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Mar 1 2018 at 11:00 PMUpdated Mar 1 2018 at 11:00 PM

Battle of billionaires: culture muscles asidecowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth

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Artist Tony Tasset's sore-looking eye stares at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas. Mei-Chun Jau

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3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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The ninth floor of The Joule hotel should be far enough from prying eyes.

But there is no escaping the piercing gaze from the small park across Main Street in

downtown Dallas.

It stares into my room, day and night, observing my bedtime tossing and turning, daily

wardrobe choices and even when I brush my teeth.

Almost 10 metres high and bloodshot, The Eye by sculptor Tony Tasset is one of the stranger

sights in Dallas, a city forever associated with the 1980s television series about extravagant oil

millionaires.

The bank balances of J.R. Ewing and his brothers would barely amount to spare change for

today's Texan tycoons such as Tim Headington, the billionaire owner of The Joule.

The Nasher Sculpture Centre's garden is an oasis from Dallas' heat, humidity and traffic.

A stylish Neo-Gothic hotel, The Joule has a fine collection of bars and restaurants specialising

in Texan cuisine, which compete for attention with its collection of contemporary artworks

such as Andy Warhol's Electric Chairs and The Eye.

by Andrew Taylor

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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Headington bestowed the artistic eyeball on the city after his attempt to build a carpark

opposite his hotel was thwarted by neighbouring businesses that argued it would be "too

much of an eyesore".

Or that's what one of the hotel staff tells us: "He literally put a giant eyesore there for everyone.

It's a cute way of saying I'll do what I like."

It is an expensive way of delivering a two-fingered salute to your neighbours too.

But then everything is bigger in Texas, especially the bank balances of its tycoons who seem

to compete with each other to build museums filled with world-class art, replacing the gun

duels of Wild West folklore with their philanthropic arms race.

With its replica of George W. Bush's Oval Office, Dubya's Presidential Centre at Southern Methodist University is afascinating, if one-eyed, trip down the memory lane of his tenure.

Coupled with a burgeoning culinary scene and efficient airport, Big D (and its twin Fort

Worth) is an attractive port of entry for visitors wishing to avoid shambolic, inhospitable Los

Angeles International Airport.

Battle of the billionaires

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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The naked bodies gathered at the Nasher Sculpture Centre have certainly never had to slum it

through security at LAX.

Matisse's Large Seated Nude poses awkwardly under the stern gaze of Picasso's Head of a

Woman. Rodin's Eve modestly tries to hide her nudity opposite de Kooning's Seated Woman,

an abstract bronze giantess who appears content to bare her soul.

Tony Tasset's The Eye keeps The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas under surveillance.

Security guards inside the cool marble walls of the museum founded by millionaire

businessman Raymond Nasher seem nonplussed by their statuesque bronze and steel

companions, undoubtedly one of the finest collections of sculptures.

Outside in the sculpture garden – an oasis from the heat, humidity and ceaseless traffic –

squirrels chase each other across a lawn littered with works by Richard Serra, Henry Moore

and Alexander Calder.

John Ankeney, a past director of the Dallas Museum of Art, sagely observed in 1930: "Nature

made Dallas rich, Time will make her powerful, but only Art can make her great."

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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Self-serving? Perhaps. But it seems to have loosened the purse strings of collectors who have

donated or bequeathed works to the museum. These include the fertility figures collected by

Stanley Marcus of luxury retailer Neiman Marcus and his wife, Billie, and Wendy and Emery

Reves' collection of 1400 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by the likes of Cezanne,

Monet, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh.

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame features Annie Oakley's wedding ring and gun.

The battle of the billionaires heats up as we wander through the Dallas Arts District to The

Perot Museum of Nature and Science, conveniently located next to a Hooters sports bar and

grill chain.

Named after Ross Perot, the Texan tycoon whose quixotic 1992 presidential campaign helped

Bill Clinton to victory, the museum reportedly upset the God-fearing with "wild theories"

about birds evolving from dinosaurs and a Big Bang exhibition.

Beyond the floor full of dinosaur fossils and evolutionary theories, Perot himself features in

the museum's Engineering and Innovation section – evidence that bankrolling an institution

earns one the right to be an exhibit.

A place in history

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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Longhorn cattle sashay through Fort Worth's Stockyards (nicknamed the Wall Street of the West) each day for the benefit oftourists.

Besides oil tycoons (real and fictional), a small white 'x' on Elm Street marks Dallas'

unforgettable place in American history.

Thousands of cars drive over the spot each day, sometimes dodging tourists posing on the

spot where President John F. Kennedy was shot outside the Texas School Book Depository in

November 1963.

Inside the Depository building, The Sixth Floor Museum painstakingly recounts JFK's

presidency and his assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald.

George W. Bush's reputation was bruised by the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina and the Great

Recession, but the 43rd president turned artist looks less bad with every passing day of the

Trump presidency. With its replica of his Oval Office, Dubya's Presidential Centre at Southern

Methodist University is a fascinating, if one-eyed, trip down the memory lane of Bush's tenure

as the man in charge of the US's nuclear arsenal.

The September 11 display featuring a twisted steel beam from the World Trade Centre is

poignant. So too are Florida's notorious "hanging chads" that helped Bush win the contested

2000 election and the soldiers' portraits he painted.

