will be a secretary. (Ibid.)

Askew writes that the DMCA had an annual operating budget of $35,000 in its first

year of operation. For comparison, he notes that the half-‐century-‐old DMFA

operated on $63,365 for the same 1956-‐57 season (Ibid.).


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Volunteer members of the Society curated these early shows – a real grass-‐

roots museum with some fifty volunteers on various committees, and a board

consisting of one hundred ten members (MacAgy 15). Referring directly to the anti-‐

patriotic art attacks in Dallas, board president Edward Marcus wrote, “We will not

be restricted or limited by form or by country, by creed, color or political

persuasion. Our job will be to consider art and art alone as the criterion of what

shall be shown” (Marcus).

Out of the chute, the Museum’s first 1957 exhibition, Abstract by Choice,

featured an incredible mix of work: four Stuart Davis paintings, six works by Lyonel

Feininger, six by Max Weber, five by Marsden Hartley, three by Arshile Gorky, four

by Alfred Maurer, six by John Marin, and five by Piet Mondrian (“Museum’s First

Exhibit”). It would be hard to imagine a splashier start – Abstract by Choice would be

an amazing exhibition even today. Over one thousand people attended the preview

of the opening, held on a Tuesday night (“Museum in Action”).

From the very first show, this group of volunteers proved remarkably

resourceful in using their national connections to bring stellar modern art to Dallas.

Abstract by Choice featured loans from The Addison Gallery in Andover,

Massachusetts, The Brooklyn Museum, New York City galleries such as The

Downtown Gallery, The Babcock Gallery, The Sidney Janis Gallery, and The Willard

Gallery, MoMA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The

Worcester Museum, and numerous private collections (“Abstract By Choice”). One

can only imagine how both stunning and revolutionary the exhibit must have been

for the time – and for the level of art Dallas was used to seeing.


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Following Abstract by Choice were fourteen volunteer-‐curated shows in the

next two years, including:

• The World of Realism (including deChirico, Blume, Dickinson,

Hopper, O’Keefe, Sheeler, and Wyeth)

• Action Painting (including Kline, Elaine and Willem de Konning,

Frankenthaler, Gottlieb, Hoffman, and Pollock)

• Young Collections in Retrospect

• Sculpture: From Rodin to Lipchitz (including Braque, Arp,

Calder, Degas, Giacometti, Lachaise, Maillol, Picasso, and

Renoir)

• Canadian Portfolio (including abstract expressionistic work by

the Painters Eleven group)

• Laughter in Art (including Steinberg, Johns, Daumier, Demuth,

Ensor, Klee, Miró, Magritte, Picasso, Shahn, Toulouse-‐Lautrec,

and Rauschenberg)

• Fort Worth Collects

• Les Fauves (including Dufy, Matisse, Rouault, Vlaminck, and

Derain; works valued at over a million dollars [“Hints Broadly

at Future”])

• Contemporary Mexican Art (including Tamayo, Galvan, Merida,

Gerzso, and Martinez)

• Postwar Prints: 60 Prints by 60 Artists (including Braque, Buffet,

Caruso, Chagall, Dufy, Escher, Leger, Matisse, Miró, Moore,


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Picasso, Tamayo, and Yoshihara) (“Wall Label;” “Wide Range of

Exhibitions”)

By all contemporaneous accounts, the DMCA’s early years were a resounding

success. In addition to top-‐quality exhibitions, in November of 1957, the DMCA

launched an aggressive membership drive with two hundred volunteers divided

into twenty-‐eight membership teams who canvassed the city door to door. Annual

memberships cost $10 ($2.50 for students and teachers) and rose to levels of $500

for “museum patron” level (“Membership Drive”). By April 1958, they had over 600

paid memberships (“Young Collections in Retrospect”).

In May of 1958, the DMCA initiated an evening film series with short films on

Braque, Henry Moore, Calder, Ray and Charles Eames, Jean Lurcat tapestries, and

modern Mexican architecture (“Art Film Series”). The film series was an uncommon

feature for museums of the era, but the DMCA continued to sponsor a free film and

lecture series throughout its history – often to standing-‐room-‐only crowds. In

addition to art, the Museum was one of the only locations at the time where

Dallasites could see foreign films (“Film Bill on Japan”).

Despite their smashing early achievement, however, Askew offered some

advice in his January, 1959, column:

Our constructive warning still stands for the ambitiously talented

amateurs to find themselves a professional director, soon, who will lift

the project off the hook of upper income bracket plaything, a move

that will do much to broaden its appeal automatically. (“Hints Broadly

at Future”)


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He added, “Even competing institutions and professionals in the field will have to

admit, grudgingly if necessary, that luck and good taste have done a lot to establish

the contender in two short years of museumkeeping” (Ibid.).

The only director of the DMCA, Douglas MacAgy, wrote in 1971 about these

early days before he arrived in Dallas:

“The Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts had started

buoyantly in a rented store, well away from the town’s center. It was

formed by a handful of ardent modern art fans who, in Dallas, couldn’t

find shows to match interests discovered in travel and follow-‐up

reading. At the outset, it was very much a matter of doing their own

thing. The thrill was infectious. As excitement grew, eyes got bigger,

and soon arrangements were made to occupy a suitably refurbished

building near the heart of the city and to set up a professional

program.

During the two years before that ambitious move, New York

art dealers -‐ who were lending with justified anticipation of sales -‐

were telling everybody about the bright, innovative shows the women

of DMCA had begun to foment. Sprightly and alert, their program

struck a note that was not to be lost until, by merger, the Museum

changed its identity. (MacAgy 14)

In addition to considerable success in their exhibitions and membership

drives, by early 1959, just three years after their first meeting, the group had

amassed the beginnings of a remarkable collection of modern art. The jewel of the


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collection at this point was the nine-‐foot-‐square paper maquette / collage, Ivy in

Flower, by Henri Matisse (see Appendix B, fig. 9) (Lee 1). The artist had created the

collage in 1952-‐1953 as a commission for a New York socialite widow, Mary Lasker.

She planned to have Matisse–designed windows in her husband’s mausoleum.

Matisse was “greatly disappointed” Mrs. Lasker terminated the project because she

didn’t like the design or colors. (Lee 3). Betty Marcus, museum president Edward

Marcus’ wife, knew Mrs. Lasker and suggested in a 1957 letter that she donate the

piece to the DMCA, which Mrs. Lasker did in 1958 (Lee 1). The magnificent piece,

one of the last of Matisse’s long career, is still displayed with much fanfare on rare

occasion (due to its fragility) at the DMA.5 In addition to the Matisse, in the first two

years of existence, the all-‐volunteer museum acquired June Night by Koerner,

Dancing Girls by Soyer, Still Life with Boar’s Head and Still Life by Buffet, Two Figures

by Morlotti, and Palazzo San Marco by Katzman (“Another Approach”).

5 The last time it was exhibited at the DMA was during the second half of 2011. (http://www.dallasmuseumofart.org/press-‐release/afterlife-‐story-‐henri-‐matisse-‐s-‐ivy-‐flower)


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III. History of the DMCA: The MacAgy Years (1959-‐1962) 1959 was a milestone year for the young museum. Despite the fact that their

two-‐year lease on Northwest Highway allowed for renewal for a third year, the

DCMA was bursting at the seams for more space. What had seemed like a

reasonable yet modest sized gallery space in 1957 was clearly too small for the

museum’s requirements given its early success. In early 1959, five board members

began looking for a new building for the museum and settled in April on the former

Slick Airways headquarters building at 3415 Cedar Springs Road, the corner of

Cedar Springs and Turtle Creek Boulevard in Oak Lawn (“Hints Broadly at Future;”

“Airways Building Bought”). The Turtle Creek / Oak Lawn area was becoming the

new hotspot for the city arts elite – Frank Lloyd Wright was building a theater6 a few

blocks from the new museum building and, across the boulevard, modernist

architect Howard Meyer (also a member of the DMCA) had built the exclusive

“3525” – a twenty-‐two story luxury high-‐rise, in 1957.

The five owners of the new museum building (Edward Marcus, Algur

Meadows, John Murchison, John O’Boyle, and Henry Buck) gave the DMCA a rent-‐

free lease on 7,000 square feet for two years (“Airways Building Bought”). They

planned to allow the museum to expand as its needs grew and, in the meantime,

lease the building’s remaining 25,000 square feet (Saarinen). In the building

announcement, Marcus, who would be re-‐elected for his third year as board

6 The Dallas Theater Center building was begun in 1955 and had its opening in December 1959, just two months after the DCMA inaugural. Mr. Wright died in April of 1959, making the Dallas Theater Center his last commission. (Weeks)


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president in May 1959, also announced that the board was searching for the first

permanent director (“Museum Re-‐elects Marcus”).

In July, the DMN reported that remodeling work was progressing at the new

museum at a cost of $25,000 to $30,000. The gallery space was to consist of light

colored floors and walls with a dark blue ceiling. The article describes a suspended

grid system designed for the space and painted the same color as the ceiling. This

grid (see fig. 2) would serve as a support for display panels and a camouflage for a

moveable lighting system (“DMCA Starts Work”). Another newspaper article reports

on a design meeting in which the grid feature was discussed and describes the

volunteer leaders’ sense of camaraderie:

Architects Howard Meyer and Downing Thomas quickly

pointed out that the grid could be used to support panels, hang

lighting fixtures, and conceal wiring or even to support pottery or

mobiles.

“And,” added Edward Marcus quickly, “to hang the architects

from should things not go well.” (Crume)

Thomas, who got credit in the press for designing the museum, later designed

Southern Methodist University’s Underwood Law Library, University of Texas at

Austin’s Blanton Gallery, and many modernist residence projects (“Profile”). He was

a young man at the beginning of his career in 1959, having just opened his

architectural practice that year.

The museum opening was scheduled for mid-‐October, with an inaugural

exhibition called Signposts of Twentieth Century Art (Appendix A), curated by the


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grande dame of modern art, Katharine Kuh. Meanwhile, membership numbers

continued to rise – in early October, before the Inaugural opening, the DMN reports

that the DMCA had 900 members and was undergoing a drive to double that number

(“900 Members”).

