Dallas built its culture out of money and ambition: four Pritzker laureates on one street, a free encyclopedic museum, and the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world at Fair Park. This is the culture-first route, not the tourist one.
Free general admission to 25,000 works spanning Ancient American gold, Mondrian and a re-created Wisteria Dining Room by Guimard. Open Tue–Sun 11:00–17:00 (Thu to 21:00), closed Monday. Edward Larrabee Barnes designed the 1984 barrel-vaulted building.
Renzo Piano's travertine pavilion with a sun-scooping cast-glass roof, holding Raymond Nasher's modern sculpture collection: Rodin, Giacometti, Serra's Inverted House of Cards. Wed–Sun 11:00–17:00. The 1.4-acre garden is by Peter Walker.
Trammell Crow's collection of Chinese jade, Japanese screens and a full 17th-century carved sandstone facade from a Rajasthani haveli, installed indoors. Free admission, Wed–Sun 10:00–17:00, on Flora Street opposite the Nasher.
The 1902 red-brick cathedral seats one of the largest Catholic congregations in the US, mostly Spanish-speaking. Two blocks away, Philip Johnson's 1976 spiral Chapel of Thanksgiving holds a stained-glass Glory Window by Gabriel Loire.
I.M. Pei's 1989 hall for the Dallas Symphony, built as a Russell Johnson shoebox with 42 movable concrete reverberation chambers behind the audience. Free guided tours are offered on select weekdays; the lobby is open to walk-ins.
Foster + Partners' drum-shaped Winspear sits under a 400-foot solar canopy; across the plaza, OMA and Rem Koolhaas stacked the Wyly's fly tower and back-of-house vertically so the stage walls can open onto the street.
The largest collection of Spanish art outside Spain: Velázquez, Goya's Los Caprichos in full, El Greco, Ribera and Miró. Tue–Sat 10:00–17:00, Sun 13:00–17:00. Santiago Calatrava's kinetic Wave sculpture stands in the plaza outside.
The 1931 Venetian-style cinema, once the largest in Dallas and briefly owned by Howard Hughes. Now an independent repertory house screening 35mm and arthouse films, with a bar in the balcony lounge and live music some nights.
The largest intact collection of 1936 Art Deco exposition architecture in the world: the Hall of State, six Esplanade pylons, and Carlo Ciampaglia's restored mural cycle on the facades of the Centennial and Automobile buildings.
Housed in Arthur Rogers's 1993 ivory stone building at Fair Park, holding one of the largest African American folk art collections in the country plus archives on Freedman's Town and Dallas's Black business district on Elm Street.
Oak Cliff's 1920s shopfront district, now around 60 independent galleries, letterpress studios and record shops along Bishop and Seventh. The 1942 Kessler Theater nearby books singer-songwriters and Tejano acts in a 400-seat Deco room.
The old Sears catalogue warehouse turned artist lofts anchors this post-industrial quarter south of downtown, with the non-collecting Dallas Contemporary nearby staging large-scale installations in a converted trucking warehouse.