Dallas Arts District Tour
The Dallas Arts District is a large area (touted by the Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau as “the largest urban cultural district in the nation”) at the north end of Downtown Dallas that consists of Dallas’ best multi-cultural art, music, dance and general entertainment venues. The Arts District is a place that caters to almost everyone’s tastes on almost any day of the week.
The Dallas Arts District was conceived and developed in a matter of eight years (1977 – 1984) through a cooperative effort by the City of Dallas and private arts foundations. The location of this District was no accident. In 1984, the year when the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Theater Center, and the Trammell Crow Center opened their doors, they brought their artistic flavor to an area that was already graced by historic structures such as the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe, St. Paul United Methodist Church, and the Belo Mansion.
Here’s a Downtown Dallas Arts District Map to help you on this “tour.” (Previously, as the map shows, the Arts District extended only to the east side of Routh Street, but on March 9th, 2005 the Dallas City Council approved an extension of the district east to the US-75/I-45 expressway.)
The Dallas Museum of Art, at the intersection of Flora and Harwood Streets, is considered to be the cornerstone of the Arts District. As mentioned before, this museum opened it’s doors to the public in 1984. Two additional sections of the Museum have been built since then, one in 1985 and one in 1993. This museum was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. Barnes and his partners also designed the glass-tower in New York that houses the I.B.M. Corporation’s headquarters and the beautiful Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis.
In a single month the museum will offer approximately 20 different exhibitions ranging from exhibitions of fine art and sculpture, to lectures, film festivals and special events for kids. This is all offered in addition to the museum’s ten permanent collections of impressionist and contemporary paintings, photography and sculpture from around the world and five special exhibitions. Some of the museum’s sculptures are also displayed in a beautiful sculpture garden.
Hours: Tue – Sun 11-5, open late on Thursday until 9 p.m.
Admission: $6.00, Seniors, students, kids 12+ $4.00. Thursday after 5 p.m. and the first Tuesday of the month is free. Live Jazz every Thursday.
Raymond Nasher Sculpture Center
Speaking of sculpture gardens; just across the street from the Art Museum’s Harwood Street entrance is the Raymond Nasher Sculpture Center. This one-of-a-kind art museum and sculpture garden, named after the Texas businessman/philanthropist who donated the Center to Dallas, was completed in 2003; making it the newest addition to the Dallas Arts District. This is one of the very few museums in the world devoted almost exclusively, to the exhibition, study and preservation of modern sculpture, as is attested to by their educational and research facilities, and state-of-the-art conservation lab.
The building that houses the Nasher Sculpture Center is a creation of Pritzker Prize Award winning architect Renzo Piano and landscape architect Peter Walker. When speaking of architecture, it is not common to feature a building’s roof but the Nasher Center’s roof is an exception. The Nasher’s roof is an engineering marvel that was designed by the London based architectural consulting/engineering firm Arup. To protect the artwork in the gallery, Arup engineers plotted the sun’s path across Dallas’ skies and then created a protective ‘sunscreen’ that consists of over a half-million aluminum ‘shells’ that work to exclude the sun’s damaging rays while flooding the gallery with natural sunlight.
On exhibit at any one time are 25 large-scale works outside in the sculpture garden, and 70 more in the inside galleries. Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s entire collection consists of more than 300 sculptures and 20th Century paintings and drawings that will be rotated into displays that flow from the gallery to the garden throughout the Center’s two-and-a-half acres of exhibition space.
Hours: The Nasher Center opens at 11:00 a.m. every day and closes at 5:00 p.m. every day except Thursdays. On Thursday they are open until 9:00 p.m..
Admission: Admission is $10.00 for adults, $7.00 for seniors and $5.00 for students. Children under 13 are admitted at no charge.
Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art
Directly across Flora Street from the Nasher Center is the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art. The Asian treasures on display in this building are from the personal collection of Dallas real estate czar Trammel Crow and his wife, Margaret. The Crows have collected works of art from Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia for exhibition here in a peaceful, thoughtful setting. Over 300 works of art, dating from 3500 B.C. to the early 20th century are on display, including paintings, sculptures, architectural pieces, precious jade ornaments from China, delicate Japanese scrolls and an unusual 28-foot by 12-foot sandstone facade of an 18th century Indian residence. Some artifacts in this collection date back to thousands of years B.C..
As you tour the Crow collection, you may notice that many of the pieces have strong religious overtones. Many objects now considered “art” were originally created for religious purposes, so many of the pieces in the permanent collection show representations of deities from various Asian religions, including Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Jainism.
Hours: The Crow Collection is open Tuesdays through Sundays (closed Monday) from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. except Thursday when they close at 9:00 p.m..
Admission: Admission is free.
The Trammell Crow Center and Sculpture Garden
The beautiful 50-story skyscraper right behind the Crow Asian Art Collection is the Trammell Crow Center. The Trammell Crow Center is the sixth tallest building in Dallas. The exterior is polished granite and, if you look way up at the top, you’ll see it’s capped by a glass pyramid and a slender needle.