Unfortunately, the record of how Ms. Kuh came to curate the inaugural show

doesn’t seem to exist, but, in 1959, she was the highest profile museum expert on

modern art in the country. After first owning a modern art gallery in Chicago in the

1930s, she spent the next fifteen years as the first Curator of Modern Painting and

Sculpture at the venerable Art Institute of Chicago, where she was instrumental in

acquiring a magnificent collection. She had written three books on modern art7 and,

at the time, was the Art Editor for the The Saturday Review and a free-‐lance curator

(Kuh 30; “Library Exhibitions”).

On top of the spectacular exhibit, the inaugural event would also be the

venue for the DMCA to introduce its new director. In early August of 1959, the DMN

began to report rumors that a man with a national reputation had been hired to run

the Museum. On August 19, Askew reported that a letter from Edward Marcus to

the museum membership revealed that the board had hired Douglas MacAgy (see

fig. 1) for the post after interviewing “many prospects” and “importing the three

final candidates to Dallas for full committee talks”(“MacAgy Head”).

MacAgy (1913-‐1973), who was 46 years old when he was hired, had an

undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and had subsequently studied

at the Barnes Foundation of the Cleveland Museum, the University of London, the 7 Art Has Many Faces, 1951; Leger, 1953; American Artists Paint the City Exhibition, 1956 and many more books after 1959 in a long and distinguished career.


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University of Pennsylvania, and the Cleveland School of Art at Western Reserve

University (Ibid.). He had worked as a lecturer and curator at the Cleveland Museum

of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art, was the Director of the California

School of Fine Arts (where he had hired Mark Rothko and Clifford Still as faculty),

had been executive secretary for New York Museums Committee for UNESCO, a

special consultant to the director of MoMA, and director of research for New York’s

Wildenstein and Company gallery. He had written numerous reviews and papers for

arts journals (McCain). MacAgy’s art pedigree was unrivaled in North Texas at that

time. The DMFA’s Bywaters, by comparison, had a Bachelor of Arts degree in

English and Journalism from SMU and was a regionalist painter when he became the

director of the museum in 1943 (Kelly). All over the country, the 1940s and 50s

marked the beginning an era in which graduate-‐level higher education became a

requirement for museum curation and management.

Kuh curated a sensational, simple, and important show of just twenty-‐five

works of art – but those pieces were seminal pieces in the modern art timeline.

Kuh’s international reputation was such that she could get artwork loaned that had

never before traveled for shows (“Much Ado”). Even 50 years later, nearly every

piece she chose is considered a masterpiece and wholly representative of the artist’s

oeuvre for that time in his career. One could teach a history of the first two decades

of modern art using just these 25 pieces. Askew called it “a complete work of art in

itself”(“Pulls It Off”). He reported that the value of the exhibition was over 2.5

million dollars, which today would be over 20 million 2012 dollars (“CPI Inflation


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Calculator”) adjusted only for inflation and not considering the intrinsic

appreciation of the art itself. He writes:

Certainly Dallas’ newest museum provides a handsome complement

to the longer-‐established, differently focused Dallas Museum of Fine

Arts. Between the two and the inherent competition already in force,

daily living for all of us will be that much more vital and meaningful

than before we reached this happily cosmopolitan state. (“Pulls It

Off”)

In January 1960, Art News magazine editor Alfred Frankfurter traveled from New

York to present the DMCA with an award in the “Best Exhibition of Modern Art in

1959” category for Kuh’s exhibition (“Editor”).

In the Introduction of the exhibition catalog, Kuh wrote:

It seems fitting that a new building for a new contemporary

museum should open with an exhibition celebrating the discoveries of

our time. In capsule form by means of twenty-‐five distinguished

works of art we have tried to show how changing concepts of speed,

light and space have interpenetrated our vision; how fragmentation

and multiplicity create new techniques; how method supersedes

content; how primitive sources capture the imagination of the present

day artists and Freudian discoveries permit greater freedom.

Of utmost importance today is the artist’s preoccupation with

motivations more than accomplished achievements. Indeed this

attitude has progressed so far that recently method has turned into


21

content. Heretofore it was merely a tool of meaning; now the two

have merged.

Though it is far too early for final evaluations, it is not too soon

to record what has happened -‐ and in so doing to relate the art of our

time to the life it mirrors. But art does more than reflect; it predicts.

Were we able to read its message astutely, we might already find new

signposts to guide us. (“Signposts of Twentieth Century Art”)

The inaugural opening of the DMCA on October 27, 1959, was heralded with

a Camelot-‐like black-‐tie premiere. The Tuesday evening event was scheduled from a

sophisticated hour of 9:00 p.m. until midnight and provided patrons the chance not

only to see the new building and meet the new Director, but also to see a

magnificent and groundbreaking modern art show. Ms. Kuh was to be in

attendance, of course, as well as guests from MoMA and several of the collectors

who had loaned artwork to make the show possible. The DMN devoted a full page to

photographs of dapper mid-‐century men in black tie and their wives in evening

gowns to report on the event (Brinkerhoff).

Remarkably, the new museum achieved several instances of national press at

this time, which must have pleased them tremendously given how New York-‐centric

the national art scene was, and how national press on the arts in Dallas had been

solely negative for several years, the result of the anti-‐communist censorship efforts.

The initial report on the opening of the DMCA in the New York Times (NYT), dated

the day after the premiere, was probably prompted by the fact that Marcus (as

Executive Vice President of Dallas-‐based Neiman-‐Marcus), Kuh (who lived in New


22

York), and MacAgy (who had worked in New York) all were well connected with the

New York art scene. The NYT piece says Marcus “hailed the Museum for

Contemporary Arts as an expression of maturity that most of America hasn’t

recognized as existing in the state of Texas” (“Modern-‐Art Museum”). The article

notes (in a sort of rags to riches spin) that “the museum’s first quarters were rented

space in a suburban shopping center,” and concludes by saying that the DMFA “has

never shown an interest in all the forms of modern expression” (Ibid.). Not quite the

case, but it made for a great journalistic contrast.

Three weeks later, the NYT ran a much longer piece about the DMCA, this one

under Aline Saarinen’s byline. She wrote, “Let communities everywhere take heart

from what has been achieved in Dallas . . . . in short, in two years it has moved from

the minor museum leagues to the majors”. While neither the DMCA nor the Dallas

press ever specifically connected the conservative Dallas groups’ resolutions and

complaints about Communist artists with the success of the new museum, Saarinen

didn’t hesitate:

The existing Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, dedicated to the whole

history of art, is inhibited as a city-‐supported institution both overtly

and subtly by vociferous anti-‐modern art groups and has become

increasingly conservative. (Saarinen)

Two months later, the DMCA was mentioned in Vogue magazine, this time in

conjunction with the new theater just blocks away: “People are talking about . . . two

effective new buildings in Dallas; one, the Theater Center designed by Frank Lloyd

Wright and the other, the Museum of [sic] Contemporary Arts, designed by Downing


23

Thomas” (“People”). The glamour of the DMCA’s Turtle Creek location made the

DMFA’s fairgrounds location seem dusty, pedestrian, and old-‐fashioned by

comparison. On December 7, 1959, the DMN reported that over 8,000 people had

been through the new museum since it opened just 40 days before, and that the

museum had increased its membership to over 1500 paid members (Blair).

MacAgy proved to be everything the Board had expected him to be. The

DMCA literally took Dallas’ art world by storm with its innovative and fresh

exhibitions, a vibrant film and lecture series, and art education programs for

children through adults. He was a consummate exhibit curator. His ideas were

novel and sometimes untested – just as he liked. When interviewed in the DMN in

April 1960, he said he had taken the DMCA job because “he wanted a job with

adventure – a job that had a number of unknown factors involved” (McCain). In his

obituary just 13 years later (MacAgy suddenly died from a heart attack in 1973 at

the age of 60), friend and colleague at the National Endowment for the Arts, Brian

O’Doherty, wrote in Art in America:

And no one knew better how to show pictures. It was always a joy to

watch him lock into a work of art and place it, so that its placement

echoed around the space, cueing other works into subliminal dialogue

. . . . Doug was an artists’ man. Watching his response to new work was

marvelous. I would have trusted him with new art more than anyone.

(O’Doherty)

MacAgy had an interesting philosophy about contemporary art museums. Rather

than focus strictly on various “isms” or genre, MacAgy told the DMN that he believed


24

that a contemporary museum “should take a contemporary point of

view toward art of all periods.” As an example, the museum is

planning an exhibit next year build around the theme of the human

figure in art, tracing the different concepts of man through art of all

periods. (McCain)

This was an unusual way to curate shows, but done well, had the added

consequence of being consciously didactic – something modern art curators felt

obligated to provide in the mid-‐century for patrons not used to looking at modern

art. Curators such as Kuh and MacAgy believed part of the curatorial role was to

teach viewers how to see modern art with their exhibit catalogs, lectures, and object

labels. Thematic exhibitions that reached back to modern art forebears helped

serve this dual purpose of training the public’s eye by showing them that “this” is

not that different from “that.” Former DMA director Jack Lane writes that MacAgy’s

exhibitions were “lively and substantive . . . philosophically, culturally, and

artistically driven” (12).

In all, MacAgy curated 27 exhibitions at the DMCA from 1960 through 1962.

The museum had space for both major exhibitions and smaller ones, so there were

sometimes two shows on view at once. The smaller shows, which were usually

hung just for a week or two, included:

• James Boyton Drawings

• Derain Sculpture

• Drawings by Ulfert Wilke

• Art by Children at DMCA


25

• The Motion Picture as a Static Art Form

• Hebrew University Children’s Paintings

• Children’s Book Show

• Paintings and Drawings in the Estate of John R. Covert

• The Artist as Illustrator

• Hayter Paintings and Prints

MacAgy’s blockbuster shows during 1960, 1961, and 1962 usually hung for

three to seven weeks. The DMCA exhibition calendar reveals one hit show after

another:

• Dallas Collects

• Contemporary Japanese Painting and Sculpture

• To Be Continued: DMCA Permanent Collection

• American Genius in Review

• The Theater of Norman Bel Geddes

• Italian Sculptors of Today

• Rene Magritte in America

• Impressionists and Their Forebears from the Barbizon

• The Lily Pons Collection (Pons was an internationally known operatic soprano

who lived in Dallas)

• Alfred Eisenstaedt: Witness to His Times

• The Art that Broke the Looking Glass

• The Art of Assemblage

• To Be Continued: DMCA Permanent Collection


26

• 1961

• Arts of the Circus

MacAgy was ahead of his time in creating exhibitions that explored motion

pictures, theater designers and photographers – or thematic shows like Arts of the

Circus. In fact, these were some of the most avant-‐garde modern art shows in the

country. Artist and sometime staffer at the DMCA, Herb Rogalla, said, “Nothing like

this had happened before in Dallas” (qtd. in MacAgy 16). My analysis of the

exhibition calendar shows that four of MacAgy’s shows stand out as pure magic –

they are American Genius in Review, Italian Sculptors of Today, Rene Magritte in

America, and 1961.

