MMA’s proposal for the Reimagining the Dallas Museum of Art international design competition addresses the transformation of one of North America’s leading art museums. The design preserves the stepped gallery sequence of the original Edward Larrabee Barnes building while introducing a series of strategic interventions across the full city block site. A new elevated floor of gallery and program spaces floats above the treetops of the Arts District, connecting Barnes’s existing galleries into a continuous spatial sequence. Below, the original inward-looking concourse is replaced with a transparent façade that opens the museum to the street and reveals its interior activity.

The elevation of the new gallery level transforms North Harwood Street into an expansive civic landscape that bridges Klyde Warren Park and downtown Dallas. This ground plane operates as a continuous public surface—linking the park, the museum, and the surrounding Arts District into a single urban environment. The new transparent enclosure at street level dissolves the boundary between interior and exterior, positioning the museum as an open, publicly accessible institution embedded within the daily life of the city.

Taken together, these moves propose a museum that extends outward rather than turning inward—one that connects the history of the Barnes building to the evolving needs of the institution and the city it serves.

The competition team included Studio Zewde as Landscape Architect, Guy Nordenson and Associates as Structural Design Engineer, Buro Happold as MEP Engineer, Atelier Ten as Sustainability Consultant, and Joel Sanders Architect / MIXdesign as Exhibition Design and Accessibility Consultant.