With the passing of Charles Dee Mitchell, who died on Friday at the age of 74, the Dallas art world has lost one of its leading lights who helped shape the local artistic culture as a critic, curator, collector, patron and general all-around wise man of the arts.
After getting a theater degree from SMU, and a brief period teaching at Greenhill School and living in New York, Mitchell began working in 1972 at a small startup called Half-Price Books, eventually becoming chief buyer. Retiring early, he devoted his considerable talents and resources to the flourishing of the visual arts in Dallas.
For many years, Mitchell had a major voice in representing the North Texas art scene to the broader art world, in sharp, penetrating reviews published in Artforum and Art in America, among other magazines. (When I tried to educate myself about Dallas art before I moved here in 2009, reading Mitchell’s impressive publications set my expectations at a high level.)
Unlike many who write about art, though, the breadth and depth of Mitchell’s literary and cultural knowledge set his work apart. A glimpse at the index of his archive at the Dallas Museum of Art, or even his eccentric blog, suggests the range of his thinking. Later he exercised this range as president of the literary and poetry organization Wordspace from 2010 to 2018, which was credited with helping nurture a “literary renaissance” in Dallas.
His Bermuda Street home, designed by the architect Ron Wommack, was made to showcase his art collection, which Mitchell developed with razor-sharp, unerring taste. Far from simply pursuing the blue-chip or fashionable, as so many collectors do, Mitchell thought deeply and committed whole-heartedly. Among his outside-the-box interests was conflict photography, of which he was a significant collector, which brought together media, culture and politics.
The work of the local artists he supported, such as Ludwig Schwarz (whom Mitchell curated at The Box Company), or Jesse Morgan Barnett (to whom Mitchell turned over his home as an exhibition venue), was invariably among the most exacting creative work, demanding viewers’ full attention — never something that could be viewed distractedly or lazily. Like all of Mitchell’s projects, these curatorial projects brought together eye and mind at an elevated level, setting a high standard for those who follow.
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