Walking around the building you’ll encounter many bronze sculptures, there are 30 in all around the building and grounds that comprise the “Trammell Crow Bronze Collection.” The Harwood Street entrance to the building is ‘guarded’ by a massive horse sculpture by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle; one of several Bourdelle pieces in the Crow Bronze Collection.
The building’s lobby is itself a piece of art. The extensive use of polished marble and granite combined with brass and wood finishes under the 40-foot high rotunda give you the feeling of stepping into an elegant old-world setting.
Continuing around the building we ascend a short flight of steps into the showcase for the Crow Bronze Sculpture Collection, the Trammell Crow Outdoor Sculpture Garden. This beautifully landscaped, shaded garden features more than 20 bronze sculptures by French masters such as Bourdelle and Rodin.
In the evening you’ll see that the four powerful searchlights positioned at the corners of the building shine skyward, converging above and beautifully accenting the building’s pyramid shaped dome.
The Belo Mansion / Dallas Legal Education Center
Just across Olive Street from the Crow Center is the ancestral home of Colonel A. H. Belo, the founder of Dallas’ daily newspaper, The Dallas Morning News. Colonel Belo built this beautiful neo-classical mansion in the late 1800’s and lived here with his family until 1920.
When the Belos left Dallas, the Loudermilk-Sparkman Funeral Home leased the building for 50 years. The Sparkman Funeral Home’s most famous moment came in 1934 was when they hosted the viewing of the body of the infamous gangster Clyde Barrow, after Barrow and his partner in crime, Bonnie Parker were shot to death by the police in Louisiana. An estimated total of 30,000 people came from all over to the Sparkman Funeral home to see this man who terrorized the country.
In 1977, the Dallas Legal Education Center purchased the mansion to house various legal association offices. They restored the building to it’s original state and began allowing the public to view the mansion. The mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and offers docent led tours on the second Tuesday of every month.
Just across Pearl Street from the Belo Mansion is the beautiful Santuario de Guadalupe. Officially known as the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, this is one of the most visited Catholic Churches in the United States; average Sunday Mass attendance is nearly 9,000, with liturgies in both English and Spanish. The beautiful Neo-Gothic building was designed over 100 years ago by a legendary Texas architect named Nicolas Clayton. The cathedral was completed in 1902 but was then known as the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1965, the Sacred Heart Cathedral Parish and Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish were merged and then in 1977 the name was changed to the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe.
The Cathedral has just completed an exterior renovation; two steeples were just added to the cathedral to complete the original vision of the architect.
Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
On the north side of Flora street, just across the street from the Santuario de Guadalupe is the breathtaking Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. This beautiful building was designed by an architect who’s name is known in every major city in the world, I.M. Pei. Pei worked with Russell Johnson, a master of acoustical design to create a symphony center as pleasing to the ear as it is to the eye. The effort was, by the standards of all the experts, a complete success.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Turtle Creek Chorale, the Dallas Wind Symphony and the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra all call the Meyerson home. Every year there are over 325 concerts at the Meyerson.
The Meyerson is also home to the Herman W. and Amelia H. Lay Family Concert Organ. With 4,535 organ pipes, this is one of the largest mechanical action pipe organs ever built for a concert hall and its here, at the rear of the stage in the Meyerson’s Concert Hall, due to the generosity of the Lay family. Herman W. Lay, in case you’re wondering, is the same Lay – as in Frito-Lay – who created the Lay’s Potato Chip brand.
Annette Strauss Artist Square
Right next to the Meyerson is what might be considered the outdoor version of the Meyerson, the Annette Strauss Artist Square. This square, named after a former mayor of Dallas who was a stalwart supporter of the arts, is placed right in the middle of the Arts District and serves as an outdoor setting for eclectic performances of music, dance, theatre, festivals and almost any other imaginable outdoor gathering.
Every year the Square will see over 100,000 people flock to events such as The Dallas Morning News Dance Festival, the Asian Festival, the Uptown Run and Foklorico Festivals.
Dallas Arts District Theatre
Just across the street from the Annette Strauss Artist Square and the Meyerson is the temporary home of the Arts District Theater, one of the two venues utilized by the Dallas Theater Center.
This has been considered to be one of the most flexible theaters in the country, staging everything from Shakespeare to an annual performance of A Christmas Carol.
The final production at the Arts District Theatre, before being torn down late in 2005, to make way for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, is My Fair Lady.
The new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, soon to begin construction, is being designed by two Pritzker Prize Award winning architects: Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaaswill.
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Just across the street from the temporary home of the Dallas Arts District Theatre is the sprawling Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts. The school has the nickname “Grammy High”, because of the number of graduates who have gone on to win Grammy Awards (Norah Jones and Erykah Badu among the many). First known, in 1892 (in a different location) as “the Dallas Colored High School” because, at the time, it was the only high school in Dallas that allowed African American students, it has gone on to become one of the preeminent schools in the country for Performing Arts education.
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Across Routh Street from the Booker T. Washington High School is the St. Paul United Methodist Church. Construction on St. Paul church was begun in 1901 and finally completed in 1927. The church itself, however, predates the building. According to one archaeological survey, “Saint Paul was founded at its present location in the summer of 1873, with services first held in a simple brush arbor.”
