My MMIAM Journey

To summarize my experience from each leg of my graduate school travels, I decided to interview an expert: myself! Here is my overview of Dallas:

What were your first impressions of Dallas?

It was hot! We arrived in the middle of August and the weather was scorching for the first 4-6 weeks. I was struck by how large and spread-out the city is too. Many of the buildings are recently built, so it has a very new and modern feel to it. But there’s also an undercurrent of its old western, ranching origins that occasionally become more pronounced depending on where in the city you are.

How long were you there?

I was there from mid-August until mid-December when I returned to Grand Rapids for two weeks over the holidays.

Where did you stay?

I stayed in a very nice apartment community near the SMU campus. You can read more about it here. Because Dallas is very difficult to navigate if you don’t have a car (the public transportation options are minimal and it’s not bike-friendly – no bike lanes in the street and the sidewalks are often in bad condition) it was very convenient to live so close to school. I brought an electric kickscooter with me and was able to zip to and from classes in about 10 minutes.

Most of my time was spent in Dallas, but I made a few trips to Fort Worth too. Our first trip to Fort Worth was with our fundraising professor who showed us some of the museums there like the Kimball and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Some of us went back on a Saturday to see the rodeo and stockyards. A colleague of mine from the Bass Performing Arts Center invited me to see Come From Away, so I made a trip to Fort Worth for that too.

Some of us also rented an AirBnB and spent a long weekend in Marfa, which is a tiny, rural town six-hour drive southeast of Dallas. Marfa is best known for being the residence of sculptor Donald Judd, and both his family foundation and a foundation that owns and presents his art are based there. Marfa now attracts a lot of arts-interested tourists and has a sort of “poor man’s Palm Springs” feel to it.

What were your classes like?

The Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University taught this part of the program. We had five three-credit courses covering various aspects of arts management like fundraising, budgeting, policy, international law, and entrepreneurship. This provided a nice foundational understanding of the job of an arts manager. Each class had a major project or exam due at the end of the semester, which I appreciated because it allowed us to work on something deep and substantive as a method of crystallizing and applying our learning. However, many of us felt the classes had a more undergraduate feel to them most of the time, where the professor would lecture on an assigned reading and there was less opportunity for peer-to-peer discussion. Because the school is in the United States, the course material had an American focus to it. Most of the classes were taught in a classroom, but our fundraising professor did an excellent job of arranging meetings for us with arts managers every week. Because of that, we were able to meet most of the major arts leaders in the Dallas Arts District and tour their facilities.

Any highlights from this part of the program?

The Marfa weekend trip was a definite highlight. It was fun to escape the city for a bit and drive through the desert. We toured the Judd residence and walked through the 15 untitled works in concrete exhibit at the Chinati Foundation and stopped by a few other art galleries. Marfa is also known for paranormal sightings, so one evening we drove to the lookout point to see the “Marfa Lights” (mysterious, unexplained lights that flash above the horizon of the desert). We saw the lights, but most experts believe they’re simply a distant reflection of headlights from cars driving the highway. It was fun to bond with some of my peers and I have fond memories of this trip.

Another highlight from Dallas was the amount of meetings we got with arts managers, tours of their facilities, and free tickets to shows and events.

Any lowlights from this part of the program?

Dallas is not without its flaws. We arrived at the hottest season of the year and the heat was definitely oppressive at times. It was very challenging to get around the city on your own; all I had was my electric kickscooter, which isn’t suitable for sidewalks and a lot of people drive big trucks or SUVs in Dallas and they don’t like bikes or scooters on the road. Dallas also has a painful history of racism and segregation, and once you see the lingering effects of that history, or even the new forms of racism today, they are impossible to unsee. Dallas was also much more expensive than anticipated. Lastly, Dallas is home to what many would consider “world-class” art (impressive facilities, high-quality productions, many popular and classical works), but there doesn’t seem to be much happening in the way of alternative, edgy, contemporary, avant-garde type of art that challenges the status quo. For that reason, the culture can feel homogenous and monolithic.

Do you have a good story to tell that’s not necessarily a highlight or lowlight?

I really didn’t want to leave Dallas without a cowboy hat, so all semester long I had my eye out for one. I thought I might find a good one at the stockyards in Fort Worth, but the authentic ones were outrageously expensive. I finally ended up finding one at the State Fair of Texas (which, in and of itself, is another experience I won’t soon forget). Inside this huge tent that had merchants from all over the world selling all kinds of goods I stopped by a stand selling cowboy hats. The merchant travels a circuit all over North America selling hats at various fairs and conventions. He was a hell of a salesman, having me try on all different types, teaching me the proper way to wear them, showing off their unique features. I finally ended up with a reasonably-priced, versatile, brown leather one with a part-mesh upper that helps you stay cool in the heat. I don’t know when I’m ever going to wear it again, but I’m glad to have it.

What is something you learned in Dallas?

Dallas is in many ways the apex of Americana, so it made sense to spend a semester there to learn about arts management in America. The most significant aspect of arts management that distinguishes arts management in America from any other country is the philanthropic support structure, and that dynamic is perhaps more pronounced in Dallas than anywhere else in the country. This looks like very wealthy individuals and corporations who benefit from tax deductions giving away a significant portion of their earnings to fund the arts. It’s a dynamic that has its pros and cons. But you see it on full display in Dallas.

Did your impression of Dallas change by the end of the experience?

I certainly got a much deeper understanding of Dallas by the end of the semester due to the long period of time we spent there (four straight months, which is the longest we stayed in any location throughout the program). I wouldn’t say my impressions really changed, but they became clearer, more informed, and vivid.

How would you summarize your experience from this part of the program?

Although I had never been to Dallas before, as an American, this part of the program wasn’t wildly exciting and interesting to me. It was fun to visit a new city, but it’s still America. I enjoyed becoming a full-time student again at a later age in life and I’ll always remember Dallas for being my first entry into that change. Although the time spent in class was mostly unchallenging, I really appreciated the semester-long projects we worked on. For my fundraising class, I had a group project where we consulted the Nasher Sculpture Center on their digital programs and engagement with their members. For my entrepreneurship class, I created a business plan for a satellite school at Miami City Ballet. And for my policy class, my group developed a plan that argued for a universal code of ethics for arts managers, and that project helped inform my thesis later.