American Genius in Review ran from May 10 to June 19, 1960 and was

MacAgy’s first major show at the DMCA. In it, MacAgy aimed to introduce patrons to

5 artists who were not contemporary, but who had contributed to modern art

decades before and had largely been forgotten. The artists represented were not

household names then, nor are they now, excepting in certain small circles. They

were Tom Benrimo, John Covert, Gerald Murphy, Morgan Russell, and Morton

Schamberg. MacAgy writes in his Introduction to the show about his fascination

with the interpretation of “art of the past in terms of its present” (“American Genius

in Review”). He also expressed an interest in American artists working in the

interwar period, most of whom had been ignored by European-‐centric art

fashionistas and critics.

The five artists he selected were a sort of rag-‐tag bunch by 1960. He

describes them like this:


27

Several of the artists represented here have received some notice in

recent years; but earlier, when the paint was fresh and when, for a

little while, the bare canvas was a field for the next day’s adventure,

they and the others had been accorded the briefest of nods by all but

their friends. To some the reception was discouraging. Hopeful to the

end, Schamberg died before he reached forty : less8 hopeful and broke,

Covert put aside his brush, was said to have destroyed all his works

but a few in the hands of friends, and became an “open-‐hearth

troubleshooter” in the steel mills of Pittsburgh : Russell, troubled by a

need for communion, reverted to a less provocative mode of painting :

towards the end of his urgent life, after retracing a road made hard by

habits formed during a long interval of producing populate designs for

commerce, Benrimo created a personal form that is as articulate as his

cubist paintings of many years before : Murphy, who lived in France

during fruitful years for Americans abroad, was forced by

circumstance to quit painting and return, an artist in memory, to head

a great store in New York. (“American Genius in Review”)

Murphy, who came to Dallas for the opening, was so pleased and grateful to MacAgy

for the show that he donated two paintings, Razor and Watch to the DMCA

(Appendix B, figs. 10 and 11); they are still signature pieces in the DMA 20th century

American permanent collection to this day.

8 The unconventional punctuation is the way the essay was published in the exhibition catalog.


28

Italian Sculptors of Today (October 26 to November 27, 1960) won the DMCA

their second spot in Vogue magazine. The editors ran photos of seven pieces that

MacAgy had chosen for the exhibit during his visit to Italy earlier that year. Under

the title, Italian sculpture -‐ now at The Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, the

magazine exclaims, “For the first time in this country, there is an impressive

exhibition of work of twelve contemporary Italian sculptors -‐ at The Dallas Museum

for Contemporary Arts. (The show will later travel).” The short copy mentions

MacAgy and concludes with the pronouncement, “A big, massive, beautiful show”

(“Italian Sculpture”). The show was huge: 43 pieces of sculpture and 44 drawings by

twelve artists – new work that had never been seen in America. The twelve

sculptors MacAgy had selected to represent contemporary Italian sculpture were:

Consagra, Fazzini, Garelli, Guerrini, Mannucci, Mastroianni, Milani, Minguzzi, A.

Pomodoro, G. Pomodoro, Somaini, and Viani. The catalog for the show was also big –

a hefty 98 pages. The exhibit was organized and scheduled to coordinate with the

Neiman-‐Marcus Fortnight, which that year was celebrating “Double Italian

Fortnight.” Fortnight was a local geographic / thematic, annual Neiman-‐Marcus

event that was highly anticipated every year and studded with special international

retail offerings and tie-‐in events throughout the community. Brothers Edward and

Stanley Marcus, who ran the upscale national retail chain from offices in their

downtown Dallas store (which still exists), were both great civic leaders and art

collectors. Edward, as mentioned above, was the President of the DMCA for its first

three years and one of the owners of the museum building. Stanley had been the

Board President of the DMFA during the “Communist” art scandal a few years


29

earlier (Carraro 177). MacAgy had wisely arranged for the Italian government to

pay for shipping the works to America and for the printing of catalogues (“April

1960 Minutes”).

MacAgy’s next blockbuster, Rene Magritte in America (December 6, 1960

through January 8, 1961), was, surprisingly, the Belgian artist’s first solo show in the

United States, despite the fact that he’d had a long and celebrated career in Europe.

It was also an example of MacAgy’s getting ahead of the established Eastern

museums in showing a particular artist first. His “rediscovery” of Gerald Murphy’s

brief artistic career led to a later solo show of Murphy’s work at MoMA in 1974 and

MacAgy mounted his Magritte show five years before MoMA’s Magritte show in

1965 (“Largest Survey;” “Wall Label” 2). MacAgy’s Magritte show consisted of 82

works – all from American collections – and was said to have been the largest show

of the artist’s work ever (“Largest Survey”). Magritte himself helped MacAgy choose

pieces, contributed a statement and an ink drawing of an oil derrick with the caption

“This is not a derrick” for the catalogue, recalling his famous painting “Ce n’est ne

pas une Pipe” (MacAgy 8).

Finally, 1961 featured an ingenious concept: a snapshot of a year of art

creation, the show was held from April 3 to May 13, 1962, and contained artwork by

36 artists. The artists included well-‐known veterans such as Joseph Albers and

Alberto Giacometti hung side-‐by-‐side with future superstars like Fernando Botero,

Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert

Rauschenberg, all young in their careers and destined to become the next

generation of great American artists. The exhibition also brought Oldenburg to


30

Dallas to install his famous work, The Store (see fig. 4), and stage Dallas’ first

Happening, called “Injun” (see fig. 6)(“1961;” “Happening”). Roger Winter, a young

artist just out of the MFA program at Iowa, recalled, “The DMFA was more like the

establishment and maybe traditional. And the Contemporary Museum, the DMCA,

was more like the terrible infant of Dallas” (“Winter 1”). Other words Winter uses to

describe MacAgy’s exhibitions are “visionary,” “magnificent,” and “exciting.” He says

the experience of becoming friends with MacAgy and watching him work,

really transformed me, and I never returned to my original

proportions, to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes—I’d been stretched by a

new idea and that was in ’62, ’63, ’64, and it’s changed everything I did

since then and made me feel like I was—well, it was my coming of age

period in my work although it’s changed in various ways. (Ibid.)

Despite the Museum’s success, MacAgy’s vision for contemporary art

exhibitions was occasionally over the head of his patrons and even his colleagues.

The Art that Broke the Looking Glass is perhaps an example of that; it was the only

poor review the DMN ever gave him. The exhibition catalogue is a curious 60-‐page

MacAgy-‐authored illustrated essay on the history of the philosophy of art beginning

with these lines spaced like poetry:

The immensity of a darkening sky is more keenly felt when the first

star appears in it.

But when a cluster appears, we are engaged at once by an

arrangement of points.

Space around and beyond them becomes less portentous.


31

Constellations provoke mental images, traced to accord with desire.

Moved by a cluster of luminous points

And wishing to see godly figures in the heavens,

the Greeks – frank in their poetic license – pictured them. (“The Art

that Broke the Looking Glass”)

And 58 pages later (!), the essay culminates with:

We may be invited to engage in a hunt for the treasured secret of

geometry, finding a clue on the fifth step, the key in a pendulum and

the secret behind a little door. The object has been returned to the

world, where it is a stranger to all but those versed in its pictorial

tradition. Meanwhile, for the first time in a long time, the canvas had

been cleared of its representational responsibilities. (Ibid.)

The DMN’s Askew wrote a long article on the show in late January 1961. While he

understood MacAgy’s intentions with the exhibit, “the show makes the basic point

that nothing is really new under the sun of creative expression,” he didn’t think the

show worked: “How does this tour de force come off? It really doesn’t, though in all

fairness it is decidedly worth repeated study by as many visitors as possible.” Askew

seemed to feel that MacAgy had left his audience behind by mounting a show that

was “inflexibly academic” and presenting it with a “semi-‐dialectical method.” The

gist of Askew’s review was that the show was just too academic and heady for the

museum’s patrons (“Old Battles Rejoined”). Even MacAgy’s staff was mystified by

the show. DMCA staff member Paul Harris wrote about the exhibit in 1978,“The Art

that Broke the Looking Glass was exciting and incomprehensible at the same time.


32

Years later, we began to understand the complexity of MacAgy’s thinking”

(“Recollections” 1). This show, however, is the one and only example in MacAgy’s

three years in Dallas that didn’t seem to hit its mark. In fact, “The Art of Assemblage”

followed in January and February, 1962, with a dizzying list of works by the likes of

Malevich, Gris, Braque, Severini, Schwitters, de Kooning, Debuffet, Grosz, three

Duchamp ready-‐mades (Bicycle Wheel, Fountain, and Bottle Dryer), Vicente, Picasso,

Motherwell, Max Ernst, Miro, Torres-‐Garcia, Man Ray, Stella, Johns, Indiana,

Rauschenberg, Dove, Picabia, Tinguely, Marisol, and Nevelson. The show was so

large, only half of it fit into the Museum – the other half was hung in a local gallery.

(“The Art of Assemblage;” “Assemblage Checklist”) The Art of Assemblage showed

classic modern artwork like Duchamp’s ready-‐mades next to early career young

talent like Motherwell, Johns, Indiana, Rauschenberg, and Nevelson to illustrate

MacAgy’s belief that a contemporary museum “should take a contemporary point of

view toward art of all periods,” and that it was instructive to see the roots of modern

art displayed with a new generation of work (McCain). These shows also illustrate

MacAgy’s uncanny skill at identifying new talent and trends.

Furthermore, MacAgy tied the museum’s active lecture and film series to the

exhibition calendar as an extension of his pedagogical approach to modern art,

sometimes having to show films twice because of full houses (“Film Bill on Japan”).

For the lecture series, MacAgy often gave the lectern to academicians and scholars –

these included a two-‐part series with Ms. Kuh in 1961, a lecture by William Seitz,

associate curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture for MoMA, and one by


33

Dr. Roger Ortmayer, professor of the Department of Art and Religion at Perkins

School of Theology at SMU (“Gauguin Gift;” “Wall Label” 3).

