Kort and I caught the DART over to the Museum last night. When I worked at the Museum 5 years ago,and for many many years, i.e. throughout Kort's childhood, attendance was free to the public. A new Deputy Director came to the Museum from SF and restructured the institution which is now reflected in the $10 admission fee. Thursday nights are free after 5 p.m., although the special exhibitions are still by admission fee only - in the case of the China show that's $16 a person. Which is well more than the cost of going to see the newest blockbuster movie in the theaters. We ended up wandering thru very familiar galleries, observing the changes that have taken place in the last 5 years. Most noticeably, the Indian and Pacific galleries have undergone some major changes. The Indian art works have now been moved into a space across the hall where Egyptian reliquary works on loan from Boston were once housed. In the former gallery where the Indian art was once installed, the walls are now painted white (once a dark purple that made the space seem very small), much better lit and showcase the new acquisitions for the Pacific collection - largely ancestral figures in pairs. The Indian works are in the old Egyptian gallery, and it is apparent that many of the pieces in the collection have been taken out of storage and are now on display. The gallery feels claustrophobic and cluttered, and one strange visual effect is that against one purple painted wall, pedestals of varying height show off various statuary. Rather than all being of a consistent height, the pedestals and works of art bob up and down and cause a major visual disruption. As I looked around the crowded gallery, my eye fell on enlarged color photographs of the far East which I had never noticed paired with the collection. Nothing too impressive, but a context for where some of these works come from. Upon further examination, I noticed that these photographs with credit line were attributed to the husband of the Asian arts curator at the DMA. Interesting. Upstairs in the American collections, I was glad to see a temporary exhibit on loan to the Museum, a collection of African American art collected by professional athlete Grant Hill. There were great collage works in this show by Romare Bearden and pieces by some very talented painters, among them John Biggers. It was great to wander these galleries and to see other visitors which this show attracted - professional African Americans browsing the catalogs and looking at this work - so perhaps the museum has made some head way in becoming more of a museum for the community - though again with the admission prices, I would still argue that... the museum's own collection of African art is fairly limited, though they do have one very nice Bearden piece and though there pieces were buried in a small corner of the American galleries, having just walked thru the Hill Collection, there were some nice resonances. All of the contemporary galleries were down for some major reinstallation and the Pollocks had been moved into the modernist area of the European collections just opposite some Picasso - there is of course the connection of Pollock's earliest figurative works to Picasso's influence, but it seemed terribly out of place to see these works hung in the European section.

One of my mates in the program who grew up in Plano told me that the museum has been highly criticized by the community of artists here in Dallas for not supporting local artists, or acquiring their works, favoring instead expensive purchases of German art (Polke, Richter, Struth). While they have a program that gives grants and recognizes emerging artists, they do not necessarily purchase work to add to their collections.

The Japanese galleries had not changed at all, and the Chinese area seemed fairly static as well (one room each, if I remember right).

The other major observation made last night - I'm not too keen on the new programming - yoga in the galleries. The museum has cleared a space in the Egyptian galleries and brought in a yoga teacher who charges $10 per session and folks plop down on the hardwood floor into the downward dog and various other unflattering poses right there amidst the artwork. Barefooted on their tapas mats, just feet away from ancient reliquaries and embalmed mummies. Something about this just felt terribly terribly wrong and out of place. Call me an elitist!