Our History & Founders

Dallas leaders explore creation of a cultural district creating a home for the city’s cultural institutions. The Carr-Lynch Study recommends creating the transformative Dallas Arts District in the economically depressed northeast corner of downtown.

Dallas Museum of Art opens.

Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center opens.

Dallas Theater Center and The Dallas Opera join forces to create a multi- venue performance center in the Arts District to house both organizations. They formed the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation to undertake fundraising, design and construction. Margaret McDermott provides a gift of $3M to jumpstart the campaign.

Architects announced. London based Foster + Partners chosen to design an opera house. The team will also design Annette Strauss Square. The multi-form theatre will be designed REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramus (partner in charge) and Rem Koolhaas. Koolhaas and Norman Foster are both recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Opera house to be named for Margot and Bill Winspear following a $42M gift, at the time the largest of its kind in Dallas history.

Dallas voters approve $17M in bonds for the public share of the Center.

Multi-form theatre named following a $20M gift from Dee and Charles Wyly and Cheryl and Sam Wyly.

Groundbreaking on November 10.

Premiere dance and world music presenter TITAS will be resident fine arts presenter at the Center.

Topping out ceremonies for Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre.

Recital hall in the Winspear Opera House to be named for Nancy B. Hamon following a $10M gift.

Three main stages at the Center named for Shannon and Ted Skokos, including Skokos Pavilion in Strauss Square following $10M gift.

Performance Park renamed for Elaine B. and Charles A. Sammons following $15M gift from Sammons Enterprises.

AT&T naming sponsorship announced. Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is renamed AT&T Performing Arts Center.

AT&T Performing Arts Center opens. Spotlight Sunday on October 19 draws tens of thousands of visitors from across North Texas for tours, entertainment and fireworks.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific is among the first touring Broadway productions at the Center.

The Dallas Opera produces world premiere of Moby-Dick, by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer.

Annette Strauss Square opens.

Resident company Dallas Black Dance Theatre premiered Nycole Ray’s (current DBDT: Encore! Artistic Director and previous Dallas Black Dance Theatre dancer) acclaimed work The Edge of My Life…So Far.  Photo by Sharen Bradford             

Center kicks off its Patio Sessions featuring local artists and bands in Sammons Park.

Dallas Theater Center’s production of the The Wiz demonstrates the groundbreaking flexibility of the Wyly Theatre by seating the audience members in pods that moved around the stage during the performance.

Blockbuster musical Jersey Boys runs for five weeks in the Winspear Opera House.

TITAS, the Center and Dallas Theater Center produce The Gathering, an AIDS fundraising event featuring a dozen arts organizations, 200+ artists, as well as stagehands and crew members, all donating their time. The critically acclaimed event is presented again in 2013 and 2023.

The Center launches its first arts education programs: Open Stages, bringing students to presentations at the Center, and Backstage Spotlight, teaching students the backstage crafts.

Center announces The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a collaboration with Shakespeare Dallas to present staged readings of all the Bard’s plays and sonnets over a five-year period.

Broadway touring production of War Horse sets a record as the highest grossing play to perform in Dallas.

The first Reliant Lights Your Holidays entertains thousands with free performances, fireworks, and the illumination of half-a-million LED lights across the Center’s campus.

Broadway touring hit The Book of Mormon sells out in its Dallas premiere.

To mark its 50th anniversary, cosmetics giant Mary Kay parks 100 of its pink Cadillacs on the street in front of the Center.

In recognition of a $5M gift, the chandelier is renamed as The Moody Foundation Chandelier. American composer Philip Glass adapts his piece “The Light” to accompany the chandelier’s pre-performance ascent into the ceiling, a beloved tradition at the Center.

City of Dallas hosts the U.S. Conference of Mayors Annual Meeting, showcasing the Dallas Arts District. Singer Bonnie Raitt performs in Strauss Square for hundreds of the nation’s mayors.

NPR and KERA-FM bring the Storycorps MobileBooth to the AT&T Performing Arts Center to gather the stories from North Texas public radio fans for air on NPR newscasts and to be archived in the Library of Congress.