The DMCA also began an active education program, focusing on special

programming and gallery tours for college students home for holidays and the

students of regional colleges. Public schools, from elementary to high school, also

benefitted from the programming. Paul Harris, at that time a local public school art

teacher (and later the Director of the Waco Art Center), ran an imaginative

children’s program for the DMCA out of a house next door to the museum (see fig.

5). MacAgy and others interacted with the community via a speaker’s bureau he set

up. In August of 1961, fifteen museum members accompanied MacAgy on a

European buying tour to Paris, Basle, Nice, and London (“DMCA’s Jaunt”).

The Museum staffing was lean but efficient. Urban Neininger, an art

preparator with whom MacAgy had worked in New York, came to Dallas with him.

The other DMCA staff consisted of an executive secretary and a publicity director. In

addition, MacAgy loved being around young local artists and hired them and their

wives to help hang shows, lead children’s programming, lay out exhibition

catalogues, and provide other professional services at the Museum.9 This practice

not only provided much-‐needed additional income for artists, but also created a sort

of modern art colony around the Museum. MacAgy was also friends with Paul

Baker, the Director of the new and vital Dallas Theater Center, and his graduate

theater students, who were producing very advanced plays – theater of the absurd

9 Among these young artists were David McManaway, Roger Winter, Paul Harris, Hal Pauley, Roy Fridge, and Jim Love.


34

and the like (“Winter 1”). MacAgy later wrote about his symbiotic relationship with

Baker, who was also on the cutting edge of his art form:

Paul Baker, internationally known director of the Center and a

Texan both by birth and confirmation, needed the faith when I first

met him. He got the reactionary brickbats [from outraged

reactionaries in Dallas] before I did. I gave him the little support I

could then and later he gave his to my family and me in more ways

than one.

By luck we happened to live just across Turtle Creek from his

Theater. When I was away he’d send members of his company to

patrol our yard at night. Why? Because minatory letters and cards

were frequent, 1:00 A.M. threats of murder occasional, and my wife

would be followed home by strangers right into the driveway gloom.

Why? Because I was showing modern art -‐ a communist conspiracy.

One could never be sure how far some nut might go. It was part of the

scene. (MacAgy 17)

The Lucas B&B Restaurant, a 24-‐hour coffee shop on Oak Lawn Avenue where

artists and actors met after openings or performances, was a favorite hangout.

MacAgy and many of the artists and staff of the museum all lived in the Turtle Creek

/ Oak Lawn neighborhoods, which at the time, still consisted of many single-‐family

houses (“Contemporary” 4, 8). Roger Winter recalled,

Douglas [MacAgy] was the nucleus, the star, the center . . . . It was all

centered around MacAgy’s vision and MacAgy’s chutzpah, you might


35

say, at getting shows that you knew wouldn’t please the Dallas

audience. (“Winter 1”)

MacAgy’s success at acquiring gifts and bequests for the DMCA permanent

collection surpassed even all the above achievements. By the end of 1962, the

DMCA’s permanent collection had blossomed into a robust collection consisting of

ninety-‐three works of art then valued at over a million dollars (Table 1) (“Museums

Approve Merger”). This is quite an accomplishment in just five years – and even

more of an accomplishment that three-‐quarters of these pieces were acquired

during the three full years MacAgy was director: 1960, 1961, and 1962 (“Inventory

and Condition Report”). Over ninety percent of the collection donations were from

people outside Texas – clearly due to MacAgy’s unparalleled network within the

modern art world (“Four Years on Exhibition”). The highlights of the collection were

the Matisse maquette, Ivy in Flower, described above, a Gauguin entitled I Raro te

Oviri (Under the Pandanus), a Francis Bacon, a Stella painting, a Daumier bronze, a

Rodin bronze, Redon’s Invitation to Study, which had been in the 1913 Armory

Show, the two Murphy paintings, a Cezanne, a Rousseau, a Renoir, two Miro oils,

several Tamayo works, several Vicente collages, and many more (see Appendix B)

(“Inventory and Condition Report”).

In early 1962, amid all the heady success the DMCA was experiencing, the

museum suddenly faced a fiscal challenge so serious that it threatened its very

existence. The first reported inkling of something changing was in January 1962,

when Askew wrote in the DMN:

Speaking of meeting going on -‐ and if your ears are open at all


36

to such matters -‐ it is apparent even in the face of official silence by all

concerned that exploratory conversations have been quietly

underway in recent weeks between special committees representing

both DMFA and DMCA.

If we decipher official silences and grapevine tremors

correctly, the topic of serious conversation is the possible merger of

the two institutions under one roof and administration as a serious

bid for broader stature and influence in both the regional and national

arenas. As we say, we only hear such portentous talks are going on.”

(“Prime Acquisition”)

Then, six weeks later, on March 1, 1962, “There will be no merger between DMFA

and DMCA. That’s official” (“No Merger”). There is no mention of MacAgy or of lease

arrangements in either of these reports.

However, in the privacy of their board meetings, the DMCA leadership was

facing some significant financial anxiety and doing some serious soul-‐searching.

On February 16, the forty-‐six-‐member board met to openly discuss their financial

situation. Doug MacAgy and his wife were there, but the board secretary reports

MacAgy speaking only once, when he corrected some assumptions about museum

attendance figures. Mrs. Blake announced that financial exigencies had arisen which

caused the board to reconsider whether Dallas was best served by two art museums

rather than one. Apparently, Algur Meadows precipitated the situation with his

generosity:

About eight months ago, Mr. Meadows offered to give his equity in the


37

building to the museum, with the understanding that the museum

would assume his portion of the mortgage and taxes. This generous

gift naturally presents the problem of the museum having to raise its

budget to allow for the additional present expense involved. (“16 Feb

1962 Board Meeting”)

There is no explanation given as to why Meadows would burden the Museum with

this “gift” at this point in time. Board minutes from April 1959, when the building

was purchased state that “Mr. Marcus said that the owners had agreed among

themselves to bear the mortgage obligations of the building for a minimum of five

years even if he gave his share to the museum before the end of that time (“18 Apr

1959 Board Meeting”).” It’s unclear why he didn’t withdraw his gift once he realized

the precarious financial position it created.

The first word from MacAgy came on May 1, 1962, when Askew writes about

a letter from MacAgy that went out to the DMCA membership. His upbeat letter

reviews some of the accomplishments of the Museum since he arrived (including

that the museum was still increasing membership at a rate of 75 people per month),

and concludes with this statement: “Arrangements are being made for meetings

“aimed at transferring ownership of the building to DMCA with financial provision

to cover burdens so assumed through the years just ahead” (“Bigger Future”). Given

the dire financial circumstances discussed at the February meetings, his comments

seem either overly optimistic or made as an attempt to buy some time while the

Museum made their decisions. Regardless, just two months later, on July 19, 1962,

Askew reported in the DMN that the Museum had lost its free lease (“New


38

Quarters”).

The column quotes DMCA Board President Betty Blake saying that the Board

had voted to give up the building and that their prime consideration would be “to

find a new location and to build a building suitable to the specific needs of a

contemporary museum” (Ibid.). Askew’s article doesn’t go into why the museum lost

its free rent, but quotes Mrs. Blake explaining that the owners of the building,

made us a very generous offer to permit us to acquire this property

(reportedly for $325,000), but prudence has dictated that we reject

their offer in favor of the construction of a building more realistically

in keeping with our financial abilities and one specifically designed for

museum use. (Ibid.)

Blake explained that the building owners would allow the Museum to stay for up to

twelve months while the building was for sale and if the building sold, they would

have 60 days to vacate (Ibid.).

Another curiosity in the July 19, 1962, article was the following paragraph on

MacAgy:

About Douglas MacAgy, who has been DMCA’s director since its move

from Northwest Highway to Cedar Springs three years ago, Mrs. Blake

announced that he had agreed to remain on through December 31. It

has been no secret that even before the troubled merger rumpus last

spring and all the double-‐talk that inspired, MacAgy had quietly

investigated posts elsewhere. It is understood that until his official


39

departure he will help in locating a suitable successor when plans for

the future have clarified to that point. (Ibid.)

Why MacAgy decided to leave Dallas isn’t clear either – at the time, the Museum

intended to continue, albeit in another location. Was the fiscal situation so dire that

they could no longer afford him? Had the Board fired him? Had he resigned? Did

the merger talks – though unconsummated – suggest to MacAgy that it was time to

go? The only hint of any conflict is a couple of sentences in a transcribed oral history

of Paul Harris. In it, he recalls that a trustee told him MacAgy was stubborn,

independent, and strong willed. Harris said he concurred, but only in retrospect

could he see that this attitude didn’t sit well with the board (“Notes” 8). Jack Lane

wrote that his understanding was that “MacAgy’s contract had been terminated by

the board” (12). MacAgy biographer Douglas Beasley attributed his leaving Dallas to

the so-‐called “handwriting on the wall.” He wrote:

The growing popularity and international recognition of the Dallas

Museum for Contemporary Arts intensified the fears of

conservatives in the Dallas community. A retrenchment owing to a

downturn in the economy and community pressures to merge it with

the tradition-‐bound Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, a move which

MacAgy opposed, brought an end to the Museum in 1963 and

unemployment to MacAgy. (Beasley)

Three days later, on July 22, 1962, Askew wrote a long column using a

different tone from before. In it, he seems frustrated with the DMCA board, but it’s

not clear why. Was it because MacAgy was leaving? He writes,


40

There is, it seems to us, considerably more than finances

unsettling its [the DMCA] cause and as yet scant evidence that

sufficient attention is being paid to more than cultural economics,

which are somewhat different but no trickier than others.

However devoted the intentions or sincere, isn’t the problem

perhaps one of dictation by the wrong people? With all its physical

retrenchment and other tentative plans in process, isn’t it time to

disengage policies and policy-‐making from custodial amateurs and

entrust its future to professionals dedicated to the arts as a way of life

and at the highest possible level of achievement? We think so.

(“Returns to Crossroads”)

Askew seems to be hinting that the DMCA Board is responsible for MacAgy leaving

here – whether because they fired him, or because micromanagement or

disagreements caused him to leave is not clear. However, Askew wrote twelve

paragraphs that day essentially taking the board to the woodshed. “When the

financial chips were down, the scramble for cover under the guise of merger with

DMFA still could not obscure more basic deficiencies in its corporate self” (Ibid.).

