Catherine Cuellar
The new Arts District executive director on Dallas' embarrassment of riches
There is no area of the city more vibrant than the 68-acre Dallas Arts District, the largest area of its kind in the nation. There, major cultural institutions share space with innovative architecture, burgeoning high-rises, and restaurants from the city’s culinary stars.
The Arts District’s promising future is now in the hands of new executive director Catherine Cuellar. A former community arts columnist for the Dallas Morning News, KERA reporter and managing editor of Pegasus News, she has also served on the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission for years as an at-large member.
Cuellar started her art career as a teen docent at the Dallas Museum of Art, and her childhood memories include the laying of the building’s cornerstone. Her new role is a homecoming of sorts, with a two-fold goal of enhancing communication among district stakeholders and being an ambassador for the arts in Dallas.
She’s excited to share what she sees as an “embarrassment of riches” with both our city and the world. “We’re living in a real Renaissance time right now,” she says. “We’re going to look at this moment the way people look at LA in the ’70s or Paris in the ’20s. I think Dallas deservedly has a reputation as the working artist capital of the United States.”
Below, just a few of the things that make Cuellar’s world go ’round:
