Dallas Art Fair and Dallas Museum of Art Mark a Decade of Collecting

Ten years into its acquisition program, the Dallas Art Fair Foundation and Dallas Museum of Art have announced six works entering the permanent collection from this year’s fair, bringing the program’s total to 78 acquisitions made possible through more than $1 million in dedicated fund contributions since the fund launched in 2016.

The 2026 selections span five artists and roughly fifty years of work: Nicole Eisenman, Gloria Klein, Caroline Monnet, Hasani Sahlehe, and Raymond Saunders. Curatorial selections were made by Vivian Li, Ade Omotosho, Emily Friedman, Nicole R. Myers, and DMA director Brian Ferriso, alongside fund donors.

“Spanning the mid-1970s to the present, their inventive, layered approaches to textile, painting, relief, drawing, and collage transform deeply personal perspectives into powerfully original work,” said Li, the Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA. “These acquisitions reflect our ongoing commitment to Indigenous, LGBTQ, women, and African diaspora artists who are forging bold and compelling paths.”

The range of material approaches is notable. Eisenman’s Foghorn (2018) is a stained wooden relief, a relatively rare object format for an artist better known for painting, acquired from Anton Kern Gallery. A 1974 untitled canvas by Klein, acquired from Anat Ebgi, represents an earlier moment in the collection’s chronology. Klein, who died in 2021, built her practice around dense diagonal patterning that sits somewhere between systemic order and psychological pressure, work that was actively shown through alternative networks in 1970s New York before largely falling outside institutional attention. A forthcoming monograph will be published later this year. Monnet’s Kingdom (2026), made from roof underlayment and stitched polyester thread, arrives from Blouin Division and continues her engagement with Anishinaabe methodologies and colonial histories through unconventional material choices.

The two Saunders works, an untitled piece from 1990–2000 and HK 83, both acquired from Andrew Kreps Gallery, bring acrylic, pencil, and collage together on paper, consistent with a practice defined by accumulation: found ephemera, handwritten marks, blackboard surfaces that kept his role as an educator close to the surface of the work. Saunders died last year; the Carnegie Museum of Art mounted what became the most comprehensive institutional survey of his practice in the months before his passing. Sahlehe’s My Prayer (2025), a large-scale canvas at 96 by 78 inches acquired from CANADA, uses acrylic gel and airbrush in tandem, thick surface application alongside pigment that absorbs directly into the weave, a tension between methods the Atlanta-based artist has been developing in recent work.

The fair has functioned as a point of entry into the DMA’s holdings for a decade now, with the fund growing from an initial $50,000 contribution to more than $1 million. Since its inception, the Dallas Art Fair Foundation has raised more than $3 million across the DMA, Nasher Sculpture Center, and Dallas Contemporary.

“What the Dallas Art Fair does best is bring the voices shaping contemporary art to Dallas,” said fair director Kelly Cornell. “Through the Acquisition Fund, that caliber of work enters the Dallas Museum of Art’s permanent collection, creating a lasting cultural impact well beyond the fair.”