A Preview of Museum Exhibitions Opening in North Texas this Fall

In August, Glasstire announced its top exhibitions to see across the state this fall, including Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher Sculpture Center and Afro-Atlantic Histories at the Dallas Museum of Art. Below, learn more about those exhibitions and others coming to the North Texas region this fall, including shows at the Meadows Museum, The Kimbell Art Museum, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

Earlier this week, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) debuted Abraham Ángel: Between Wonder and Seduction, the first major survey of the artist’s work in more than 35 years. A modern Mexican painter, Mr. Ángel was a leading artist of his generation before his untimely death at the age of 19. In the three years that he produced art, 1921-1924, he created 24 paintings, four of which still remain lost. The exhibition will contextualize Mr. Ángel’s work alongside pieces by his contemporaries, including Adolfo Best Maugard and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano.

In a press release, Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director, said, “We are thrilled to present the first full retrospective of a magnificent artist whose life was cut tragically short just as his works were taking the Mexican art scene by surprise in the 1920s. Living in a society that was not ready for him, Ángel suffered harassment and discrimination during his lifetime, but his art embodies joy and vivacity while tracing Mexico’s transformation from rural to modernized. This exhibition reveals to the world the artistic qualities which had no precedent and no comparison within his times. Ángel’s life story continues to resonate, and his art will captivate audiences of today as it did a century ago.”

Abraham Ángel: Between Wonder and Seduction will be on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through January 28, 2024.

In October, the DMA will host the traveling exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories, which was originally presented as Histórias Afro-Atlânticas in 2018 by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in Brazil. The exhibition consists of approximately 100 works of art and documents that together chart the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies in the African Diaspora. This presentation marks the second time the exhibition has been in Texas; in 2021 the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston hosted the show.

Afro-Atlantic Histories will be on view at the DMA from October 22, 2023 through February 11, 2024.

In mid-September, the Meadows Museum at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas will present Spanish Light: Sorolla in American Collections. The exhibition is part of a larger celebration, initiated by the Spanish government, of the centennial of the death of Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. Curated by Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the artist’s great-granddaughter and a renowned scholar, the exhibition features 27 rarely seen paintings from private collections in the U.S. 

Amanda W. Dotseth, the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum, noted, “Spanish Light: Sorolla in American Collections, reveals Sorolla’s continued popularity in this country, which can be traced back to the American collectors who supported him during his lifetime. By participating in the Sorolla Centennial, the Meadows joins other institutions in Spain and elsewhere to introduce or reengage audiences with the work of this important artist.”

Spanish Light: Sorolla in American Collections will be on view at the Meadows Museum from September 17, 2023 through January 7, 2024.

Later this month, the Nasher Sculpture Center will present Groundswell: Women of Land Art, curated by Nasher Associate Curator Dr. Leigh A. Arnold. The exhibition features 12 female American artists working in land art in the 1960s and 1970s who have received less recognition and representation than their male peers. 

Nasher director Jeremy Strick explained, “This exhibition presents a fuller, truer history of this pivotal movement. In our time of deepening environmental crisis, Groundswell: Women of Land Art gathers work by 12 artists whose art powerfully provokes consideration of our relationship to the land, through both ephemeral and grand gestures. We are proud of how this exhibition presents their critical, profoundly relevant contributions.”

Groundswell: Women of Land Art will be on view at the Nasher from September 23, 2023 through January 7, 2024.

Last month, The World Outside: Louise Nevelson at Midcentury opened at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. The exhibition examines Ms. Nevelson’s sculptures and works on paper and reveals new scholarship on the artist’s dialogue with postwar America. 

Shirley Reece-Hughes, the Carter’s Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper, and organizer of the exhibition, noted, “Challenging perceptions that Nevelson falls among the tide of abstract expressionists working in the postwar period, The World Outside invites visitors to rediscover the artist’s iconic sculptures as fusions of diverse media, histories, and ideas that uniquely capture the vitality of their moment. With fresh insight on Nevelson’s prescient vocabulary — from her rejection of gendered hierarchies to her environmental consciousnesses to her experimentation with raw materials — we hope the exhibition gives scholars and art lovers alike a new appreciation for the artist’s endless creativity and legacy as a forecaster for the art world.”

The World Outside: Louise Nevelson At Midcentury will be on view at the Carter through January 7, 2024.

Later this month, the Carter will debut Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie. The exhibition features more than 20 new works by artist and naturalist James Prosek, including a large-scale silhouette painting, watercolor portraits of plants, and trompe l’oeil clay and bronze sculptures of wildflowers. For the past two years, the artist has explored the Texas grasslands, documenting its diversity of plant and wildlife. 

Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie will be on view at the Carter from September 16, 2023 through January 28, 2024.

In October, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will host Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map, a retrospective of the artist’s work organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition is one of the largest and most comprehensive of Ms. Smith’s work to date, bringing together 50 years of drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures. 

According to the Modern’s website, “The retrospective will offer new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art and show how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues surrounding land, racism, and cultural preservation — issues at the forefront of contemporary life and art today.”

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map will be on view at the Modern from October 15, 2023 through January 21, 2024.

In November, Bonnard’s Worlds will debut at the Kimbell Art Museum. The exhibition was inspired by the museum’s 2018 acquisition of the artist’s Landscape at Le Cannet and includes approximately 70 works created across his artistic career. The show will feature landscapes of Paris, Normandy, and the South of France, as well as paintings of interior scenes, and brings together works held in museum collections in Europe and the U.S., as well as pieces in private collections around the world.

Bonnard’s Worlds will be on view at the Kimbell from November 5, 2023 through January 28, 2024.

Learn more about other current and upcoming exhibitions in the Dallas/Fort Worth area via Glasstire’s event listings.