Last week, my wife and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art to see the Cindy Sherman retrospective, the Hotel Texas exhibit, and the Body Beautiful: the Nude in Ancient Greece.

For those not familiar with the work of Cindy Sherman, she has made a career of self-portraits, from her groundbreaking work of “Untitled Film Stills” (1977 - 1980) to her “Society Portraits,” “Clowns,” “Sex,” etc. When viewed all in one place, it’s amazing to see how she’s aged and morphed over time, changing her appearance with make up, props, prosthetics, and more recently, digital manipulation. Her technique is often crude and simple, and probably not really the point. Where her genius lies is in the ability to transform herself into any situation that stirs her imagination (noir film actress, society matron, classical painting, cowboy, disembodied sex object, etc.). A truly inspiring body of work to behold!

Hotel Texas tells the story of the final hotel that JFK stayed in before his assassination on November 22, 1963. The Hotel Texas was in Fort Worth, and the President and Mrs. Kennedy stayed in Suite 850, which the art patrons of the city, turned into an art gallery. They gathered 18 pieces, ranging from sculpture, painting, and collage, from national, international, and local artists. It’s an amazing thing to see how quickly they pulled this together - one week! - in response to an editorial in a local paper regarding the rather dull hotel selected for the President’s visit. The work itself, though not terribly cohesive, takes on serious historic perspective in light of the fact that this would be the last art that JFK would seriously view.

And finally, the Body Beautiful: The Nude in Ancient Greece. The Greeks were absolute masters of sculpture! Their painting pales in comparison, but their sculpture remains a marvel to this day. Interestingly, most of their sculptures and paintings featured the male nude, as the female form was mostly seen clothed. It never ceases to amaze me that these carved pieces of marble and stone have survived nearly intact for thousands of years.