After several years away, one of the Dallas Museum of Art’s most interactive spaces is ready to welcome visitors back.
The DMA’s Center for Creative Connections, better known as C3, reopens this September following renovations prompted by major flood damage in 2022. The more than 10,000-square-foot learning environment returns with upgraded studios, new technology for art making, a redesigned play space, and fresh presentations drawn from both the DMA’s collection and Dallas’ creative community.
C3 will officially reopen with a free weekend-long celebration Saturday, September 19, and Sunday, September 20, featuring performances, artist talks, hands-on art making, scavenger hunts, and programming inspired by its new exhibitions.
Originally opened in 2008 under former DMA Director Bonnie Pitman, C3 was conceived as a place where visitors could engage directly with original works of art while experimenting, making, and learning. Its interactive galleries, artist projects, studios, theater, and Arturo’s Nest play space made it an early model for museum education spaces around the country.
The newly renovated C3 builds on that approach while introducing several significant updates. Its 82-seat theater has been outfitted with improved soundproofing and upgraded equipment for presenting time-based media, while a new Art Lab gives visitors access to tools including 3D printers, laser cutters, and other emerging technologies. Arturo’s Nest, designed for infants and toddlers, has also been reimagined, alongside improvements to the center’s studio spaces.
“As the city’s museum, the DMA places education and access at the core of our work, and the Center for Creative Connections is the perfect embodiment of this ethos,” said Brian Ferriso, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “C3 is where curiosity begins, where questions are encouraged, and where every DMA journey starts.”
At the center of the reopening is Rhythms on Repeat, a new exhibition bringing together more than 50 works from the DMA’s collection to consider rhythm as both a visual and audible force. Spanning periods, geographies, and media, the exhibition includes paintings by Pablo Picasso and Romare Bearden, ceramics by Viktor Schreckengost and Roberto Lugo, and musical objects including a Mangbetu horn.
That exploration continues with Pattern Play, a new interactive installation by Dallas-based sculptor and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts teacher Jessica Bell.
Responding to sound, Bell’s installation invites visitors to build patterns using brightly colored three-dimensional forms. Inspired by repetition and variation in natural cycles and human expression, the work considers rhythm as something capable of forming both environments and emotional experience.
“The Center for Creative Connections is one of the most alive spaces in the museum,” said Stacey Lizotte, the DMA’s Allen and Kelli Questrom Center for Creative Connections Chief Learning Officer. “At any given moment, visitors are looking, listening, making, talking, and thinking.”
Pattern Play will remain on view into 2027, while Rhythms on Repeat continues into 2029. Throughout both presentations, C3 will host programming exploring connections between pattern, music, and artmaking.
The reopening weekend offers an introduction to that expanded vision. Artists represented in Rhythms on Repeat will lead talks and activities, joined by performances with local musicians and DJs, along with self-guided experiences encouraging visitors to trace patterns and musical connections throughout the DMA’s collection.
The Center for Creative Connections reopens at the Dallas Museum of Art with free public programming Sept. 19–20. More information is available at dma.org.