Astonishingly, between July and the end of the year, the DMN published only

one more paragraph on MacAgy – it was almost as if he had vanished on the spot.

That last paragraph was published on August 22, 1962, in a review of the latest

exhibition of the DMCA permanent collection. Here Askew says that MacAgy’s talent

in art acquisition,


41

attests that should director Douglas MacAgy, who officially vacates his

post December 31, decide to forego the rigorous realm of museum

administration entirely, he could prosper and astutely advise clients

of his special bent as one of our more knowledgeable commercial

dealers. (“Restricted Sampler”)

Clearly, Askew (who in 1964 resigned his position at the DMN to open a gallery of

his own) had great respect for MacAgy’s talent and unique contribution to the Dallas

art scene (Dallas Public Library). Regardless, the paper didn’t publish so much as a

farewell story or report on where MacAgy had accepted a new position. This seems

odd after the amount of good press he had received over his three successful years

in Dallas.

Winter says that the young artists who had become friends with MacAgy

were dismayed at his leaving:

It was a setback for each of us [the young Dallas artists] when

the museum closed because, not only did we not have the jobs any

more installing the shows, but we also didn’t have the shows that

were being done by Douglas MacAgy.

We [the cadre of young artists] were also kind of stranded at

that point, I think. Because I believe by that time [1963] probably

MacAgy had left. And it was like someone threw a grenade in the Oak

Lawn area and people were kind of scattering. (“Winter 2”)

Almost a decade later, in 1971, MacAgy wrote about his perspective on the

end of the DMCA:


42

In joining a bigger league, the DMCA encountered an institutional

company that has been complaining about inadequate financing for

years. Too soon for all concerned, it was caught short. Failing in a

wishful gamble to sustain the real estate into which the expanded

museum had moved, committed businessmen turned to a customary

expedient -‐ merger. Against the will of a hopeful membership, the

deal was made. For DMCA the game was up and its surviving assets

took on another career. (MacAgy 15)

Presumably, MacAgy left at the end of 1962 as planned, leaving the DMCA

Board to create their own fate with the DMFA.10 He subsequently worked as Deputy

Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and as the curator of exhibitions

at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution in

Washington, D. C. He was also an advisor to Northwood Institute in Cedar Hill,

Texas11 in the late 1960s and curated at least two art shows at SMU in the early

1970s. MacAgy died suddenly at age 60 in 1973 (“MacAgy Dies at 60”).

10 According to the board minutes, MacAgy was not in attendance at the January 23, 1963 meeting. His name doesn’t appear in any of the 1963 exhibition catalogs, although his influence on the final 1963 shows and catalogs (particularly on the Lyonel Feininger show) can clearly be seen. 11 Northwood Institute had a short-‐lived avant-‐garde studio art program run by several of the local artists MacAgy had befriended and promoted during his time at the DMCA.


43

IV. History of the DMCA: The Merger (1963)

The dual losses of their permanent location and director, whatever the

reasons, were serious blows to the Museum. In January 1963, the Board had

approached the DMFA again about a merger, but was told that the DMFA wasn’t

interested in discussing a merger at that time (“23 Jan Board Meeting”). A DMCA

committee was looking for land on which to build, but their resources were limited.

Algur Meadows appealed to the rest of the board to consider moving the museum to

Southern Methodist University (SMU). While this suggestion apparently was never

really taken seriously by the rest of the board, Meadows did eventually fund the

establishment of an art museum that bears his name on campus (“Contemporary

Art”). It’s intriguing to think that the Meadows Museum at SMU could have been a

modern art museum rather than one for Spanish art.

From the DMCA’s point of view, a merger with the DMFA had major sticking

points. Even the year before, in February 1962, Mrs. Blake had enunciated a

number of issues that were in the way of a merger. The DMCA board was not keen

on the DMFA’s Fair Park location. However, the city had just passed a bond issue to

improve and enlarge the museum there, so the location was non-‐negotiable. The

DMCA felt that “the new museum must be a strong and vital organization, and

therefore must have a new name from the outset” (“16 Feb 1962 Board Meeting”).

They were also concerned about censorship -‐ the kind that had happened in the

1950s -‐ and the fact that a city-‐owned museum was not really run by its board of

trustees, but inherently beholden to future and unknown city governments. There

was also concern about whether or not gallery space would be allotted to modern


44

art. They had apparently already settled on the plan to create a foundation for their

permanent collection – they would not be transferring title to those works. Finally,

the matter of the directorship:

The question of the directorship real bone [sic] of contention between

two committees. DMFA wants to eliminate future income hardship

for Mr. Bywaters. Consensus of most of group -‐ but not all -‐ that

DMFA needs new and stronger direction. DMCA would not consider

merger without directorship strengthened and changed. (“15 Feb

1962 Executive Board Meeting”)

There is no mention of MacAgy during this discussion -‐ it seems as if his leaving

Dallas at the end of 1962 had already been decided before February 1962. The

DMCA ultimately lost the battle for a new name for the combined museum.

Nevertheless, the DMCA board would not agree to a merger with Bywaters still

director. They had been working with one of the best museum curators in the

country in MacAgy and had seen what a professional director could do. Winter

recalls the transition the DMCA backers faced:

And there are [sic] just -‐ I don’t know if -‐ antagonism might be too big

of a word but it wasn’t a friendly relationship. But then on the other

hand, after the Dallas Contemporary closed, several -‐ like Betty

Marcus and Edward Marcus, who were still living at that time, they

made an easy transition I think from the . . . DMCA to the DMFA.

(“Winter 1”)


45

Lane writes that, “harsh words had been said on both sides during the two

organizations’ independent existence, and strong views continue to be held to this

day [2007] by some of the veterans” (12).

The disagreements weren’t resolved quickly. After many meetings to iron

out differences, in April 1963, the DMCA felt that they had a merger contract they

could live with. The vote to merge was not unanimous in either board – the DMCA

vote was 20 to 9 in favor; the vote at the DMFA was 24 to 5 in favor (Bywaters).

They had worked out a solution to their permanent collection by creating a

foundation and giving title to the works to the foundation. It’s not possible to

ascertain from newspaper clippings how the many individuals who had given so

much of their time and effort felt about the merger. Even board meeting minutes

from the time are relatively businesslike and sterile. However, it seems as if the

merger contract would insure, to the best of their abilities, that contemporary art

would be a part of the DMFA’s acquisition strategy going forward. If there were

disagreements or ruffled feathers within the DMCA “family,” none of that was

recorded.

Askew wrote, however, that the merger “would have to guarantee sustained

drive for the contemporary specialties and interests plus a full time professional

directorship geared to national and international perspectives” (qtd. in Carraro

219). The DMCA board, now half of the new combined board, had no faith in

Bywaters to continue as director. The merger agreement stipulated that the

directors of both museums would step down (the DMCA had no director at the

time.) Bywaters had been allowed to say he wished to “be relieved of his position as


46

director, but would stay on with vague duties related to research” (Carraro 221).

Askew quoted a document Bywaters had presented to the Board of the DMFA on

March 16, 1963:

Your director sincerely believes this is a propitious time for him to

voluntarily make way for new personalities in administrative and

directorial responsibilities and thereby make it possible for himself to

serve the museum by concentrating on special curatorial services, on

research, writing, and lecturing, as well as on the promotion of

educational activities. (“Bywaters Wants to Give Up”).

It took the “new” DMFA a year to find a new Director – on July 1, 1964, Merrill

Rueppel became the Director of the combined museums (“Contemporary Art”). A

year later, in 1965, SMU hired Bywaters to become Chairman of its Fine Arts

Division (Carraro 222).

The DMCA had also insisted that the merger contract contain language that

related back to the 1956 anti-‐Communist art resolutions. This language also

codified what had always been Bywaters’ belief – despite his board sometimes

waffling to appease public controversies. The merger contract reads that a

maximum effort would be made at all times to maintain the highest

standards and to judge and exhibit works of art solely upon their

artistic merits, free of political interference or any other form of

censorship, subject to observance of applicable law and highest

principles of civic responsibility. (“Merger” 5)

Finally, the DMCA board included language that its permanent collection would


47

continually hang in a certain gallery at Fair Park: “Appropriate gallery space will be

set aside in the museum for the exhibition of contemporary art,” and that the funds

from both museums would not be mixed: “Existing separate funds shall remain

separate to be administered by a special committee or trustees” (“Merger” 3).

Later, the DMCA created a non-‐profit foundation, the Foundation for the Arts,

to hold title to the collection. In spite of the fact that they had delivered the

collection to the DMFA in May of 1963, the contract between the Foundation and the

DMFA is dated April 3, 1964. It stipulated that the works are on loan to the DMFA,

who would have possession and control of the collection, but not title. The DMFA

may “exhibit, lend, and otherwise use the collection” and agreed to “properly care

for, store, conserve, and maintain the works” (“DAA Contract”) The DMFA was also

required to pay for the insuring of the collection. Finally, “each work must bear a

label designating ownership by the Foundation for the Arts” (Ibid.). The contract

states that the Foundation was free to receive additional gifts and bequests to grow

the collection, but it would require that all gifts be unconditional (Ibid.). The

Foundation for the Arts remains an active non-‐profit foundation, still separate from

the DMA over fifty years later. Some of the DMA’s most treasured pieces are owned

by the Foundation for the Arts – and not just contemporary art treasures. Courbet’s

Fox in Snow is an example, bequeathed to the Foundation in 1984 (Simek). Church’s

The Iceberg is another – donated in 1993.

Bonnie Pitman, who was a leader at the DMA for over ten years, and Director

for three of those years (2008 – 2011), believes that through the merger, “a strong

commitment to collecting international contemporary art was forged” (10). Pitman


48

came to the DMA in 2000, thirty-‐five years after the merger, so has the benefit of

hindsight with which to realistically assess the collection.

Winter agrees about the effect of the merger:

Well, I think it enriched the DMA in many ways. It caused some of the

artists, certainly, to be more sympathetic with the DMA because, as I

said, it had that shadow of regionalism, which was “last year’s ideas.”

