Frommer's Review
Though always considered a notch below a world-class institution, the Dallas Museum of Art significantly improved its standing within the art world in 2005 when it received the undeniably world-class modern and contemporary art collections of three prominent local collectors (the Hoffmans, the Rachofskys, and the Roses); the collections, which were gifted together in an unprecedented deal, total more than 800 works as well as future acquisitions. Beyond that exciting news, the I. M. Pei-designed museum contains impressive collections of international art, especially from the Americas, Africa, and Asia and the Pacific. The Arts of the Americas section is the largest and most impressive, with valuable contributions from pre-Columbian lost civilizations of the Aztec, Maya, and Nazca peoples and Spanish colonial arts. The more limited Art of Europe gallery exhibits a handful of works by the biggies -- van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Degas -- while the small 20th-century collection includes Picasso, Mondrian, and Giacometti, among others. The contemporary collection includes works by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, the Texan Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. In the Wendy & Emery Reves Collection is a curious re-creation of Coco Chanel's French summer home, complete with her collection of furnishings and paintings by such French Impressionists as Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Degas. The DMA mounts interesting occasional shows, including "Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat" and the blockbuster "Splendors of China's Forbidden City" exhibit. In the atrium, where jazz combos play for free on Thursday evenings, hangs a gorgeous, monumental blown-glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. A couple of hours should be sufficient, unless you're a dedicated art hound.
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