Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art's Stupidity

Put rather crassly, the Nasher Sculpture Center is yet another example of rich people collecting a whole bunch of incredible art and then building a museum for it. While that sounds at least flippant and at worst condescending, I am grateful for these wealthy citizens as I am a patron of estates made accessible to the public.

I learned of the Nasher not through my sister, but because I worked at the Palm Springs Art Museum when the board hired Steve Nash to be the executive director. Nash came to Palm Springs from the Nasher, where he helped bring Ray and Patsy Nasher's vision to fruition by first serving as a consultant and then as the first  executive director of the Center starting in 2001. So I thought I'd go see what all the fuss was about. And since the Dallas Museum of Art sits conveniently right next door, we availed ourselves of that opportunity as well.

While the Nasher had some fabulous work in the inside galleries, it was the sculpture garden area that was so arresting, despite a level of heat and humidity that should be illegal.

Barbara Hepworth, Squares with Two Circles (Monolith) 1963 (cast 1964) photo from Nasher web site

I can always tell a Hepworth because it usually has a couple holes through it. She is British, but that doesn't explain the holes, I know. Hepworth's early work was naturalistic, but by the 1930s she was making abstract shapes and was interested in what she called "abstract negative space." Thus, the holes. By enabling the viewer to see through the object, she allowed the viewer to see the object differently, bringing what is outside the piece into the piece and reforming it. Cool, right? And this is a fabulous setting for the piece.

Henry Moore, Working Model for Three Piece No. 3 (Vertebrae), 1968, bronze

I like Henry Moore's work. If you look at the "I (heart) KC" blog entry, there's a photo on their of one of his works displayed at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's sculpture garden, called "Sheep Piece," which I refer to as The Humping Sheep. There is something about his abstracted shapes, the smoothness of the bronze, and what I perceive as a compassion and kindness toward the images he sculpts. Also a Brit, he was actually a contemporary of Hepworth's and attended the same art school, the Leeds School of Art. I've seen charcoal sketches that Moore did during air raids in London down in the tube tunnels. Eerie stuff, but it shows the same treatment of form even then, even in that situation.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Polish, born 1930 "Bronze Crowd" 1990-91

You'll notice from Abakanowicz's birth date above that she was a child during WWII, which means that she witnessed many of the atrocities inflicted by the German's. There are thirty-six larger-than-life-size figures that comprise this sculpture, and although all of them appear identical from a distance, each one has subtle differences. The fact that they are headless suggests what happens with group  mentality. Abakanowicz has said, "A crowd is the most cruel because it begins to act like a brainless organism."

After feeding the parking meter, we went to the Dallas Museum of Art. I had been to the DMA one time before, and remembered one piece in particular that I was hoping to see again. "Stake Hitch" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the same artists who did "Shuttlecocks" for the Nelson-Atkins in KC. What's interesting is that, like at the N-A, Oldenberg was commissioned to create something for a specific location, in this case, a large gallery with a barrel vaulted ceiling. The artists created something that I thought and still think is perfect for Dallas. Unfortunately, after 18 years, Jack Lane who was then the director of the DMA, removed the work. He promised to bring it back in a decade, but it hasn't shown up yet. Too bad. It was a 5,500 lb icon of the city, and had a lot of "wow" in it. And even with all the wonderful work on display, the DMA is flat without this piece. Next, remembering the Alamo.

Stake: aluminum, steel, resin, painted with polyeurethane enamel. Rope: polyeurethane foam, plastic materials, fiberglass reinforced plastics, painted with latex. Total height, including upper and lower floor: 53 ft. 6 in. Installed 1984. Image copied from Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Buggen's web site without permission.