And maybe that's not really fair because the DMA had a broader

collection that Jerry Bywaters was very, very supportive of, regional

artists working in sort of a post-‐cubist sense, making Texas

landscapes in a cubistic way. (“Winter 1”)


49

V. History of the DMCA: Conclusion

Imagine for a moment the impact this collection had on the DMFA when the

works were transferred to that museum. Jack Lane has written that it was a

“modest” collection, but the facts seem to indicate it was a more important addition

to the DMFA than that (12). Because of the merger, the DMFA suddenly had a

million-‐dollar nucleus of modern art on which to build – a huge valuation in 1963

dollars. As noted above, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts had previously been

bequeathed two modern pieces, Cathedral by Pollock12 and Flower by Calder in the

early 1950s, but they hadn’t added to those pieces. Richard Brettell, who was the

DMA Director from 1988 – 1992, wrote in 1989:

Indeed the gift of Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral in 1950 was something

of a milestone in American museum collecting. However, the museum

did not follow that gift with any important purchases of Abstract

Expressionist painting until the mid-‐ and latter 1960s. (19)

The Foundation for the Arts permanent collection and the appointment of a new

director in 1964 started the cascade for serious contemporary collecting for the

Museum. It may have never happened without the merger.

The new director – the first professional art historian to direct the DMA -‐ was

Merrill C. Rueppel, whose Ph.D. in Art History was from the University of Wisconsin.

He had previously worked at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and been Assistant

Director of the City Art Museum of St. Louis (Bywaters). Just months after Rueppel’s

12 In 2007, Lane wrote that Cathedral was the most valuable individual piece of art owned by the DMA at that time.


50

appointment, two contemporary pieces were added to the DMA collection: a Louise

Nevelson construction, given to the Foundation for the Arts in 1964, and a Jim Dine

piece purchased by the DMFA. A year later, in 1965 the DMFA made four other

major modern art purchases: a Henry Moore sculpture, and paintings by Gorky,

Vasarely, and Gottlieb. The new direction Rueppel was taking with the collection

subsequently encouraged Dallas collectors to donate modern art to the museum –

the most generous of these gifts during his directorship from the Meadows and the

Clarks (“Contemporary Art”).

Algur Meadows donated significant contemporary art from his collection

during Rueppel’s administration. The list of his gifts includes works by Pollock,

Rothko, Krasner, Kline, and Louis. The Pollock, Portrait and a Dream (see fig. 9), and

the Rothko, Orange, Red and Red (see fig. 11) are both important pieces in those

artists’ oeuvres. In 1981, after Meadows’ death, his Foundation bequeathed more

important modern art, including works by Brooks, Diebenkorn, Motherwell, Noland,

Stella, Still, and another Rothko (“Contemporary Art”). The Clarks, who also had

been very involved with the DMCA, donated important pieces to the DMFA under

Rueppel, including two Hepworth works, three Dubuffets, a Lindner, two Tobeys, an

Arp, a Vasarely, and a particularly important Constantin Brancusi, Beginning of the

World (see fig. 10). After Mr. Clark died, Mrs. Clark continued to donate work into

the 1990s, including a pair of paintings by Albers, six early Mondrians and three

important Legers (Ibid.).

With Rueppel’s appointment in 1970 of the DMFA’s first contemporary

curator, Robert Murdock, the Museum focused its contemporary collecting (Ibid.).


51

Almost two decades later, in 1989, Brettell wrote that by the time he came to Dallas

as director in 1988, the museum had acquired through gift or purchase more than

1700 works of art made after WWII (7). The critical decade after the merger set in

motion a new standard for a modern art collection at the DMA.

Dallas wasn’t the only American city that struggled to get modern art into

museums during the post-‐war period. The red scare was a national phenomenon,

and the country as a whole had taken an extremely conservative turn. In their

appreciation of modern art, Americans were decades behind Europe throughout

most of the country. It was often the case that a contemporary museum was a

grassroots effort begun by a small group of collectors.

In Houston, for example, the Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM) was

founded in 1948 by a group of seven. Their first exhibitions – held at various

locations throughout the city – were This is Contemporary Art and L. Maholy-‐Nagy:

Memorial Exhibition. In 1955, the all-‐volunteer organization hired its first

professional director – coincidentally she was Douglas MacAgy’s first wife, Dr.

Jermayne MacAgy. MacAgy organized such groundbreaking exhibitions as The

Sphere of Mondrian, Mark Rothko (just his second solo museum exhibition), The

Disquieting Muse: Surrealism, and Totems Not Taboo: Primitive Art. The

Contemporary Museum of Art is now in its sixty-‐sixth year of existence (“History &

Mission”).

Los Angeles, where one would think modern art would have been de rigueur,

didn’t have an art museum at all until after WWII. Collectors Walter and Louise

Arensberg, who owned practically the entire oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp among


52

many, many other priceless pieces of modern art, offered their complete collection

to the Los Angeles County Museum Board in 1939 and were promptly refused. In

1941, actors Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson, and Fanny Brice founded the

Modern Institute of Art in Los Angeles, in part, to attempt to keep the Arensberg

collection in LA. They had to close the doors in 1947 when funding ran out. Then, in

1951:

The Los Angeles City Council held two days of noisy hearings to

condemn the "offensive and nauseating" abstract works in the All-‐City

Outdoor Arts Festival sponsored by the Municipal Art Department.

The hearings tarred modernist painters as "tools of the Kremlin," and

the department was nearly dissolved. When the county museum

acquired a small Jackson Pollock, curators were ordered not to show

it publicly. (Waldie)

In the 1940s, the Arensberg collection was coveted by Katharine Kuh for the Art

Institute of Chicago. She courted their donation, curated a large show of their

collection, and even catalogued the collection for them gratis, but it slipped through

her hands when Walter gave it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1950 (Kuh 21).

Today, many of the artworks from the first half of the twentieth century in

the DMA collection are either from the Foundation for the Arts collection or

subsequent gifts from the people deeply involved in the DMCA, most notably the

Meadows and the Clarks. The DMA has a limited unencumbered acquisition

endowment, and that has prohibited them from purchasing important works of art

in any field. In some ways this makes them beholden to the personal tastes of


53

collectors and the styles of the times. Spiegelman wrote in D Magazine about the

consequences of this constraint:

The DMA’s first full-‐fledged curator of contemporary art, Robert

Murdock, was a fan of Color Field paintings. According to Brettell, the

DMA has significant holdings of the work of Helen Frankenthaler,

Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Larry Poons, much of

which has also been in storage for a decade or more. (Spiegelman)

The DMA doesn’t yet have a searchable database of its vast permanent

collection, according to Jacqueline Allen, Director of Libraries and Imaging Services.

Therefore, a quantitative analysis regarding the importance of the Foundation for

the Arts pieces is difficult. In addition, Allen estimates that only ten percent of the

American, Contemporary, European and Latin American Departments’ permanent

collection is on view at any one time (Allen). Judging merely from the number of

Foundation works and the subsequent works from DMCA members like the

Meadows and the Clarks one sees hanging, the DMA’s collection of modern art got a

huge jumpstart from the DMCA – both in works of art, and maybe more importantly,

in the goodwill and generosity of future donations.

After the museums’ merger Bywaters’ career continued at SMU, where he

was the Chair of the Fine Arts Department from 1965 to 1967. His museum career

concluded at the time of a national paradigm shift toward professional art historian

museum directors. In MacAgy, the city had seen what a professionally trained

director could accomplish in just three short years, and, just as other museums

around the country were realizing, this was the direction they needed to go in order


54

to move from a small regional institution to a national player both to attract loan

exhibitions and in acquisition of a permanent collection.

As noted above, after Dallas, MacAgy went on to posts at the National

Endowment for the Arts and the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and

Sculpture Garden. While at the Hirshhorn, he had “established a new division to

seek safe means of travel for works of art, developed a new system for traveling

exhibitions, and produced the ‘Art Fleet’ concept” (“MacAgy Dies in Washington”).

The DMN eulogy (written by the DMCA’s former public relations manager Janet

Kutner) notes MacAgy’s encouragement for a group of young struggling artists while

he as in Dallas – Bill Komodore, Jim Love, David McManaway, Hal Pauley, Herb

Rogalla, Roger Winter, and Charles Williams. Further, the article opines, “His

direction of the DMCA combined an exhibition program of national and even

international stature with a significant encouragement of local and regional art. It is

a combination that has not been equaled in Dallas since his departure” (Kutner).

Art museums in the 21st century are political and marketing corporate

machines – due, in part, to the skyrocketing price of art in our culture. As such, a

great deal of time and money is spent on attracting and courting the right patrons

who might become donors. Spiegelman writes, “The art world is filled with

shenanigans. Museums operate in part by the Golden Rule. That is, the person with

the gold makes the rules” (Spiegelman). While the same could probably be said for

the late 1950s and the DMCA, the smaller stakes and the delightful subversiveness

of introducing non-‐mainstream artists and movements to the public certainly makes


55

for an adventurous art story – one that took place in perhaps a simpler time, the

impact of which is still relevant some 60 years later.


56

Figures

Figure 1. Undated photograph of DMCA Director Douglas MacAgy.

Figure 2. The entry lobby of the DMCA at 3415 Cedar Springs Road. Notice the ceiling grid.


57

Figure 3. Installation photograph of Katherine Kuh’s Signposts of the Twentieth Century, 1959.

Figure 4. Installation photograph of Claes Oldenburg’s The Store, 1962.


58

Figure 5. DMCA Children’s House, next door to the Musem, the location for educational programming and the Oldenburg happening, Injun, in 1962.

Figure 6. Poster for Oldenburg’s happening, Injun.


59

Figure 7. Calder Flower, 1949 Iron, silver, aluminum, and paint, dimensions unknown

Figure 8. Pollock Cathedral, 1947 Enamel and aluminum paint, 71 1/2” x 35 1/16”


60

Figure 9. Pollock Portrait and a Dream, 1953 Oil, 58 1/2” x 134 3/4”

Figure 10. Brancusi Beginning of the World, ca. 1920 Marble, metal, and stone, 30” x 20” x 20”


61

Figure 11. Rothko Orange, Red, and Red, 1962 Oil, 93 1/8” x 80 1/8”


62

Table The DMCA Permanent Collection

This inventory of the permanent collection was created by comparing two

documents found in the DMCA archives at the DMA. The documents are titled,

“DMCA Permanent Collection Inventory December 4, 1962 /s/ Jett Rogella” and an

undated four-‐page document entitled simply, “Dallas Museum for Contemporary

Arts.”

