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The thought that Dallas–Fort Worth could actually be a tourist destination has always been a bit of a local joke. The "Metroplex" is a nice place to live...but to visit? The idea that the main reason to tour these cities could be their fine-art scene seems even more preposterous. For outsiders, Fort Worth has never entirely shaken its "cow town" appellation, and in Dallas a venerated former mayor once announced proudly that he'd be happy to help the city establish an opera house as long as he didn't have to attend. But cities, like people, go through their phases and eventually grow up. And nowhere has the coming of age been more dramatic than in these two cities. High culture is flourishing on the high plains of Texas.
To see what I mean, you had only to be in the Dallas arts district this past October, to celebrate the first anniversary of the Nasher Sculpture Center, the institution credited with singlehandedly putting the region in the forefront of art-tourism destinations. Certainly, Fort Worth's "big three"—the Kimbell Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Amon Carter Museum—have always had estimable reputations; the Kimbell, in fact, has long been known as the nation's best small museum. But it wasn't until Dallas art collector and former real estate developer Raymond Nasher hired Renzo Piano to build a home for his internationally recognized collection of sculpture that critical mass was attained.
"Dallas–Fort Worth is officially on the arts radar screen," says Dallas businessman Robert Hoffman, one of the city's most prominent art collectors. "Since the opening of the Nasher, last year, and the new Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, two years ago, many more VIPs from other museums, as well as other collectors and curators, have been coming to see the museums and private collections. Think about it: after New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, we have as much here as, if not more than, anyone else."
If you observed the Nasher Sculpture Center on that cool, crystalline October afternoon, it wasn't hard to see what the fuss was all about. When the center opened, in the fall of 2003, the praise from quarters that hadn't had much nice to say about Dallas in decades was swift and certain. "Piano has designed an exquisite building, yet it remains a backdrop for its extraordinary contents," gushed the Financial Times, of London. "A smashing combination of indoor museum and outdoor environment," raved the New York Times.
At the center's first anniversary, its one-and-a-half-acre sculpture garden—designed by landscape architect Peter Walker in collaboration with Piano—was crowded with families and couples studying such sculptures as a huge wooden piece by Richard Deacon called Like a Bird and Richard Serra's almost smirking My Curves Are Not Mad. Inside Piano's subdued, Italian travertine–walled sequence of skylighted pavilions, more patrons were studying more sculpture. Most pieces are accessible from 360 degrees and bathed in natural light. As one critic put it on viewing the facility for the first time, "It's a sculpture lover's dream."
Just across the street, at the Dallas Museum of Art, things were even more crowded and kinetic, as it was a Thursday evening, the night on which the museum offers free admission and a jazz jam in its first-floor Atrium Cafe. All 350,000 square feet of Edward Larrabee Barnes's sturdy, utilitarian structure seemed packed with curious customers taking in everything from Indonesian art (one of the best collections in the nation) to a wide-ranging array of decorative arts to a decent smattering of post-1800 European masterpieces. To someone who has lived in Dallas for more than thirty years and who has followed this institution's frequently bumpy road to respectability, the sight was as shocking as it was heartening. With an assist from the Nasher—not to mention from the nearby Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, a swooping, sweeping I. M. Pei creation, and the small and stylish Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, featuring the couple's impressive trove—the Dallas Museum of Art, once a laughingstock, has seen its attendance climb to almost a million visitors a year.
"It seems as if it's suddenly come together," says longtime Dallas art collector and patron Marcia May. "But really, there's been a cultural scene here for some years."
