Frances Bagley receives Moss/Chumley Award from Meadows Museum

DALLAS (SMU) – The Meadows Museum announces that Frances Bagley is the recipient of the 2010 Moss/Chumley Artist Award. 

Frances Bagley

The award is given annually to an outstanding North Texas artist who has exhibited professionally for at least ten years and has a proven track record as a community advocate for the visual arts.  Bagley received the award on December 7, 2011 at an evening reception at the Meadows Museum.

Bagley’s art exhibits a pervading interest in form and fabric, and the de-contextualization and re-contextualization of our conditioned responses to it. 

In a recent interview with PegasusNews.com, Bagley stated that, “We are all familiar with cloth.  We wear it, we live with it, we sleep on it and we are never without it.  It reflects our society and our prejudices.  A piece of cloth can trigger a wide range of response because of the subjectivity built into the color, texture, weight, and feel of the fabric.” This social material extends to her interest in human hair—as a “common denominator” of humanity. The pieces Bagley submitted with her entry for the Moss/Chumley award also included her work with video, and its incorporation with sculpture and installation.

Bagley has a long record spanning over 30 years of professional and community projects in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and beyond.  She has served on the board of directors for both the Emergency Artist Support League and the Dallas Artist Research and Exhibition group.  From 1989 to 1996 she was the designer and lead artist for Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and she has worked on public sculpture projects at Maxey Park in Lubbock Texas, Brookhaven College, Fishtrap Lake and Park Design, and most recently the Battan Railway project in El Paso, Texas. 

Together with her husband, sculptor Tom Orr, she has collaborated on additional public works and major installations, including the Wildlife Water Theater at Dallas’s White Rock Lake, a sculptural bird habitat that incorporates solar power.  They also collaborated on designing the sets and costumes for Dallas Opera’s opening production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco for the company’s 50th anniversary in 2006.

The jury for the 2010 award included George T. Lee, Jr., chair of the Collections Committee of the Meadows Museum Advisory Council; Kevin Vogel, president of Valley House Gallery in Dallas and member of the Meadows Museum Advisory Coucil; Joan Davidow, director emeritus of The Dallas Contemporary; Nicole Atzbach, assistant curator at the Meadows Museum; Shelley DeMaria, curatorial assistant at the Meadows Museum;and  Iraida Rodríguez-Negrón, Meadows/Kress/Prado Fellow at the Meadows Museum.

Jury member Lee commented, “The committee to determine the winner of the Moss/Chumley award was impressed by the quality of the applicants but felt that Frances Bagley stood out as the primus inter pares.  Frances is a supremely talented artist of great originality. Her innovative use of material represents a creative and genuine response to our time and space. As the lead designer for the Dallas Area Rapid Transport project she helped to make our city a better and more congenial place to live, and her service with the Dallas Artist Research and Exhibition Group and the Emergency Artist Support League demonstrates her fierce support for other artists in the area.  Her acknowledged artistic talent and many efforts involving the art world in North Texas and nationally over an extended period makes her the ideal candidate for this award.”

About Frances Bagley

A Tennessee native, Ms. Bagley holds multiple degrees—Bachelor of Fine Art and Master of Art from Arizona State University and Master of Fine Art from the University of North Texas, Denton. Her first degree was in painting, and she also worked as a potter, apprenticing with world-renowned British ceramicist Michael Leach at Yelland Pottery in Devon, England in 1971 and 1972.  Bagley has taught at a number of institutions, including Oklahoma State University, University of Texas at Dallas, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, and Southern Methodist University.

In the course of her career, Bagley has won both national and international awards in both solo and group exhibitions.  She is the only American to have won an award in the Kajima Sculpture Competition (the 10th Annual, in 2008), a competition held every two years in Tokyo. Her art is represented in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kajima Corporation in Tokyo, the El Paso Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Arkansas Art Center, the University of Texas at Arlington, as well as numerous corporate collections.

About the Moss/Chumley Memorial Fund and Artist Award

The Moss/Chumley Memorial Fund was begun in 1989 by Frank Moss and the Meadows Museum as a tribute to Jim Chumley; Moss’s name was added to the fund upon his death in 1991. Moss and Chumley were two Dallas art dealers who made outstanding contributions to the visual arts in North Texas during the 1980s. The pair operated the Nimbus Gallery on Routh Street from1980 to 1987 and the Moss/Chumley Gallery at the Crescent Court from 1986 to 1989, where they showcased numerous new artists. Established in 1995, the Moss/Chumley Artist Award is given in their memory. 

The award is open to artists working in any medium who reside in one of the eleven North Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, and Wise.

Past recipients have included Isabelle duToit, Juliette McCullough, Catherine Chauvin, Kaleta Doolin, David Dreyer, Susan Kae Grant, David Hickman, TracyHicks, David McCullough, Bob Nunn, Sherry Owens, Ludwig Schwarz, Noah Simblist, Janet Tyson, Marie Van Arsdale, Mary Vernon, and Marilyn Waligore.

About the Meadows Museum

The Meadows Museum is one of the  leading art institutions of the Southwest.  Established in 1965 by oilman Algur H. Meadows, it is located on the campus of Southern Methodist University incentral Dallas.  Its permanent collection of Spanish art, one of the largest and most comprehensive outside of Spain, contains works from the 10th through the 21st centuries by such masters as Velázquez, Goya, Miró and Picasso.

Its holdings also include a significant collection of 20th century sculpture, much of it on display in its outdoor plaza, as well as the University Art Collection, which features works by a number of noted Texas artists.  In accordance with its mission to advance knowledge and understanding of art, the Meadows Museum collaborates with institutions and collectors around the world to serve its broad audience by mounting exhibitions of works of the greatest aesthetic and historical importance, as well as offering a range of educational programs. 

Visit www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org for more information.

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