To celebrate its works from 1945 to the present day, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Postwar and Contemporary Galleries have been reinvigorated with pieces typically closed off to the public. Within these gallery spaces, the DMA plans to rotate and showcase artwork on a quarterly basis, allowing for these pieces to catch the public eye and delve into the unseen.
As I explored the gallery space during my first visit, I was thoroughly surprised to see that whenever I stopped in front of a piece I was almost guaranteed to instantly recognize the famous art and artists standing before me. The variety of works and artists alone is worth making the arduous trip to downtown Dallas: the current curation of art pieces boasts several household names including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Jean-Michel Basquiat, among other multidisciplinary artists.
However, while making my way around, I started to develop a special fondness for the lesser-known artists featured in the exhibition. I was particularly attracted to some of the collection’s new pieces like “Guardian (Somewhere)” by Naudline Pierre and works previously stored in the DMA’s archives like “Goddess of Love, Goddess of Liberty” by Hung Liu. These quickly became my favorites in the entire gallery.
Pierre’s piece manipulates Renaissance religious imagery to create otherworldly compositions, where a guardian figure appearing in what looks to be a suggestion of armor shines with divine sparkles of light. Renaissance imagery — think “The Birth of Venus” or “The Creation of Adam” — is usually bright and angelic, leaning more towards the humanistic depictions of its subjects. In comparison, Pierre’s work is moody and lacks a naturalistic style. The guardian’s expression, as if caught in a moment of brief respite, is obscured by dark shadows; the guardian’s companions, faces equally malformed, appear to take the form of feathered birds and scaly serpents, a stark contrast to the soft Biblical angels of typical Renaissance art. If you squint, you can also spot the light outline of a fiery “halo” around the guardian’s head, acting as a contradiction to the serene holiness of usual Renaissance subjects.
Liu’s work highlights “figures forgotten to history,” like women, workers, and refugees, where a bowl is offered in front of each section of the oil painting. Both sections depict stereotypes of the “ideal” Chinese woman — specifically, the left depicts a sexualized version of the “ideal” while the right depicts the “ideal” with her feet bound, a practice common in China from the 10th century until 1949. Though Liu does not elaborate on the meaning of the bowls, they could stand in as offerings to each “idealized” woman, playing up to the namesake of the piece. When read hand-in-hand with the broom adjacent to the piece, the bowls could also serve as a reminder of the women’s “typical” domestic role in the household: to cook and clean. Furthermore, Liu’s piece was created shortly after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, so the broom could simultaneously reference the bloody calamity of the massacre — as if to “sweep away” the aftermath — while addressing the subordinate role of women in society. Overall, both works approach the topic of weaving worldly narratives and culture together through two different scopes.
My second visit to the gallery a month later differed greatly: between August and September 2025, the DMA put kiosks in their gallery spaces in a collaboration with Samsung and Google, allowing visitors to interact with AI prompts to learn more about the pieces surrounding them. The AI kiosk rollout was a silent one, with only social media posts on Instagram and Facebook advertising the temporary collaboration.
Public reception was anything but positive — in the comments, many Dallas citizens brought up the destructive impact of AI on the environment, and dozens argued that the screens take away from the lived-in experience of visiting a museum. I agree with the majority opinion here. Aside from the environmental consequences, the kiosks practically sterilize the gallery space, detracting from the face-to-face aesthetic interaction patrons are meant to have with the artwork. The kiosks are also a lackluster replacement for a knowledgeable and passionate guide, curator or art historian that could serve the same purpose of informing the community about art without the potential of spewing out misinformation.
On the advertised Instagram post, the DMA’s community response comment said that it had reviewed all the received feedback, but that the DMA still sees the collaboration as an opportunity for AI and art to “co-exist.” The DMA’s response begs the question of whether they can truly “co-exist” without detracting from one another. In my opinion, they cannot. A comment from @semegransculpts on Instagram sums up my thoughts on the AI collaboration: “Museums are one of the last remaining institutions people actually trust — don’t turn your back on your visitors and your employees just because you’ll make money from Google.”
Comments like these — ones where concerned laymen speak up about the blatant issues surrounding them — are the easiest kind of action one can take to hold institutions like the DMA publicly accountable. It is strange that the DMA would take on the potential risk of spreading misinformation about artwork for the sake of earning money from a name-brand collaboration, and it should be called out. Museums are meant to be institutions for engagement and learning from what is in front of you, sans screens; they have a moral obligation to educate the public, not to follow the AI-hype bandwagon for the sake of earning a few extra dollars.
It is strange that the DMA would take on the potential risk of spreading misinformation about artwork for the sake of earning money from a name-brand collaboration, and it should be called out.
Unless these kiosks are re-purposed into something better, like an accessibility tool for visitors that could find use in a large-print list or map of pieces, I don’t see the point in keeping kiosks that amount to nothing more than traffic-causing eyesores that block one’s view of all the beautiful works of art on display.
If the DMA wants to integrate technology into their gallery spaces, it should remove the kiosks entirely and instead invest effort into digitizing works and their labels, creating an educational tool for those that want to learn more about art history. The DMA could also integrate the tablets into art displays for book-like objects that visitors would not be able to flip through otherwise. In particular, the Keir Collection of Islamic Art at the DMA would greatly benefit from such a development, as it hosts many Qurans and manuscripts that are inaccessible in glass vitrines.
In the past, the DMA has gracefully handled the “co-existence” between technology and analog art. Most recently, in “Marisol: A Retrospective,” on view from Feb. 23 to July 6, visitors could flip through the digital contents of the artist’s sketchbook on a tablet similar to the ones on the kiosks. With “Marisol,” the DMA has proven it is capable of establishing “co-existence” between technology and art. However, in this case, I do not think the “benefits” outweigh the extensive cons of environmental damage, miseducation and the loss of spirited museum staff. I can only hope that the DMA sees this temporary collaboration as an experiment that shouldn’t be further explored.
Despite the setback of an unpalatable collaboration, the Postwar and Contemporary Galleries succeed in platforming key artists from these active time periods all-the-while introducing new, unfamiliar names into such an artistic sphere. The galleries are on view and included with free general admission at the first-floor Barrel Vault and Quadrant Galleries until June 15, 2030.
One Comment
Outstanding – thank you!