It’s springtime in Dallas and never a better time to visit local museums for an education and a good time.  From a spring break camp this week to a look at some serious art, mark your calendar now for some real culture in the days and weeks ahead.

Spring is making an impression at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science where you will find not only the largest and most comprehensive Maya exhibition to tour the U.S., but also gripping 3D films and spring break activities and camps this week. The 10,000-square-foot Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed traveling exhibition allows children of all ages to explore a forgotten world and uncover its hidden secrets. Highly interactive, the family-friendly exhibition is presented in English and Spanish.
“Here’s your chance to walk in an archaeologist’s shoes and step back in time to experience what it was like to live during one of the most advanced ancient civilizations,” said Dan Kohl, Perot Museum’s interim chief executive officer. “In Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed, you’ll get to survey underground caves, decode the Maya calendar, decipher mysterious glyphs, build arches and even discover a Maya ballgame, which is believed to be one of the first team sports in human history.”
Also on the lineup are Discovery Camps, daily activities and extended hours during Spring Break, wild 3D films, First Thursday Late Nights, second-Saturday Discovery Days and sleepovers. Through May you can also check out Electropolis 3D a look at the electrical grid and explore how companies are working to ensure that blackouts do not disrupt everyday life. Or Extreme Weather with a look at famed storm chaser on the front lines of massive wildfires or deadly tornadoes. Specifically in March, the Museum rolls out its popular daily activities plus Discovery Camps March 13-17, 2017 to keep pre-K through elementary kids content and constructive.

The Dallas Museum of Art offers Passages in Modern Art: 1946 – 1996 from now until May 28, 2017.  This exhibit brings together objects from the DMA’s acclaimed contemporary collection, including recent acquisitions, rarely seen works, and newly conserved paintings and sculpture. Art by such iconic artists as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Philip Guston, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama, and Mark Rothko is presented alongside some lesser-known artists.

At the Museum of International Cultures in Duncanville there are permanent exhibits featuring Mexico, Central America, South America, Native America as well as numerous countries and cultures from Africa, including an extensive exhibit about the Batwa people of Uganda. The exhibits are accompanied by touch screen presentations in several rooms and there is also a Texas World War 1 Commission exhibit.  Specifically for spring break the Children's Lab is a good idea and Dr. Penny Ball and her scientist and engineer team present monthly STEM programs.

The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art begins its Wisdom of Compassion: The Art and Science of Iwasaki Tsuneo (1917-2002) show this week though June 11, 2017. A Japanese artist and scientist Tsuneo painted as an act of devotion interlacing his fluency in the languages of Buddhism, science and art. His work portrays resonances he discovered between scientific and Buddhist views of reality to convey that all beings are an integral part of an ever transforming and vast cosmos.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is presenting its FOCUS series with Stanley Whitney until April 2, 2017. FOCUS exhibitions are open to the public and are included in general museum admission. The Stanley Whitney exhibition investigates the many possibilities of color and form in the realm of abstract painting. His signature style features multicolored, irregular grids on square canvases. He also utilizes color as subject, and his paintings often refer to literature, music, places and other artists all done with no preparatory materials.

Spring break at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth offers a Handbook of the West 2017 exhibit until March 19, 2017.  

Also in Fort Worth, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art is free admission with a show called Invented Worlds of Valton Tyler until April 30, 2017.  For more than 40 years, Tyler, a Texas artist has depicted unparalleled worlds from his imagination. His captivating artworks feature unique interplays of identifiable, organic, mechanistic and surreal shapes, which often rise from mountain, desert or arctic landscapes.