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Dallas Museum of Art acquires 7 major artworks of the African-American south

November 15, 2018 | In the Press

From Dallas News (https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/museums/2018/11/15/dallas-museum-art-acquires-7-major-artworks-african-american-south)

Maxwell Anderson spent almost four years as director of the Dallas Museum of Art before leaving in 2015. He is now president of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which in its words is "dedicated to documenting, preserving and promoting the contributions of artists from the African-American South." 

The synergy between Anderson's past and present recently helped inspire the DMA to acquire seven works from the Atlanta-based foundation through its museum transfer program, which places artwork from its collection into museums around the country. 

"Twelve museums have made acquisitions of work, including the Dallas Museum of Art — happily," Anderson said Wednesday. "And we have many other museums in our sights."

But the announcement includes another noteworthy element, in that a private collector — in this case, Dallas' own Marguerite Hoffman — has agreed to acquire one of the works. 

"We have not before entertained the possibility of selling work to a private collector," Anderson said. "That is out of an abundance of caution. We want to see these works put to good use by leading institutions, to have the artists in our collection become part of the fabric of American art history." 

But Hoffman's reputation made this a different case, he said. 

"When Marguerite evinced interest in this particular work, called Two Coats, I brought it to my board and said, 'Look, this is not just any collector. Her acquisition of the work will be a kind of North Star for us in reaching a collection of that caliber and discernment and quality, and furthermore, it will go to the Dallas Museum of Art.' " 

What Anderson alluded to there was the 2005 "Fast Forward" bequest in which three Dallas couples — Marguerite and Robert Hoffman, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky and Deedie and Rusty Rose — agreed upon their deaths to donate to the DMA the entirety of their art collections. 

"There should be no concerns on either front," Anderson said. "We have not before or since agreed to make a work available to a trustee collector or a patron of a museum, and we will probably take our time before we do it again."

Anderson deemed Hoffman's purchase of Two Coats as being a "wonderful asset" to her collection, to have a work by the late artist, Thornton Dial, hanging alongside artwork created by "some of the great titans of American art." 

"It's such an elegant work," Anderson said of Two Coats, which he called "a beautiful elegy to Dial's vision of what human communication can be and the intimacy that he captures in the scale of the canvas."

The pieces acquired by the DMA include works by Ronald Lockett, Nellie Mae Rowe and four quilts created by Louisiana Bendolph, Mary Lee Bendolph, Amelia Bennett and Annie Mae Young, who hail from Gee's Bend, Ala. The DMA also acquired a piece by Thornton Dial, who created the Two Coats piece that Hoffman acquired. The DMA will show the seven works beginning in April.

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