The city's major art museum offers a high-caliber world tour of ancient and contemporary art. Founded in 1903, the Dallas Museum of Art is an impressively cosmopolitan endeavour, with a collection that spans the history of creativity in Europe as well as the Americas. It put Dallas firmly on the national culture map when it opened, and it still attracts a healthy crowd of visitors today.
The eye-catching frontage of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) ©Shutterstock / Gilberto Mesquita
The modern (well, more recent) collection of paintings and sculptures is equally impressive. American works include Edward Hopper's enigmatic Lighthouse Hill and Frederic Church's sublime The Icebergs. A re-created villa modeled on Coco Chanel's Mediterranean mansion holds canvases by British statesman Winston Churchill. European greats are well represented, with works including Magritte's The Light of Coincidences, Mondrian's Place de la Concorde, Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat and multiple pieces by Picasso and Monet.
It's also worth dropping into the adjacent Nasher Sculpture Center, housed in an impressive glass-and-steel building across from the Dallas Museum of Art. Partnered by a divine sculpture garden, the Renzo Piano-designed building is a work of art in its own right. Inside (accessed on a separate ticket to the Dallas Museum of Art), you can view one of the greatest private sculpture collections in the world, including works by Calder, de Kooning, Rodin, Serra and Miró, assembled by art collectors Raymond and Patsy Nasher.
Sculpture and reflecting pool at the Dallas Museum of Art ©Shutterstock / Nate Hovee
After surviving a McCarthyite purge in the 1950s, when campaigners pushed for the museum to remove works by 'communist' artists such as Picasso, the museum merged with the rival Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, creating a single space for modern and historical art in the city. As the museum's collection, and reputation, grew, so did its need for space. The present, concrete-faced premises were inaugurated in 1984.