Sixth
Floor Museum
Dallas will forever be known as the city where President John F Kennedy
was shot, and the sites associated with his death are among Dallas'
most visited attractions. If you have time to visit only one, make it
the Sixth Floor Museum, a thoughtful, comprehensive tribute to the life,
death and legacy of JFK. Located in the former Texas School Book Depository,
this museum feels frozen in time, from the go-go days of 1960, when
JFK proclaimed in his inaugural address, 'Let the word go forth ...
that the torch has been passed to a new generation,' to the tempestuous
times that followed.
With that background in place, the museum explains in minute-by-minute
detail the events of 22 November 1963. Artifacts include the original
layout for the front page of that afternoon's Dallas Times Herald, stills
from the famous home movie filmed by Abraham Zapruder, a teletype machine
endlessly reprinting the first report of the murder and an FBI model
of the assassination site. But the most evocative exhibit is the corner
window overlooking Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll and the triple underpass:
the same vista suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald had on that fateful
November day.
Conspiracy Museum
Polls have repeatedly shown that less than 15% of Americans believe
Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, making the maverick Conspiracy Museum
an intriguing foil to the Sixth Floor Museum. The Conspiracy Museum
posits that Kennedy's assassination was a coup d'e'tat to shore up the
military-industrial complex that had been gaining strength in the US
since WWII, and that the same people and forces that killed Kennedy
were later responsible for the deaths of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther
King Jr., Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick friend Mary Jo Kopechne (Ted
himself was the real target) and the 269 people aboard Korean Airlines
Flight 007, shot down in 1983. The museum also delves into other assassinations
from history, including those of American presidents Abraham Lincoln,
James Garfield and William McKinley.
Dallas Arts District
In the Dallas Arts District, a 60 acre (24 hectare) section north of
downtown dedicated to the fine and performing arts, you'll find landmarks
such as the dramatic IM Pei-designed Morton H Meyerson Symphony Center;
the Trammel Crow Center Pavilion, with exhibition and performance spaces;
and the Dallas Theater Center. Sometime early in the 21st century, the
open space between DMA and the Meyerson Center will be transformed into
a sculpture garden showcasing the world's greatest privately held sculpture
collection, which will be the crowning touch of an arts district that
puts Dallas in the big leagues among US art centers.
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), anchor of the Arts District, is divided
into five sections: the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe,
and Contemporary Art. The collection's highlights include Very Ugly
by Frida Kahlo, Sleepy Baby by Mary Cassatt, The Icebergs by Frederic
Edwin Church, Monet's 1908 Water Lilies and more pieces by Piet Mondrian
than any other US museum. A special gallery recreates the French Riviera
villa of art patrons Wendy and Emery Reves, originally built in 1927
by the Duke of Westminster for Coco Chanel. The Reves' collection on
display includes works by Van Gogh, Ce'zanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Manet,
as well as by Winston Churchill, a good friend of the couple.
Fair Park
Southeast of downtown Dallas, Fair Park was created in 1936 when Dallas
hosted the Texas Centennial Exposition. Today, more than 3 million people
attend Fair Park's annual Texas State Fair, one of the largest in the
US, in September and October. Aside from being a great place to party,
picnic or stretch your legs, Fair Park has a couple of knockout museums:
the hands-on Science Place bills itself as 'an amusement park for your
brain.' Attractions include robotic dinosaurs, a medical gallery featuring
a human brain and real beating heart, plus a planetarium and IMAX theater.
The African-American Museum is one of the best museums of its kind,
with exhibits richly detailing the art and history of blacks from pre-slavery
Africa through today.
Fair Park is full of superb 1930s art deco architecture, but nothing
is quite as inspired as the Hall of State, a tribute to all things Texan.
The Hall of Heroes pays homage to such luminaries as Stephen F Austin
and Sam Houston, while the Great Hall of Texas features a 25ft (8m)
state seal and murals depicting Texas history from the 16th century
onward.
Deep Ellum
A renovated warehouse district just three blocks east of downtown,
Deep Ellum has long been Dallas' headquarters for live music - first
the blues and now rock, jazz, alternative, Latin and country, too. At
the turn of the century, the district was the center of Dallas' black
community. Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson are just two of the blues
artists who made their mark in Deep Ellum during the 1920s and 1930s. |
