After 45 years in Uptown Dallas, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture has announced its move to Southern Methodist University. This news may surprise those who frequented the historic houses on Routh Street but is understandable when confronted with the increasing expense of maintaining such treasured structures with limited nonprofit resources.

Why are we moving?

Cost is one reason. But another is more compelling. I believe that the moment for enlightened civic leadership in the city is now — more so than any other moment since the Kennedy assassination. SMU educates so many of our city’s prominent leaders in business, in law, in politics and other fields. With a natural partner for our longstanding mission, we can now confront our city’s future without distraction.

Dallas and its surrounding cities are poised to become one of the largest and most prosperous regions in the world. Can we also be one of the greatest?

When I helped found the Dallas Institute in 1980 with Louise and Donald Cowan, James Hillman, Robert Sardello and Joanne Stroud, we took “the city” as the guiding metaphor in our attempt to explore soul and spirit in our culture. We were and are still today suffering from a malaise that is difficult to name. One attempt is to call it a spiritual aridity — a loss of a sense of the sacred in our everyday lives when everything is judged by its economic value rather than its meaning to our inner spirit.

If our focus is the city, it seems imperative that we speak from the heart about what gives a city its vital elan. We must study great literature and archetypal psychology, contemplate suffering, and imagine the recovery of the soul of the world. We need to lament “anorexic” buildings, monotonous chain stores, fast food, one-way streets and more.

For all these reasons, I initiated and ran the “What Makes a City?” series at Dallas City Hall. With civic leaders, artists, poets, businesspersons, architects, educators and city planners, we asked the city itself to speak about its needs and desires. These conferences yielded results we proudly acknowledge today: Pegasus Plaza, amenable sidewalk dining experiences, pocket parks, venues for artists, places for children to play and multiple housing opportunities.

We addressed the need to honor our Trinity River as our source and to provide ways to enjoy and increase its beauty. The Trinity Trust, now known as the Trinity River Conservancy, is a direct result of these civic conversations. Citywide support and acclaim for Dallas’ iconic Calatrava bridges can be traced to our sustained conversations about the city and its form.

Louise Cowan designed what is now known as the institute’s Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers. For her work with our city’s teachers, Cowan received the nation’s highest honor for scholars in the humanities, the Charles Frankel Prize, awarded at the White House. This program, now led by Michael McShane, continues to thrive.

Joanne Stroud supported and ran the publishing arm of the institute, publishing more than 58 volumes that remain in demand throughout the world. She sponsored an annual Hillman Conference that attracted international scholars in literature and archetypal psychology to Dallas.

Numerous civic leaders have supported the institute’s work, and they have cared deeply for its singularity and mission — our devoted and generous directors Henry Beck, Betty Regard, Nancy Cain Robertson, Deedie Rose. After my tenure, Larry Allums, in partnership with Kim Hiett Jordan, Russell Bellamy and David Griffin, initiated signature events like the Festival of Ideas, the Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium, and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. More recently, Don Glendenning guided the inspired partnership with SMU.

The institute is now in capable hands with Seemee Ali, who has served as president these past four years, heroically leading through the formidable years following COVID-19.

Change is good, and this is an important move. Dallas needs the humanities; our culture needs attention.

Gail Thomas is a co-founder of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and a founder and former CEO of the Trinity Trust Foundation.

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