Dallas sheds new light on art treasures.

• Author: Barnes, Susan J.
• Position: The inauguration of The Museum of the Americas in Dallas, Texas - Gallery Place

On September 26, 1993, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) celebrates its ninetieth anniversary by inaugurating The Museum of the Americas, and with it a unique vision of the history of art in the Western Hemisphere. This new wing is housed in the Nancy and Jake Hamon Building, designed by the architect of the original 1984 building, Edward Larrabee Barnes, and constructed in response to the phenomenal growth in the collections of the DMA, which doubled in number between 1984 and 1990.

Two monumental works by modern Mexican masters, both made for Dallas in the early 1950s, greet visitors to the Hamon Building and announce the theme of the Americas. Miguel Covarrubias's glass mosaic mural Genesis, originally commissioned for the Stewart Title Company Building, has been moved to the DMA and placed outside in the grove opposite the Hamon Tower Entrance. Just inside, the great Atrium is dominated by a single work of art, Rufino Tamayo's moving mural on the subject of human aspiration, El Hombre, which Stanley Marcus commissioned for the Museum.

The three-story, 140,000-square-foot Hamon Building fulfills several important functions. Visitors now enter the DMA from underground parking through the handsome Tower that takes its place on the skyline of the modern city. They are received and oriented on the ground floor of the building in the soaring three-story Atrium. Also on the ground floor is a grand new temporary exhibition space. At 14,000 square feet, it can easily hold two normal-size exhibitions or accommodate a mega-show.

The second floor is given to education, which lies at the heart of the DMA's mission. Fully half of those who attend the Museum annually are children and adults who have come for a formal program of one kind or another, including concerts, lectures, and guided tours. Innovative in its conception, the Education Resource Center brings together for unrestricted public access all of the documents, tools, and personnel that can assist visitors in learning about works of art. The Mayer Library, Visual Resource Library (slides and photographs), and collection records (both on computer and in hard copy) are here, open to the public for consultation. There are several classrooms, where groups can meet prior to or after their sessions in the galleries.

The DMA has been reorganizing its collections into a series of museums within the Museum. The brainchild of the Museum's former director, Richard Brettell, this scheme is ideally suited both to the broad range of cultures in the permanent collection and to the modular structure of Edward Barnes' building, which is a sequence of pavilions linked by stairs. Works of art...