For 14 years, the Dallas Women’s Gallery was a vital outlet for Texas contemporary artists. Then it vanished; its history scattered across filing cabinets, microfilm reels and fading memories. 

However, as the lights dimmed in Rudder Forum, a forgotten chapter of Texas art history flickered back to life. Old exhibition posters and the faces of artists long left out of the record glowed on the screen as students, professors and community members filed in to take their seats. Texas A&M began stitching the story back together, unveiling a project resurrecting a gallery that once helped launch more than 450 artists. 

The DW Gallery first opened its doors on Nov. 1, 1975. The artist-run space was founded by eight women in an effort to make space for up-and-coming artists struggling to be shown in the mainstream art scene of Dallas. 

A&M’s DWG Project kicked off in Rudder Forum on Nov. 4 with live demonstrations, video screenings and a panel with former gallery artists Linnea Glatt, Ann Stautberg and Ellen Soderquist. The Texas Art Project at Texas A&M and Art This Week Productions came together to launch the project in a multiyear initiative that rebuilds the history of the gallery. 

The free event invited students, educators and community members to engage with the project. It also celebrated the launch of the DWG website, which includes video oral histories, an ephemera database, an interactive timeline, essays and resources. After opening remarks and the web resources demonstration, the panelists spoke in a roundtable discussion that invited audience members to engage in asking questions.

Art This Week Productions Executive Director Richard Serrano said he first heard about the D.W. Co-op — which later became the DW Gallery — over five years ago, and since then, he said he has always had an interest in covering it.

“It always sounded really interesting, but there was really not a lot of research on it when I started, so it was always in the back of my mind to do something about it,” Serrano said.

The project gained momentum once Serrano partnered with assistant professor in the College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts Tianna Helena Uchacz, Ph.D., after being inspired by her work as the coordinator for the Texas Art Project, an initiative created by Bill and Linda Reaves, scholars and collectors of Texas art, in 2021 to bring young people’s attention to Texas art. The process unfolded slowly, then grants, archival access and artist participation began lining up.

“It was a few dominoes all falling at the right time,” Serrano said. “When I approached Tianna, she thought it was a really good idea, and then we started applying for grants and reaching out to artists, just to see who was still around and interested.”

With support from the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Public Library and archived microfilm from the Smithsonian, Serrano said the DWG Project tracked exhibition records through old postcards, exhibition announcements and news articles to rebuild the gallery’s full 14-year exhibition history.

“We knew it was important when we started, but over the past two years, it’s almost unbelievable how important it was,” Serrano said. “A lot of artists told us it was either their first gallery or the one that launched their career.”

Because the gallery closed in 1988, before the internet and social media, Serrano said much of its legacy had been forgotten — something this project now aims to reverse. He said as the project developed, he realized the gallery’s influence had shaped generations of artists.

“Even though it ended in 1988, we were able to uncover these stories and document them through video oral histories, so we can finally show the impact it had on the Texas art scene,” Serrano said.

The launch of the DWG Project marks its first reveal to the public, something Serrano said the team sees as both exciting and nerve-racking.

“We’re all nervous, happy, tense; just really anxious to finally show everybody what we’ve done,” Serrano said.

Glatt spoke about the early years of the co-op, where members paid rent, hung their own shows and rotated shifts to staff the gallery while working second or third jobs. She mentioned DWG’s first exhibition, a group show of weavings, sculpture, ceramics, painting and drawing by its eight founding members.

“We paid about $33 a month, which doesn’t sound like much now, but back then it mattered,” Glatt said. “We did everything; we painted walls, scheduled shows and decided who exhibited next. We didn’t have a director until much later.”

Even so, members said the gallery’s greatest impact came from the relationships and visibility it created. The project’s website says the “DW Gallery stood as a model of resilience, ingenuity and collaboration.” The gallery’s doors closed in 1988, concluding its 13-year history with “The Last Show” organized by Linda Samuels, one of its founding members. 

“Art is a form of communication, and if the work isn’t seen, it’s like your voice isn’t heard,” Glatt said. “DW gave us that voice.”

Uchacz explained their research efforts for the Texas Art Project at Texas A&M now include digitized materials from multiple collections, along with an interactive online timeline that documents every exhibition, move and leadership change in the gallery’s history.

“We’ve built a super-archive from pieces of other people’s archives,” Uchacz said. “The timeline lets you click on an artist and instantly see every exhibition they were part of, along with all related ephemera.”

The gallery began with eight members in 1975 and grew to 14 by the time it incorporated in 1979, remaining primarily women-run throughout its lifespan. Although started by women, it began exhibiting male artists early on. Some of the most prominent artists in Texas art today, including David Bates, Clyde Connell, Linnea Glatt and more, had their earliest shows with the gallery.

“So across its tenure, it gave rise to early shows for some of the most prominent contemporary artists in Texas and beyond.” Uchacz said. “That’s a real point of pride for the gallery.” 

Uchacz said the hope of the DWG Project is not only to share research, but to spark conversation about how artist-led collaboration can challenge the systems that shape who is seen in the art world.

“It’s really about showing how artists created their own opportunities when the existing system wasn’t built for them,” Uchacz said. “That’s the kind of meaningful change we want people to think about.”