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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A reluctant president, Bush is featured in a video waxing lyrical about west Texas and

describing how "nothing is better than cranking up a chainsaw and knocking down a water-

guzzling tree".

Other videos show Bush mangling the English language and singing: "You're all going to miss

me, the way you used to diss me."

Cowboys, crime and culture

Forth Worth's skyline with the Tarrant County Courthouse made famous by Chuck Norris in Walker, Texas Ranger.

Dallas has a conjoined twin – Fort Worth – with which it shares an airport, a tangle of

freeways and the AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys NFL team owned by

billionaire Jerry Jones.

The stadium also has a number of paintings, sculptures and installations by contemporary

artists including Olafur Eliasson and Doug Aitken, although one wonders if football fans and

concertgoers give the artworks a second glance.

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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Founded as an army outpost in 1849, Fort Worth's fortunes rode on the back of the longhorn

cattle that are shooed through its Stockyards (nicknamed the Wall Street of the West) each

day for the benefit of tourists.

Fans of Chuck Norris will also recognise the Tarrant County courthouse from his '90s TV

series Walker Texas Ranger.

Besides cowboys and crime, Fort Worth has an artistic side bolstered by the deep pockets of

its high and mighty residents and a culinary scene that is worth discovering.

Anchored by three top-notch institutions – the Kimbell Art Museum, Modern Art Museum of

Fort Worth and Amon Carter Museum of American Art – the Fort Worth Cultural District

rivals Dallas for the quality of its art and the architectural sleekness of its museum buildings.

The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, meanwhile, has Annie Oakley's wedding ring

and gun among its exhibits celebrating the women of the American West.

Annie would have needed to pack heat had she ventured into the streets of Hell's Half Acre,

otherwise known as the Bloody Third Ward, with its brothels, gambling dens and saloons

frequented by the likes of Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh (aka the Sundance Kid) as

well as Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp.

Walking the immaculate streets of downtown Fort Worth (purchased, cleaned up and

renamed Sundance Square by the billionaire Bass brothers, Ed and Sid) with guide Charlie

Norton, it is hard to believe the streets were once filled with shoot-outs and sleaze.

Norton recounts the day FBI agents reportedly stalked the streets looking in desperation for

classified documents scattered by a tornado that devastated city buildings including the

security services headquarters.

Fort Worth counts Bill Paxton, John Denver and Lee Harvey Oswald among its best-known

sons but their exploits are surpassed by those of Electra Waggoner (1912-2001) – a heiress to

one of the US's largest ranches who lived with one of her husbands (she amassed three) in the

historic Wharton-Scott House.

Known as the Princess of the Panhandle, Norton tells us she was "something else".

"She loved to drink. She loved to party," he says, sounding rather smitten. "She had a tattoo on

her thigh, very risqué for the time. Her father taught her to ride and shoot better than most

cowboys."

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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The writer was a guest of Visit Dallas and Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Drink and dine

Texas's signature food is the chilli. Its firepower is liberally and rather deliciously deployed

in chilli lime margaritas, hell's eggs and tamale tarts by chef Stephan Pyles at Stampede 66.

1717 McKinney Avenue, Dallas

Texas residents are not afraid to strike up a conversation, as our waiter at upmarket Oak in

Dallas' Design District proves. Asked where his southern drawl originates, he says he is

from neighbouring Louisiana: "We grow strawberries and ignorance and we're incredibly

proud of both." Oak's menu surfs the globe with Australian lamb loin, wild salmon and

hearty wood-fired steaks. 1628 Oak Lawn Avenue, Dallas

Named after the ranch in the 1950s movie Giant, starring James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor,

Reata's menu aims to satisfy a hungry farmhand with tenderloin tamales, blackened

buffalo ribeye and chicken fried steak, to name a few of the mammoth options. Chillis are

used liberally including in cocktails such as the Habanero lime margarita. Reata

Restaurant, 2731 White Settlement Road, Fort Worth

"Lady Liberty" is the secret password needed to cross the threshold of Thompson's

Bookstore on the night of our visit. Mismatched furniture, a fireplace and bookshelves

evoke a homely feel, while the basement bar has the atmosphere of a Prohibition-era

speakeasy with its classic cocktails, infused liquors and drinking vinegars that are easy on

the lips. Thompson's Bookstore, 900 Houston Street, Fort Worth

He might be one of its original employees, but Mierko takes little interest in the alchemy

that takes place behind the reception area of the Firestone & Robertson Distilling Co. The

German shepherd barely lifts his head as visitors ogle bottles of craft whiskey and bourbon

patriotically bottled with the TX label. "He's just punching it in on the clock," says co-owner

Leonard Firestone as he leads us through the Prohibition-era warehouse where water,

corn, wheat and yeast made from pecans grown in North Texas are turned into liquid gold.

Whiskey Ranch, 4250 Mitchell Boulevard, Fort Worth

NEED TO KNOW

Getting there Qantas flies direct from Sydney to Dallas Fort Worth International. Other

airlines fly via Los Angeles and San Francisco

Staying there The Joule, 1530 Main Street, Dallas

3/19/2018 Battle of billionaires: culture muscles aside cowboys in Dallas and Fort Worth | afr.com

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