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The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future is the first comprehensive center for women's studies in the country. Organized by a cadre of A-type Texas women and built almost entirely with private funds, it has a national agenda that belies
its regional roots.
Context
The $11.5 million building occupies a restored 1909 coliseum in Dallas' Fair Park, a National Historic Landmark. From a distance it looks like just another foursquare stucco box, except for a sublimely kitschy statue of Venus emerging from a cactus at the front door.
Solution
The interiors are all steel and glass and slashing diagonals, like a turn-of-the-century train shed redesigned for the computer age. ``I wanted a dialogue and a feeling of continuity between old and new, like the Musee d'Orsay,'' explained design architect Wendy Evans Joseph, who associated with F&S Partners of Dallas, the firm that restored the building.
Yet the comparison is somewhat misleading. The Musee d'Orsay has an extensive permanent collection and vast storage and temporary exhibition spaces, whereas the Women's Museum has none of these. It was conceived as a large interactive classroom in which engagement rather than the passive contemplation of exquisite objects is the goal. Visitors passing through the Art Deco lobby, added...