1957 Acquisitions 1.1957 Koerner June Night N.d. Oil 2.1957 Soyer Dancing Girls N.d. Oil 3.1957 Buffet Still Life with Boar’s Head 1952 unknown 4.1957 Morlotti Two Figures 1950 Oil 1958 Acquisitions 1.1958 Matisse Ivy in Flower 1953 Cut Paper 2.1958 Katzman Palazzo San Marco 1950 Oil 3.1958 Buffet Still Life 1955 unknown 1959 Acquisitions 1.1959 unknown 2.1959 Hofmann Red and Blue Harmony 1956 Oil 3.1959 Oliveira Child 1959 Oil 4.1959 Dufy Still Life with Fish and Fruit 1940 unknown 5.1959 Grosz A Dallas Night 1952 Watercolor 6.1959 Grosz Nazi Interrogation 1936 Watercolor 7.1959 Renoir Portrait of a Woman 1904 Oil 8.1959 Villon Untitled N.d. Oil 9.1959 Moualla Untitled 1955 Oil 10.1959 Keene Three Prophets 1958 Oil 11.1959 Remenick Still Life on Table N.d. Oil 12.1959 Nelson Untitled 1951 Oil 13.1959 unknown 14.1959 unknown 15.1959 Modzelevich Untitled N.d. Gouache 16.1959 Bilew Untitled 1956 unknown


63

1960 Acquisitions 1.1960 Bluhm Lovers Lane 1955 unknown 2.1960 Buffet Still Life 1950 unknown 3.1960 Stella Song of the Nightingale c1917 Oil 4.1960 Evergood Portrait of My Mother 1927-‐46 Oil 5.1960 Tamayo Young Women Jumping Rope N.d. unknown 6.1960 Salemme None Shall Escape 1946 Oil 7.1960 Siporin Market Place 1952 Ink 8.1960 Rickey U.N. 1954-‐60 Metal 9.1960 Eilshemius Sunset: Nude Entering Water 1920 Oil 10.1960 Eilshemius Sunset with Man Standing on Shore 1920 Oil 11.1960 Eilshemius Sirens of the Sea 1908 Oil 12.1960 unknown 13.1960 Torres-‐Garcia Untitled 1931 Mixed Media 14.1960 Gaudier-‐Brzeska Untitled 1912 Pencil 15.1960 Boynton Untitled 1960 unknown 16.1960 Milles Skizz till Solsangaren N.d. Bronze 17.1960 Fazzini Untitled 1960 Ink 18.1960 Daumier Portrait of Louis XIV N.d. Bronze 19.1960 Rodin Inspiration 1908 Bronze 20.1960 Redon Invitation to Study N.d. Oil 21.1960 unknown 22.1960 Murphy Razor 1922 Oil 23.1960 Murphy Watch 1925 Oil 24.1960 Bacon Walking Figure 1959-‐60 Oil 25.1960 unknown 26.1960 Capogrossi Untitled N.d. unknown 27.1960 de Chirico Untitled N.d. Watercolor/Pencil 28.1960 Maccari Untitled N.d. Ink 29.1960 unknown 30.1960 Derain Untitled N.d. Oil 31.1960 Howard Painting 1959 Oil 32.1960 Howard Painting 1958-‐59 Oil 33.1960 Mastroianni Composition 1959 Wood / Polychrome

1961 Acquisitions 1.1961 Gauguin I Raro te Oviri 1891 Oil 2.1961 Hadzi Primavera N.d. Bronze 3.1961 Russell Synchromy N.d. Oil 4.1961 unknown 5.1961 unknown 6.1961 Marsicano Figure N.d. Ink 7.1961 Hoflehner Studienblatt zu Fiour ‘Schreitender” 1957 Ink


64

8.1961 unknown 9.1961 Stamos Untitled N.d. Lithograph 10.1961 Ferber Senses 1959 Lithograph 11.1961 Frankenthaler Untitled N.d. Lithograph 12.1961 Vicente Untitled N.d. Lithograph 13.1961 La Selle Space Composition 1949 Charcoal 14.1961 Cezanne Guillaumin: On the Road 1870 unknown 15.1961 Phillips Eve 1958 Oak 15.1961 Phillips Adam (same number as Eve) 1958 Oak 16.1961 unknown 17.1961 Nicholson White Relief 1936 Oil 18.1961 Rousseau Promeneur et L’Enfant c1905-‐06 Oil 19.1961 Karfiol Babette in Black N.d. Oil 20.1961 Miro Femme et Oiseau devant le Soleil 1944 Oil 21.1961 Miro Femme et Oiseau devant la Nuit 1944 Oil 22.1961 unknown 23.1961 Tamayo Eight Lithographs N.d. Lithograph Grey Nude Orange Nude Woman in Yellow and White Lunatic Tan Nude Figure in Illuminated Doorway Dream Figure Howling Wolves 24.1961 Fantin-‐Latour Pivoines N.d. Oil 1962 Acquisitions 1.1962 Smith #9 1960 Oil 2.1962 Vicente White, Black and Grey 1961 Collage 3.1962 Levy Sago N.d. Oil 4.1962 Knoop Ion II 1961 Granite 5.1962 Viviani Terraza Fichi E Orologil 1936 Etching 6.1962 Viviani Calle E Casa 1940 Etching 7.1962 unknown 8.1962 Beck Perspective Box and Drawing 1961 unknown 9.1962 Vicente Untitled N.d. Lithograph 10.1962 Lu Duble Phrygian Bird N.d. Sculpture 11.1962 Ernst Overnight N.d. Oil 1963 Acquisitions 1.1963 Jonson Polymer No. 17 1960 unknown 2.1963 Bontecou Untitled 1 1961 Metal and Canvas Acquisitions Not Numbered


65

McManaway Figure 1960 Oil Einhoven Holland 1955 Oil Moore Girl Seated Against a Square Wall 1958 Bronze Table 1. Permanent collection of the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts


66

Appendix A Signposts of Twentieth Century Art Exhibition, Dallas Museum for Contemporary

Arts, October 28 – December 6, 1959.

FIgure 1. Arp Ptolemy, 1953 Cast Limestone, 40” x 21”


67

FIgure 2. Boccionni Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 Bronze, 43” x 34”

FIgure 3. Brancusi Two Penguins, 1914 Marble, 21 1/4”


68

FIgure 4. Braque Mantlepiece, 1927 Oil, 51 1/2” x 29 1/4”

FIgure 5. Calder Mariposa, 1951 Sheet metal, brass, wire, 9’


69

FIgure 6. Chagall The Green Violinist, ca. 1917 Oil, 35” x 20”

FIgure 7. Dali Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, 1938 Oil 43 1/2” x 57”


70

FIgure 8. de Chirico Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure), 1914 Oil, 55’” x 72”

FIgure 9. de la Fresnaye Artillery, 1911 Oil, 50 1/2” x 61 1/2”


71

FIgure 10. Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase #3, 1916 Watercolor, ink, crayon, and pastel over a photographic base, 50” x 35.5”

FIgure 11. Giacometti Leg, 1958 Bronze, 84 1/2”


72

FIgure 12. Gris The Sideboard, 1917 Oil 45 3/4” x 28 1/4”

FIgure 13. Kandinsky Composition (3), 1914 Oil, 64” x 36 1/4”


73

FIgure 14. Klee Fleeing Ghost, N.d. Oil, 35 1/4” x 25 1/4”

FIgure 15. Kokoschka Sposalizio, 1912 Oil, 41 1/8” x 24 3/4”


74

FIgure 16. Leger Three Women (Le grand dejeuner), 1921 Oil, 72 1/4” x 99”

FIgure 17. Matisse Woman with a Hat, 1905 Oil, 32” x 23 1/2”


75

FIgure 18. Miro Animated Landscape, 1927 Oil, 51” x 76”

FIgure 19. Modigliani Reclining Nude with Raised Arms, 1917 Oil, 25 1/4 x 39 1/4


76

FIgure 20. Mondrian Square Composition in Red and White, 1939-42 Oil, 39 1/2” x 39” (unable to locate color image)

FIgure 21. Picasso Boy Leading a Horse, 1905 Oil, 87” x 51 1/4”


77

FIgure 22. Pollock Gothic, 1944 Oil, 84 1/2” x 56”

FIgure 23. Rouault The Old King, 1916-1936 Oil, 30 1/4” x 21 1/4”


78

FIgure 24. Tobey New York, 1945 Tempera, 36 1/4” x 25” (unable to locate color image)

FIgure 25. Villon-Duchamp The Great Horse, 1914 Bronze, 39 3/8 x 20 x 24


79

Appendix B Highlights from the DMCA Permanent Collection

The DMA is in the process of digitizing its collection, so not all object images are yet

available. This appendix is illustrated with images of some of the permanent

collection acquired in 1956-‐1963 by the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts.

FIgure 1. Bacon Walking Figure, 1959-60 Oil


80

FIgure 2. Evergood Portrait of My Mother, 1927-1946 Oil

FIgure 3. Ferber Senses, 1959 Lithograph


81

FIgure 4. Gauguin Under the Pandanus (I Raro the Oviri), 1891 Oil

FIgure 5. Grosz A Dallas Night, 1952 Watercolor


82

FIgure 6. Grosz Nazi Interrogation, 1936 Watercolor

FIgure 7. Hofmann Red and Blue Harmony, 1956 Oil


83

FIgure 8. Koerner June Night, N.d. Oil

FIgure 9. Matisse Ivy in Flower, 1953 Cut Paper Collage


84

FIgure 10. Murphy Razor, 1924 Oil

FIgure 11. Murphy Watch, 1925 Oil


85

FIgure 12. Redon Initiation to Study, ca. 1905 Oil

FIgure 13. Rickey U.N. II, 1954-60 Polychromed Steel


86

FIgure 14. Stella Song of the Nightingale, ca. 1917 Oil

FIgure 15. Frankenthaler Untitled, N.d. Lithograph


87

FIgure 16. Vicente Untitled, N.d. Lithograph

FIgure 17. Russell Untitled Study in Transparency, ca. 1913 - 1923 Oil


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FIgure 18. de Chirico Untitled (Greek and Sea Landscape), N.d. Watercolor and Pencil

FIgure 19. La Selle Space Composition, ca. 1949 Charcoal


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FIgure 20. Nicholson 1936 (white relief), 1936 Oil on carved board

FIgure 21. Vicente White, Black and Grey, N.d. Colored paper, cardboard, and charcoal


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FIgure 22. Nelson Untitled, 1951 Oil


91

Works Cited “Airways Building Bought for Use as Art Museum.” Dallas Morning News 19 Apr

1959, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“Agreement of Merger.” N.d.: 1-‐7. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Allen, Jacqueline. “Re: Contemporary Collection.” Message to the author. 17 Jan 2014. Email.

