First Looks at Buzzy New Dallas Art Exhibitions Opening This Week

As always, PaperCity remains committed to keeping you informed about the latest and greatest happenings in Dallas. We recently listed five must-see art exhibits this spring. Now, we’re adding to the list and offering first looks at three incredible new Dallas art exhibitions opening this week. Play hooky and spend a day at the museum? We won’t tell.

Iké Udé: Still Life and Portraiture

In advance of the Met Gala on Monday, May 5, familiarize yourself with artist Iké Udé, whose work will be on display at TF Gallery beginning February 27 through March 27.

A Nigerian American artist, aesthete, and author who specializes in classic portraiture, Udé and his work explore themes of identity, fashion, and representation. This year, Udé serves as a special consultant for the upcoming Met Gala, themed “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” His work “blurs the lines between art, performance, and style” and has been exhibited in renowned institutions across the globe, including the Smithsonian’s The National Museum of African Art and The Guggenheim Museum.

In one of his most celebrated projects, “Sartorial Anarchy,” Udé presents his self-portraits while wearing “eclectic and historically diverse outfits, emphasizing the fluidity of fashion and identity.” Dallasites have the opportunity to view one of the top contemporary portrait artists whose photography is “deeply rooted in aesthetics, often drawing inspiration from classical portraiture while incorporating contemporary cultural references.”

Iké Udé: Still Life and Portraiture will be on display at TF Gallery from February 27 through March 27 at TF Gallery (122 Leslie Street).

Marisol: A Retrospective

This week, I previewed the Dallas Museum of Art’s (DMA) upcoming exhibit, Marisol: A Retrospective, and it is spectacular. Touted as “the most comprehensive survey of Marisol Escobar’s work ever assembled,” the exhibition opens February 23 and runs through July 6. If you’re unfamiliar with Escobar, art historians consider her one of Pop Art’s “unsung pioneers.” Upon her death in 2016, Escobar bequeathed her entire estate to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which organized the exhibition and its international tour. The artist’s bequest included more than 100 sculptures, works on paper, thousands of photographs, her entire library, reference materials, and tools, as well as Escoboar’s Tribeca apartment in New York City.

I particularly appreciated how the exhibit contextualized Escobar’s work, which spanned from the 1950s to the early 2000s. She experienced the height of her fame in the 1960s, but Escobar truly lived to create art, regardless of its reception. I learned that Escobar routinely refused to speak during interviews, but she stopped to talk to every dog she encountered on the streets of New York City. She never married, nor did she have children. Frequently questioned about her marital plans, the strikingly beautiful artist made a bronze sculpture of abstract figures she named “My Wedding Cake” in the 1950s, which served as “a kind of retort to such interrogations.”

An icon and a legend, visit Marisol: A Retrospective at the DMA from February 23 through July 6. Tickets are free to members and cost $20 for the general public. 

The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce

Like many, I happily RSVPd “yes” to Meadows Museum’s invitation to preview their new Dallas art exhibition, The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce, which also opens on February 23. More than anything else, I wanted to see Sir Frederick Leighton’s masterpiece from 1895, “Flaming June.”

It turns out, I wasn’t the only one eager to see the Pre-Raphaelite star in the flesh.

In the middle of the tour, Meadows Museum curator Patricia Manzano Rodriguez said, “So when you turn the corner, I know everyone’s eyes are going to go straight to ‘Flaming June,’ but if we could stop here in this room of landscapes for a minute… Don’t get distracted. It’s difficult!”

In addition to “Flaming June,” the traveling exhibition from Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP) features 60 lauded works from European, American, and Puerto Rican painters. In 2020, MAP’s iconic 1965 building (by Edward Durell Stone) experienced significant structural damage from the earthquakes and has remained closed since. In the interim, the museum loaned many of its major works to museums around the globe. A capital campaign to fund repairs at Museo de Arte de Ponce is now underway. We eagerly await their homecoming when all their masterpieces return to Puerto Rico.

Visit The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce at Meadows Museum from February 23 through June 22. Adult tickets cost $12.