Tomorrow the doors will open for a new 1,882-square-foot research center at the Dallas Museum of Art thanks to The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History. It’s all a part of the partnership between the DMA and the University of Texas at Dallas.
How’s that? The area located in the DMA will be a satellite campus for the O’Donnell Institute of Art History main offices based at UTD in a 3,700-square-foot space that opened this past May.
Designed by Buchanan Architecture, the DMA space is “equipped with state-of-the-art digital art history research tools and provides unique access to DMA collections and the research resources held at the Mildred R. and Frederick M. Mayer Library.”
According to O’Donnell Institute Founding Director/Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetic Studies Dr. Richard “Rick” Brettell, “For all of us at the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, the close study of the art object itself remains at the center of serious scholarship. For that reason, we are delighted to inaugurate an historic partnership with the Dallas Museum of Art, which has a truly encyclopedic collection of global art…. We will, in effect, bring art historical research right into the center of the DMA in a beautifully designed space next to the DMA’s Mayer Library and adjacent to the offices of the museum’s art historical brain trust, its curators.”
Founded in 2014, the O’Donnell Foundation has been “focused on works of art and materials held in regional collections and institutions and on exploring intersections between the visual arts, the sciences and technology.”
Dallas philanthropists Edith and Peter O’Donnell have been longtime supporters of the arts, education, healthcare and other nonprofit efforts.
* Photo courtesy of Buchanan Architecture