Buried Treasures
Sifting through stored collections, the Dallas Museum of Art discovers a tradition of spiritual subtlety among Texas artists.
Texas’ major museums have lately taken to revealing in public some of their best-kept secrets: They own substantial collections of Texas art, which are usually relegated to the storage vaults. Last year the Houston Museum of Fine Arts offered an intriguing sampler of its five-hundred-plus-piece Texas collection. The latest unveiling, at the Dallas Museum of Art, is “The State I’m In: Texas Art at the DMA,” more than one hundred items selected by curator Annegreth Nill from a trove representing at least 250 Texas-born or Texas-based artists. (Later this month, the San Antonio Museum Association will also air its collection of Texas art, some dating back to 1845, at the Witte Museum.)