A Dream Come True: The Dallas Arts District

Start date: Friday, September 25, 2009
Event is ongoing: Until Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Dallas Museum of Art opens up its archives to present a special exhibition celebrating the completion of the Arts District, which began just over 25 years ago when the DMA moved to Harwood Street from Fair Park. Archival images, ephemera, and media clips illustrating the establishment and growth of the Dallas Arts District will be on view this fall in the Museum’s first floor Concourse. The growth of the Museum—both in the size of the collections and in its expanded programming—will be presented chronologically, along with an Arts District “time line” showing the arrival of the other cultural institutions, culminating with the October opening of Dallas’s new AT&T Performing Arts Center.

In the late 1970s, after the first in a series of successful bond elections, City of Dallas planners joined Museum leaders and a consortium of nonprofit management groups and formed the foundation of the Dallas Arts District. In 1984, the Dallas Museum of Art became the first cultural institution to move downtown, joining the Belo Mansion, Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, St. Paul United Methodist Church and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Additional performing and visual arts members followed, establishing their homes in the 68-acre, 19-block neighborhood that is the Dallas Arts District.

To provide visitors with a framework in which to place each Arts District “resident,” A Dream Come True will include architectural renderings, construction-in-progress still and video photography, footage of media interviews, and opening-day documentation.

The museum is closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. On Late Night Fridays (third Friday of the month, excluding December), the museum is open until midnight.