Center launches The Elevator Project, a groundbreaking program presenting small, emerging and historically marginalized arts organizations on its stages in the Dallas Arts District. It becomes a major launching pad for local talent and new works. The first show is Upstart Productions’ Year of the Rooster.

AURORA, the biennial multi-media art exhibition featuring local and international artists, holds its third expansive presentation across the Arts District, drawing more than 50,000 in one night.

Alt-rock star St. Vincent performs with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the Winspear Opera House, a collaboration between the Center and DSO as part of its SOLUNA: International Music and Arts Festival.

Legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp premieres her 50th Anniversary Tour at the Winspear Opera House, a landmark TITAS presentation.

Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Lila Downs belts out tunes and throws back tequila to a packed house in Strauss Square.

Dallas Theater Center, SMU Meadows School of the Arts and AT&T PAC jointly produce the first Public Works Dallas musical The Tempest. The participatory theater work features five professional actors and 200 community members in the ensemble cast.

The Moody Foundation makes a $12M gift to the Center and an additional $10M gift to endow the Moody Fund for the Arts, which will provide flexible grants to small Dallas arts organizations. To recognize this gift, the City Council votes to rename its 750-seat Arts District venue as Moody Performance Hall.

The groundbreaking ArtsBridge – Powered by Toyota is launched to help connect historically underserved West Dallas with cultural experiences both in West Dallas and at the Center. The program Brass and Jazz in the Park, performed in West Dallas parks, becomes an annual favorite.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama helps launch the Center’s new Young Women’s Leadership Conference with a surprise appearance before the participating high school students.

The Moody Fund for the Arts (MFA) makes its first grants to small Dallas arts organizations. To date, MFA has awarded more than $2,380,000 in 350+ unique grants to more than 90 groups for general operations, new works, capacity building and more. Among those is Teatro Dallas (pictured).

Dallas Summer Musicals (now Broadway Dallas) and the Center announce a landmark partnership to present some of DSM’s season in the Winspear Opera House. The agreement is hailed as a huge win for audiences, bringing even more Broadway to North Texas.

First Disney Musicals in Schools Student Share program in the Winspear Opera House. Participating students perform numbers from Disney musicals before family and friends. The program helps public elementary schools create and sustain musical theater programs.

AT&T sponsors a competition for the creation of a new pre-performance composition to be played as the Moody Foundation Chandelier rises into the ceiling. “The Lights Are Rising” was composed by Damoyee Janai Neroes (pictured), a senior at Booker T. Washington High School of the Performing and Visual Arts. The school’s orchestra performs the recorded piece.

First annual Bravo! Gala fundraising event for the Center is held on the Skokos Stage in the Winspear Opera House featuring Broadway star Sutton Foster.

Ghost lights are illuminated on stages across the country. Covid-19 pandemic forces shutdown of arts and cultural venues nationwide, devastating the cultural economy. Over the course of the pandemic, Dallas nonprofit arts organizations report $95M in financial losses and over 1,000 jobs lost.

The Center’s education department converts many of its in-person programs into virtual programs to help teachers provide arts education to hundreds of thousands of students across dozens of school districts.

Staff of the Center, The Dallas Opera and Dallas Theater Center use their backstage spaces and costumer shops to create personal protective equipment for front line health care workers.

In September, Center reopens its outdoor performance space, Strauss Square, providing a venue where local arts organizations can perform and fundraise before socially-distanced audiences on the lawn.

Red Alert – Save Our Stages lights up arts venues and the city’s skyline in red to support federal Covid relief funding to help save live entertainment and arts venues. It became the lifeline Shuttered Venue Operating Grants.

The Center’s ArtsBridge program presents Jab Sessions, live performances for those waiting in line for Covid vaccinations at health clinics in West Dallas.

The band America plays to the first packed house in Strauss Square since the pandemic.

Center’s Auxiliary Board presents the first Turn Up the Lights fundraising event in Sammons Park and Strauss Square.

