Anyone who has ventured very far on an interstate these days has inevitably encountered outlet malls.  These sprawling conglomerations of stores and parking lots seem to be the way that shopping malls are going.  Relatively speaking, it doesn’t seem like there are many indoor malls being built.

This isn’t to be lamented too much though, because most indoor malls are hardly more distinctive than the outdoor outlet type.  One that is truly distinctive, however, is Northpark Center in Dallas.  And what makes it notable—and worthy of a visit even by those who try their best to avoid such places—is the fact that Northpark boasts an art collection that’s the envy of the best museums in the country.  Hard as it may be to believe for those who’ve not seen it firsthand, taking a walk through the mall is to encounter works from contemporary masters like Henry Moore, Mark diSuvero, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Jonathan Borofsky, and many others.  

Northpark was the creation of developer Raymond Nasher,who designed the mall back in the early 1960s.  Nasher and his wife Patsy were avid art collectors, and by the time he sat down to work on Northpark, they had begun to amass an impressive collection of Modern and contemporary sculpture.  His interest in art soon came to influence the way he thought about buildings and public spaces.  With Northpark, he was concerned not just with the more mundane aspects of retail space, but was adamant that there be places in the mall specifically set aside in which art could be displayed.  By the time he was finished, he had in mind to use space there to allow the public to enjoy his burgeoning collection.

Nasher, who died in 2007, wasn’t one of those who went around complaining that museums were too “stuffy;” his ideas were actually far more developed than that common but rather shallow complaint.  More to the point behind Northpark’s art collection was his belief that the public needed to experience art outside of galleries and museums as well as inside of them.  It should be encountered everywhere.  “The addition of art into commercial buildings,” he said years ago, “really makes them more comfortable, exciting and interesting.”

Just last week I was showing one of my classes photographs of some works by contemporary artist Frank Stella (who’s coming to Baylor to give a talk in November) and looking at one of the pieces I remarked that it could be found not in a museum but on the wall in Northpark just outside the entrance to Dillards.  They couldn’t believe it, and even less so after I told them more of what is there.  It seemed never to have occurred to them that such things could exist outside the walls of a museum.

This points to a problem that needs addressing:  a great number of people tend to think that art is something that only exists in a museum.  That the setting, in other words, influences what it is.  Such a preconception works to diminish the idea of art in our lives and causes us think of it as something that we couldn’t possibly interact with on a regular everyday basis.  

As things like laptop computers, flat-screen TV’s, and smart phones become part of that everyday existence, we tend to become less appreciative of them. But art is, oddly, the exact opposite: the more you interact with it, the more meaningful and special it becomes, not the more common. This is part of the reason its disappearance from public schools is so very lamentable.

In Dallas, a trip to one particular mall can unexpectedly remind us what we’re missing.

Mark di Suvero, Ad Astra,  2005

Joseph Borofsky, Five Hammering Men, 1985

Claes Oldenberg, Corridor Pin, Blue, 1999