Nerve Endings Firing Away

We visited Dallas over the weekend with S&R. Like any other Texas city, it is not really a great place to visit although it might be one to live in (right, Sunil?). San Antonio at least has the Alamo and the River Walk but you can’t name any primary attractions for other Texas cities. Of course, Dallas has the museum district and charming as it may seem in the sea of sprawl, you’ll find the experience underwhelming if you have visited other notable museums, . A museum is the only structure where an architect can justifiably go wild with his imaginations and claim that the structure that houses the art is a piece of art in itself. Think Guggenheim, High Museum in Atlanta, or even the glass pyramid at the Louvre.

Our primary reason for visit was the Dallas Museum of Art which is currently hosting the Tutankhamen exhibit. We booked VIP tickets to cut the wait time short and opted for the once-a-month late Friday night. But still the museum was crowded…with kids. I’m sure the ‘Mummy’ had more to do with the interest than interest in ancient Egyptian archeology. However, there was no mummy at display but only smaller artifacts found in the famed Tutankhamen tomb. It was definitely great to see these objects that were supposed to keep the boy king busy in his afterlife but I must say that I was disappointed at not seeing even the outer-fourth coffin in which he was embalmed. We were told the sarcophagus along with the Russian doll-like caskets never leave Egypt. Instead we saw photographs and enlarged X-Ray images and MRI scans of the mummy which although impressive cannot lift your dampened spirits. Thankfully no one was dancing the Walk Like an Egyptian although you could see hazaar kids in those overpriced ($35!!!) King Tut headgear.

The next day we visited what may be a far more popular tourist destination in Dallas – the spot where Jack Kennedy was assassinated. The street even has couple of X marks to show where exactly he was shot. It brings out the best in human morbid curiosity. As you walk around the grassy knoll, you come across couple of guys with a table and a clip chart showing how Lee Harvey Oswald was probably a fall guy and the fatal shots probably came from the fence behind us. This is the baap of all conspiracy theories but admittedly has more teeth to it than any other. One of the guys reportedly had first broken the story and photos on the finding that JFK probably was shot from the front instead of in the back of the head. Heck, he had photos of the JFK autopsy too (dunno if they were real though). It helps when the Vice President Lyndon Johnson admitted that Oswald probably might not have been the lone gunman. The sixth floor of the Dallas Book Repository from where Oswald (allegedly) shot Kennedy has been converted to a museum of sorts with pictures of that fateful day. Again a badly designed museum space not equipped to handle the tons of visitors that this place attracts.

The Kennedy Memorial across a few blocks and designed by Philip Johnson is a ugly monstrosity built out of bare concrete columns. Again we imagine this looks better at night but totally lacks the subtle beauty of other memorials like the Vietnam wall. Perhaps Dallas simply does not want to remember that day and you cannot blame them for it.