First free Brass and Jazz in the Park concert in Jaycee Zaragoza Park in West Dallas as part of its community engagement program ArtsBridge – Powered by Toyota.

Center hosts its first Latinidad Festival highlighting Latin American music, dance, food in Strauss Square, attracting 3,000 people.

Center announces veteran arts executive Warren Tranquada as its new president and CEO.

The highly successful ArtsBridge community program expands into South Dallas neighborhood thanks to support from the Eugene McDermott Foundation and BMO Harris Bank.

Immersive arts experiences take front and center in the Wyly Theatre. The Canadian presentation, Hubblo, provided a visual journey for audiences seated in a dome on stage. And Bombshell Dance Project’s dance-theater murder mystery In the Conservatory with the Knife took audience members across multiple floors of the Wyly Theatre to try to solve the crime.

Center hosts its first Asian American Pacific Islander Family Weekend in Sammons Park.

The Center and its concessions partner G Texas launch Flora Cantina, adding an affordable pre-show and post-performance dining option for arts patrons adding a new destination and vibrance to the Dallas Arts District.

Hundreds of people from North Texas and across the country gather in Sammons Park to watch the total eclipse.

Center celebrates its 15th Anniversary. Welcomes all with a free fall community concert series.

The Moody Foundation Chandelier in the Winspear Opera House is composed of 318 six-feet long, acrylic LED light rods. 44 motors lift it into the ceiling before each performance. Normally in a cone formation, they can be rearranged into different configurations and color schemes, including a Christmas tree.

The colorful pattern on the Kuitca Curtain was specially commissioned and designed by Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca. It is a configuration of the seating chart for the Winspear Opera House. This public art was funded by a gift from philanthropist Margaret McDermott.

Both the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre have a signature wall backstage where performers sign their names after their show. Signatures include Michelle Obama, Billy Crystal, Carol Burnett, Kristin Chenoweth, St. Vincent, Charlie Daniels, and the cast of Peter and the Starcatcher.

The Winspear Opera House backstage area is big enough to park a Boeing 737 jet.

The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre is covered with 466 aluminum tubes in 6 different sizes. Each tube is suspended vertically from the top of the 10-story building. They drape down the sides of the Wyly like a giant metal curtain.

The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House has seven stories of more than 1,450 panes of red glass coverings called cladding.

The original Annette Strauss Square was built in 1989. Artist Square was a temporary, affordable stage for Dallas artists located where the Winspear Opera House is today. Its events attracted 200,000 a year. In 1998, it was renamed to honor the late Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss, a passionate arts advocate.

Annette Strauss Square seats about 2,000 people, and up to 3,000 standing room only crowds. The stage is 40 feet deep and 60 feet wide.

The Center’s buildings are built in the flight path of Dallas Love Field Airport. To block out the sound, the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre each have two roofs, with 12-15 feet of open-air space as a buffer.

During the campaign to build the Center, more than 125 individuals, families, corporations and foundations made gifts of $1M or more. That is still a significant achievement for campaigns like this. All of those donors’ names are embedded inside the Donor Reflecting Pool in Sammons Park.

Originally, the music played when the Moody Foundation Chandelier rises into the ceiling before each performance was by American composer Philip Glass, who adapted his piece “The Light”. See 2019 in the timeline to learn about the student-composed piece that is played today!

The Winspear Opera House is the third opera house to have been built in downtown Dallas. One was located at the site of the current Greyhound Bus Depot, and the other was on the site of the current University of North Texas Law School near Main Street Garden.

The furthest seat from the stage is 119 feet from the front of the stage, which is closer than the front of the balcony to the stage at Fair Park.

There is a Winspear Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada that was funded by Francis Winspear who is the father of industrialist Bill Winspear, namesake of the Winspear Opera House. There is also a Winspear Performance Hall in the Murchison Performing Arts Center at the University of North Texas in Denton.

There are 659 louvers on the expansive sky canopy surrounding the Winspear Opera House. The canopy is 65 feet off the ground and covers 3 acres of Sammons Park. The area beneath is closed during freezing events to protect pedestrians from ice falling from the louvers.