Dallas Museum of Art Reveals Plans for Redesign

The winning design by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos features a floating contemporary art gallery on the institution's roof.

A Spanish architecture firm has won the Reimagining The Dallas Museum of Art International Design Competition.

Madrid and Berlin-based Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos (NSA) proposed the winning design, which seeks to balance memory and innovation in the architectural transformation of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) campus.

The DMA launched the competition this year as part of its five-year plan to create a more inclusive and accessible museum. They received 154 submissions over a six-month period.

'A transformation to the DMA campus will send a signal that we are inviting everyone near and far to join our vibrant art community,' said president Gowri N. Sharma and board of trustees chair Jeffrey S. Ellerman.

Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the DMA's Director, said in a statement that the redesign would allow the museum to release from storage more of its collection comprising ancient, historic, modern, postwar, and contemporary art from around the globe.

Currently, the museum has only a small portion of its contemporary artworks on display at a time. Highlights from the collection now on display include Jean Michel Basquiat's portrait Sam F (1985) and Rashid Johnson's film installation, The New Black Yoga (2022), which was gifted by the artist last year.

NSA's architects have previously worked on the Madinat al-Zahra Museum in Córdoba and the Moritzburg Museum in Halle.

Their design for a re-invented DMA minimises removal of elements from the original building, which was designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1984.

The large white square extension will overhang its supports, seeming to float above the roof of the existing building. It will contain a gallery for presenting contemporary art, a restaurant, and a terrace.

Within Barne's original footprint, the architects proposed opening up the museum's indoor and outdoor spaces to create more connections between the galleries and with the outside world.

At street level, windows on the north facade will replace bare walls so passers-by can see into the galleries, reflecting the museum's aspirations to be accessible to the surrounding arts precinct and the wider Dallas population.

Other features include a perforated facade with LED artworks, an outdoor amphitheatre, and systems for rainfall collection and clean electricity generation.

The design competition's Selection Committee Co-Chairs, Jennifer Eagle and Lucilo Peña, expressed that, 'the new and reinvented DMA promises to be a confident exemplar of sustainability and urbanism but also to be a place that's just fun to be in.'

Plans to further develop the design will begin in September. —[O]