DWG Project Shines A New Light On Historic Dallas Gallery And Its Impact On Artists
Launch event unveils the project’s website that includes interactive timelines, databases of images and articles and interviews with gallery artists.
The history of an upstart art gallery created by women in Dallas that launched the careers of prominent artists has been brought to light by the DWG Project, a multiyear initiative of the Texas Art Project at Texas A&M and Art This Week Productions.
Tianna Helena Uchacz, Ph.D., assistant professor and art historian in the Visualization and Performance and Visual Studies programs, led a launch event on Nov. 4 at Rudder Forum. She worked alongside Richard Serrano, executive director of Art This Week Productions, to research the gallery and to develop web resources to reconstruct its lost history.
DW Gallery — which began as Dallas Women’s Co-op — was founded in 1975 by eight women who had struggled to have their works shown in the Dallas art scene. It became an influential home for exhibitions by emerging artists — men and women — through 1988.
At the launch event, Uchacz outlined the gallery’s history and showed the project’s website that includes interactive timelines, databases of images and articles and recorded interviews with DWG artists. A highlight reel of these interviews was featured during the event.
Three DWG artists — Ann Stautberg, Ellen Soderquist and Linnea Glatt — took part in a discussion about the challenges they overcame and the gallery’s impact. They also offered students advice on breaking barriers in the art world.
“DW Gallery gave an early career boost to so many of today’s prominent Texas artists,” Uchacz said. “Clearly, its story needed to be told.”
The DWG Project is supported by a grant from Humanities Texas and support from Texas A&M University Libraries, the Center of Digital Humanities Research, the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts and private donors.
