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During your Dallas vacation, don't miss these great establishments and attractions:
Dallas County Historical Plaza
Just a couple of blocks from the spot where JFK's motorcade slowly rolled by the Texas School Book Depository is the heart of historic downtown Dallas -- though nothing of permanence was built here until the 1890s. In the middle of the plaza is a reminder of Dallas's recent origins as a Western outpost: John Neely Bryan Cabin, a replica of the one-room log structure built by the Tennessee-born attorney credited with founding the city in 1841. The original cabin stood on the banks of the Trinity River.Across Main Street is the John F. Kennedy Memorial, funded by private donations and designed by the famed architect Philip Johnson in 1970. The open-roofed square room, made of limestone, is a "cenotaph" (an empty tomb), according to Johnson. Unfortunately, the memorial is also empty of emotion -- not the moving testament to a president and event that so marked the American national psyche. Inside the four solemn walls is a black marble slab, which looks like a low coffee table, engraved with the words "John Fitzgerald Kennedy." Johnson's intent was for the open roof to symbolize the "freedom of spirit of JFK," but I doubt that many visitors will feel their own spirits soar here.Just west of the Kennedy Memorial, across Record Street, is the Old Red Courthouse, built in self-important Romanesque Revival style in 1890 on the site of the original log courthouse (property donated by city founder John Neely Bryan). The blue granite and red sandstone building today houses the Dallas Visitors Center (which has Internet access and plenty of sightseeing and hotel and restaurant information).For those who miss the true nonbelievers that used to swarm around the Texas School Book Depository trumpeting wacky tales about the JFK assassination, Dallas now has The Conspiracy Museum, 110 S. Market St. (tel. 214/741-3040), brazenly located across the street from the Kennedy Memorial. Rejecting the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report and claiming "The Truth Shall Set You Free," the small, private collection of artifacts, photos, videos, and minutiae addresses the wealth of conspiracy theories, unsubstantiated but never let go of by a large segment of the population, that have swirled around the JFK assassination and other alleged cover-ups. A huge poster hanging from the ceiling proclaims that all the Kennedy brothers were the victims of conspiracy. This is the kind of place where the staff, who call themselves "assassinologists," place an "Out to Lunch" sign on the door that says: "We look forward to seeing you (and that guy following you!)." The Conspiracy Museum is open daily from 10am to 6pm; admission is $9 for adults, $8 for seniors and students, and $3 for children. Allow a little less than an hour to visit the museum, unless you get caught up rehashing the assassination and reading all the minutiae. The staff offers free JFK historical walking tours, and they're pretty much rant-free.
Meadows Museum of Art
On the campus of Southern Methodist University is one of the city's best-kept secrets: the finest collection of Spanish art outside Spain (so significant, in fact, that it spent much of 2000 on display at the top-tier Thyssen-Bornemisza museums in Madrid and Barcelona). A Dallas oil magnate, Algur Meadows, went to Spain to search for oil, entertaining himself at the Prado Museum. He came up dry, but his sojourn into Spanish art history bore fruit: Meadows began to assemble a splendid collection of works from the 15th to 20th centuries, including pieces by Spanish masters from the Golden Age of Spanish painting (such as Velázquez, Goya, Ribera, Murillo, Zurbarán -- just about the only big name missing is El Greco). Having moved into a new building six times larger than the old site, Meadows Museum is one of the best small museums with a singular focus in the U.S. Of special note among the nearly 700 items on display are Ribera's Retrato de un Caballero de Santiago and Goya's El Corral de los Locos (by many accounts the finest Goya found in the United States), as well as a series of 200 works on paper by Goya. The 20th-century Spanish masters Picasso, Dalí, Miró, and Tàpies are also represented.
Nasher Sculpture Center
Despite its status as the principal art museum in a city of considerable wealth, the rather modest permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art is proof that either north Texans don't collect much great art or they don't donate it on a grand scale to local institutions. One notable exception to that rule is Raymond Nasher, one of the world's foremost collectors of contemporary sculpture. A local businessman, by way of New York, who made his banking and real estate fortune in Dallas (with the shopping mall NorthPark Center, among other properties), Nasher decided, after years of being wooed by the Dallas Museum of Art as well as major institutions like the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to establish a public sculpture garden in his adopted city. The $50-million project was entirely funded by the private Nasher Foundation.The Nasher Sculpture Center opened in 2003 on a 2 1/2-acre site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art, in a glass-and-marble structure infused with natural light, designed by the renowned architect Renzo Piano. The center should change the way art aficionados think about Dallas and make it an art destination. The collection, which includes high-quality pieces by virtually all of the great modern masters and was amassed over 4 decades by Ray and his wife Patsy, is considered by some art experts to be the finest private sculpture collection in the world. The tasteful 54,000-square-foot center, a place of quiet refuge in downtown Dallas, features an outdoor sculpture garden landscaped by Peter Walker, with pieces from Nasher's immense collection exhibited both indoors and out. The collection includes some of the finest individual works from the likes of Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Joan Miró, David Smith, Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Joseph Beuys, Roy Lichtenstein, and many others. Among the monumental pieces in the open-air museum there are too many highlights to mention, though James Turrell's "skyspace" Tending (Blue), perhaps deserves special recognition as a site-specific piece commissioned for the museum. At the back of the garden, near the bathrooms, it is a walk-in box open to the sky, with optical effects and an unexpected perspective. Although the Nasher Sculpture Center -- which has some of the biggest names in art and architecture attached to it -- opened with big publicity and truly ought to be one of Dallas's most highly prized treasures, it is sadly and inexplicably having some difficulty attracting visitors, especially locals. If you're at all a fan of modern art, don't miss the opportunity to see this spectacular collection.
Candlewood Suites DALLAS/MARKET CENTER
Candlewood Suites Dallas Market Center , is an all-suite, extended-stay hotel located near several Dallas hospitals including Children®s Hospital, UT Southwestern, Presbyterian, Baylor and Scottish Rite. The Candlewood Suites Dallas Market Center, is just moments away from the Dallas Convention Center, American Airlines Center and downtown Dallas. Guests visiting the area can enjoy a variety of professional sports teams including the Dallas Mavericks, Cowboys and Stars. Fully equipped ...
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