"Also included in the exhibition is Dallas-based artist Cynthia Mulcahy’s Daddy (War Garden Series) (2024), a lacquer box containing ten glass tubes that resemble cigars. Each tube has an image of a famous man, such as Benjamin Franklin and Pope John XXI (1215-77), all of whom published guidelines on how to prevent or terminate pregnancy with plants, examples of which fill the glass vessels.
“I want to draw in viewers with a James Bond-like travel case for the botanical agents,” Mulcahy says of the work. “At the same time, Daddy is a parody of the necessity of any man's advice about our reproductive lives. I hope folks think about the absolute necropolitics of all these laws being passed and the absurdity of the persecution and prosecution of people seeking basic healthcare.”
- Annabel Keenan, ‘We are down here fighting for our lives’: Texas exhibition highlights crackdowns on reproductive healthcare and abortion access. Focusing on works by artists with ties to the American South, “Is It Real?” raises awareness and funds for reproductive rights for communities on the front lines. The Art Newspaper, October 15, 2024.
"This is not the first time an attempt has been made to physically mark sites of segregation and racial violence in Dallas’ public parks. In 2014, artists Cynthia Mulcahy and lauren woods (lowercase intentional) received funding to create markers in Dallas’ formerly segregated parks — public spaces like Moore Park or Oak Cliff Negro (now Eloise Lundy) Park, which were once designated for
Black Dallasites and typically located in segregated and redlined neighborhoods. The artists’ project was halted, not by choice of the artists. They and others related to the project believe that neither funders nor the city were ready for an honest depiction of Dallas’ history. While the city has partnered with DCJI on its work, it remains to be seen how far its decision makers are willing to go and how honest a narrative they can tolerate."
- Lizzie MacWillie, Dallas County Justice Initiative Works to Commemorate Sites of Triumph and Terror, Texas Architect Magazine March/April 2023 Issue. Click here for article.
"It was not until a 2015 grant from the Office of Art and Culture allowed artist Cynthia Mulcahy to dig into the park’s history that activists began discussing restoring the park. Mulcahy looked through oral histories as well as municipal archives in Dallas, San Francisco and New York, and discovered the statues featured in the garden date back to the 17th century. “They are the oldest works in Dallas’s public art collection, that they didn’t know they had,” Mulcahy said.
- Emma Ruby, Historic Japanese Garden in Kidd Springs Park opens after $1 million restoration, published in Oak Cliff Advocate Magazine, June 23, 2023
Smart, Lauren. Rooted in history, The Dallas Morning News Sunday Arts Section, July 3, 2022, Photograph.
Guerrero, Andrea A. American Monument: Remembering as a Form of Resistance. Chapter 20 of In and Out of View: Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression and Censorship. Edited by Catha Paquette, Karen Kleinfelder, and Christopher Miles. Afterward by Laura Raicovich and Svetlana Mintcheva. Bloomsbury Press published 2022.
Mulcahy, Cynthia. Moore Park opened in 1938 as largest Black park during segregation. Oak Cliff Advocate, February 2021 Magazine Issue, photographs.
Simek, Lucia. Shelf Life / An archive of non-perishable cultural sustenance from around the world: Cynthia Mulcahy, Nasher online initiative, April 2020, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas.
Hallock, Jeremy. Cultivating a unique view of hostilities: Artist focuses a lens of flora and fauna to comment on the U. S. war machine, The Dallas Morning News, July 22, 2018, photographs.
Rees, Christina. A Stroll Through America’s War Garden with Cynthia Mulcahy, Glasstire, July 3, 2018, photographs.
"And if we leave that sucker up there, we're going to need one hell of a plaque. Probably I could think of lots better qualified authors for it--Cynthia Mulcahy, lauren woods, Michael Phillips, to name but a few."
- Jim Schutze, Context for Confederate Monument Would Require One Hell of a Plaque. Dallas Observer, March 23, 2018.
Simek, Peter. The Lost History of Dallas' Negro Parks: Two artists were commissioned to explore the city’s segregated past. What they found proved a bit too stark for the powers that be. D Magazine, June 2016 Issue, photographs.
"Now, a history project meant to honor seven of Dallas' historically Black parks has sparked a dispute about how the city should remember an ugly part of its past. lauren woods and Cynthia Mulcahy, two conceptual artists hired for the project, say they're at odds with the two local foundations that gave a grant for historical markers. Woods and Mulcahy say the Dallas-based Boone Family Foundation and the Fort Worth-based Rainwater Charitable Foundation are pushing ahead with a sanitized history of the segregated parks."
-Melissa Repko, Segregated parks gone, but they still divide. Historical markers for 'Negro Parks' spark dispute over ugly part of Dallas' past. The Dallas Morning News front page story, February 15, 2026, photographs.
Stephens, Alain. In Dallas, A Dispute Over How to Remember Segregated Parks: Historical markers are supposed to tell the history of public parks' Jim Crow past. But some say their version of history is whitewashed, NPR broadcast (Texas Standard), February 19, 2016.
"Such perceptual adjustments are are expertly managed by the show's curators, Charles Dee Mitchell and Cynthia Mulcahy, and the compare-and-contrast can be devastatingly effective."
- Holland Cotter, The photographs in Engines of War offer vantage points on battle, its precedents and its aftermath. The New York Times, April 25, 2013, photograph.
Saltz, Jerry. See Engines of War. New York Magazine, April 29, 2013 Issue.
Schjeldahl, Peter. Engines of War at Gasser Grunert. The New Yorker Magazine, April 28, 2013.