Arnold, Leigh. "Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art: How Stanley Marcus, Al Meadows, and James and Lillian Clark Shaped a Collection." Dallas Museum of Art, N.d. Web. 8 Mar 2014.

Arnold, Leigh, prod. Roger Winter (Part 1): History of Contemporary Art in Dallas Oral History Collection. Dallas Museum of Art Publications, 2012. Web. 10 Mar 2014.

Arnold, Leigh, prod. Roger Winter (Part 2): History of Contemporary Art in Dallas Oral History Collection. Dallas Museum of Art Publications, 2012. Web. 10 Mar 2014.

“Art Film Series Opening at Contemporary Museum.” Dallas Morning News 19 May 1958, Section 3 Page 8. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1958, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. "Another Approach to Museum Collecting." Dallas Morning News 31

Aug 1958, Section 6 Page 10. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. News Clippings -‐ Dallas Society for Contemporary Arts, 1958, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. “Bywaters Wants to Give Up Directorship to Do More for DMFA.” Dallas Morning News 16 Mar 1963, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. "Contemporary Museum Hints Broadly at Future Via Shows." Dallas Morning News 18 Jan 1959, n. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “DMCA Geared for ‘Happening’.” Dallas Morning News 6 Apr 1962, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “DMCA Planning Now for Bigger Future.” Dallas Morning News 1 May


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1962, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “DMCA Returns To Crossroads.” Dallas Morning News 22 Jul 1962, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “DMCA To Seek New Quarters.” Dallas Morning News 19 Jul 1962, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “First-‐Line Abstractionists in Museum’s First Exhibit.” Dallas Morning News 6 Nov 1957, N. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “First Official Words On DMCA’s Jaunt.” Dallas Morning News 10 Sep 1961, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1961, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. “Film Bill on Japan is Bonus.” Dallas Morning News 30 Jan 1960, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1960, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew , Rual. "It's Time to Take Up Slack." Dallas Morning News 1 Jul 1956, N. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “Largest Survey Yet of Magritte’s World.” Dallas Morning News 23 Jan 1960, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “MacAgy is New Museum Head.” Dallas Morning News 19 Aug 1959, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “Much Ado on Cedar Springs.” Dallas Morning News 20 Sep 1959, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014. Askew, Rual. "Newest Museum in Action." Dallas Morning News 21 Nov 1957, N. pag. Web. 9 Mar. 2014. Askew, Rual. “New Museum Comes As Civic Progress.” Dallas Morning News 3 Nov

1957, N.pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. News Clippings – DMCA Opening, 1957, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. “New Museum Pulls It Off.” Dallas Morning News 28 Oct 1959,

N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “No Merger of Museums.” Dallas Morning News 1 Mar 1962, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.


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Askew, Rual. "Old Battles Rejoined." Dallas Morning News 3 Dec 1961, N. pag. Print.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. News Clippings -‐ Dallas Society for Contemporary Arts, 1961, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. “Prime Acquisition, Merger Talk.” Dallas Morning News 20 Jan 1962, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. “Restricted Sampler Has Clues, Goodies.” Dallas Morning News 22 Aug 1962, Section 1 Page 15. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Askew, Rual. "Society Organized to Keep Art ‘Living’." Dallas Morning News 22 Jun 1956, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. News Clippings -‐ Dallas Society for Contemporary Arts, 1956, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Askew, Rual. "Wide Range of Exhibitions Planned by ‘New’ Museum." Dallas Morning News 5 Feb 1958, N. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Beasley, David. "Douglas MacAgy and the Foundations of Modern Art." Davus Publishing. N.p. eBook. 9 Mar 2014

Blair, Dale. "Art Notes: New Galleries Marked ‘59" Dallas Morning News 7 Dec 1959, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1959, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Brettell, Richard R. NOW/THEN/AGAIN: Contemporary Art in Dallas 1949-‐1989. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1989. 1-‐33. Print.

Brinkerhoff, Mary. "Black-‐Tie Preview Party for Museum’s New Headquarters." Dallas Morning News 25 Oct 1959, n. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Bywaters, Jerry. Seventy-‐Five Years of Art in Dallas: The History of the Dallas Art Association and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. 1978: 44. Digital Book. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Carraro, Francine. Jerry Bywaters: A Life in Art. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. 172-‐222. Print.

"Case 4: Katharine Kuh." Library Exhibitions. The Art Institute of Chicago. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“Contemporary Art Museum Re-‐elects Marcus President.” Dallas Morning News 24


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May 1959, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“Contract: Dallas Art Association and Foundation for the Arts.” 3 Apr 1964. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

"CPI Inflation Calculator." Bureau of Labor Statistics. United States Department of Labor. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Crume, Paul. "Big D." Dallas Morning News 1959, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1959, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

"Dallas Contemporary Arts Museum to Launch Drive for 900 Members" Dallas Morning News 4 Oct 1959, Section 7 Page 6. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1959, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. 1961. 1962. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Abstract By Choice. 1957. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. American Genius in Review No. 1. 1960. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Board of Trustees Meeting.” 16 Feb 1962: 1-‐4. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Board of Trustees -‐ Minutes, 1956-‐1963, Box 1. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

“Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Board of Trustees Meeting. 23 Jan 1963: 1-‐3. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Board of Trustees -‐ Minutes, 1956-‐1963, Box 1. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Executive Committee Meeting. 7 Apr 1960. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Board of Trustees, Executive Committee -‐ Minutes, 1959-‐1962, Box 1. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.


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“Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts Inventory and Report of Condition – Permanent Collection.” 4 Dec 1962: 1-‐8. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA Permanent Collection Lists, Box 1. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Rene Magritte in America. 1960. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Signposts of Twentieth Century Art. 1959. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. The Art of Assemblage. 1962. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. The Art that Broke the Looking Glass. 1961. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Young Collections in Retrospect. 1958. Exhibition Catalog. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Dallas Museum of Art. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“DMCA Starts Work on New Quarters.” Dallas Morning News 19 Jul 1959, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“DMCA To Put Four Years of Museum on Exhibition.” Dallas Morning News 3 Sep 1961, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014. “Douglas G. MacAgy Dies at 60; Hirshhorn Exhibitions Curator.” New York Times 7

Sep 1973, Section L Page 38. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“Douglas MacAgy Dies in Washington.” Dallas Morning News 7 Sep 1973. N.pag. Web 9 Mar 2014.

“Editor Visits Museum.” Dallas Morning News 18 Jan 1960, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014. “Executive Board Meeting -‐ DMCA.” 15 Feb 1962: 1-‐2. Print. Dallas Museum for

Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Board of Trustees, Executive Committee -‐ Minutes, 1959-‐1962, Box 1. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

“Gaugin [sic] Gift Unveiled To Open ‘Barbizon.’” Dallas Times Herald 9 Mar 1961,


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N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. DMCA News Clippings, 1961, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Harris, Paul. “Contemporary Art & Texas Artists in the 50s & 60s.” Unpublished, N.d.: 1-‐11. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas

Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Harris, Paul. "Dallas Museum for Contemporary Art Wall Label for DMFA Exhibit.” Unpublished 1978: 1-‐4. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Harris, Paul. “Notes on DMCA for DMA Oral History Interview.” Unpublished, N.d.: 1-‐11. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

Harris, Paul. “Recollections: Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts.” Unpublished 20 Nov 1993: 1-‐4. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

"History & Mission." Contemporary Museum of Houston. N.p. Web. 10 Mar 2014. "Italian Sculpture -‐ Now at The Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts." Vogue. 15

Oct 1960: 44, 84. Print.

Kelly, Carolyn. "Jerry Bywaters at the Blanton Museum of Art." The Magazine Antiques. N.p., 20 Aug 2009. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Kuh, Katharine. My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator. Avis Berman, ed. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006. 30. Print.

Kutner, Janet. “MacAgy Influence Strong in Arts.” Dallas Morning News 13 Sep 1973, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Lane, John R., and Maria de Corral. Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art. New Haven: Dallas Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007. 7-‐12. Print.

Lee, Natalie H. "Ivy in Flower: A Collage by Matisse in the Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.” Unpublished N. d.: 1-‐4. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts


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(DMCA), 1956-‐1963, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

"Library Ban Kept in Force Against Works of Picasso." Dallas Morning News 28 Nov 1956, N. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

MacAgy, Douglas. “One i at a time.” Exhibition Catalog. Division of Fine Arts, Meadows School of the Arts. 1971. Print.

McCain, Nina. “Douglas MacAgy – Art of Adventure.” Dallas Morning News 2 Apr

1961, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

Marcus, Edward S. "New Museum: Defenders Now Have Own Base." Dallas Morning News 17 Nov 1957, N. pag. Web. 9 Mar 2014.

“Meeting of the Board of Directors.” Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. 18 Apr 1959: 1-‐3. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. Board of Trustees -‐ Minutes, 1956-‐1963, Box 1. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

"Membership Drive Set for Special Museum." Dallas Times Herald 12 Nov 1957, N. pag. Print. Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts (DMCA) Records. News Clippings – DMCA Opening, 1957, Box 2. Dallas Museum of Art Archives, Dallas, Texas. 31 Dec 2013.

"Modern-‐Art Museum Is Opened in Dallas." New York Times 28 Oct 1959, 33. Print. “Museums Approve Merger.” Dallas Morning News 20 Apr 1963, N.pag. Web. 9 Mar

2014.

O’Doherty, Brain. “Douglas MacAgy (1913-‐1973).” Art in America. Nov 1973: 40. Print.

Pitman, Bonnie. Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. 10 – 18. Print.

"People Are Talking About." Vogue. 1 Feb 1960: 149. Print. "Profile." Booziotis & Company Architects. Booziotis & Company Architects. Web. 9

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Saarinen, Aline. "A Museum of Contemporary Art for Dallas: Inauguration of New


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Quarters Brings Citizens' Program to a Milestone." New York Times 22 Nov 1959, X11. Print.

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the dallas museum of contemporary art 1956-1963

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