“The Hedge of Halomancy” is one of the newest exhibitions at the Crow Museum at UTD in Richardson.
Anja Schlein/The Dallas Morning News
Many people are familiar with the Crow Museum of Asian Art’s Dallas Arts District location, but fewer have visited its newer, larger space at The University of Texas at Dallas. Like its older sibling, the campus location in Richardson features several exhibitions that visitors can explore.
Trammell and Margaret Crow began collecting Asian art in the mid-1960s, and the Crow family opened the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art as a permanent museum in the Dallas Arts District in December 1998. It was renamed the Crow Museum of Asian Art in 2018.
The Crow Museum at UT Dallas, which opened in spring 2024, is one of a planned three buildings that will comprise the university’s Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum.
Article continues below this ad
“The university was primarily known as a STEM university and the Crow family was looking to see how they could expand their legacy and continue beyond what they had opened in the Arts District,” said Caroline Kim, director of development at the Crow Museum of Asian Art.
“So the Crow family donated some of their collection to the museum with the understanding and anticipation of building this first building, so now we have two locations.”
While walking around the two-story museum, visitors will come upon a lime green area with a large, monochromatic mountainscape painted on wooden panels as part of the exhibition “Mountain Jade with Lam Tung Pang.”
Next to it is “Echoes of the Earth” by contemporary artist Echo Morgan. This exhibition showcases a video by Morgan titled Be the Inside of the Vase, which reflects on her complex family relationships and the correlation in her ceramic work.
Besides physical art there are also photographs by Dallas-based artist Carolyn Brown in the exhibition “Intersections: Photographs by Carolyn Brown.” Her photos feature art and architecture from the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean.
Article continues below this ad
The newest exhibitions at The Crow Museum at UT Dallas are “Unseen Worlds: Southeast Asian Textiles from the Spancake Collection,” “The Hedge of Halomancy” and “New Deal Texas and the West.”
“Unseen Worlds: Southeast Asian Textiles from the Spancake Collection” includes work from multiple countries from Southeast Asia.
Anja Schlein/The Dallas Morning News
“Unseen Worlds” showcases textiles, jewelry, silver bowls, lacquer and tattoo implements from Steve and Jenny Spancake’s collection. These objects come from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. A common theme among the works is the naga, or divine sea serpent, that shows up in many of the objects in the exhibition. The naga symbolizes spirituality and transformation.
“Steve and Jenny lived and immersed themselves in the cultures and societies that they were living in,” Kim said. “So this collection represents not just objects but their deep appreciation and understanding of where they lived.”
On the other side of the museum is the new immersive exhibition, “The Hedge of Halomancy” by artist duo Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser, also known as Hylozoic/Desires. Their work combines archival material, moving imagery, poetry and music that reconstructs and reimagines the forgotten history of India’s Inland Customs Line. The line was a colonial infrastructure built by the British in the 19th century that extended over 2,485 miles and formed the living barrier known as the “Great Hedge of India” to enforce a tax on salt.
Article continues below this ad
The entrance to the new multimedia exhibit, The Hedge of Halomancy, at the Crow Museum at UTD in Richardson, Texas.
Anja Schlein/The Dallas Morning News
“I wanted to make sure that we walk away knowing how Steve and Jenny Spancake as collectors and Hylozoic/Desires as artists are dedicated to preserving history through the collection, through their storytelling, a very destructive and turbulent history at times that could have otherwise been forgotten in a major way if it weren’t for their artistry and their dedication to being the keepers of these collections,” Kim said.
The newest exhibition, “New Deal Texas and the West,” features federally funded art produced by American artists during the Great Depression, focusing on scenes and subjects in New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The Crow Museum of Asian Art at The University of Texas at Dallas is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson. Free but suggested donation is $12 for adults and $7 for seniors. crowmuseum.org.