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Art & Design|Austin’s Artful Blanton Museum Says: Come On In
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/arts/design/blanton-museum-architecture-snowhetta.html
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When a director envisioned a museum you couldn’t walk by, Snohetta’s architects and designers added bright entryways, varied landscaping and impossible-to-miss “petals” on campus.
Aug. 8, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET
When Simone Wicha took over as director of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011, she inherited a complex of two buildings — completed just three years earlier — that, by her own description, was “nestled perfectly into campus.”
Its Mediterranean-inspired architecture fit with U.T.’s historic palette, and its tree-filled plaza, designed by the landscape architects Peter Walker and Partners, tied into the campus’s thick green canopies and long pedestrian walkways. But while it worked as a campus museum, it didn’t match Wicha’s vision for a world-class one. It fit too well.
The Blanton literally looked inward (its two front doors faced each other across the plaza), and the plaza’s trees blocked views of the entrances. “It was really just a couple of banners announcing here was an art museum, ” Wicha said. As a result, people often walked right by.
“It’s hard to make your case that this is your community museum when you don’t have a front door,” she added. “You get to a place where you don’t want to be the best kept secret in town anymore.”
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Wicha has since helped shape a museum that stands out on campus, in the city, and in the art world. Inside she has revamped educational and curatorial programs and reorganized and refreshed the galleries. The collection has grown from 12,500 works to more than 16,250. Outside, she helped open, in 2018, Ellsworth Kelly’s ethereal chapel for art, “Austin,” which put the museum on the international art map. The final piece of the puzzle is now complete: a $38 million transformation of the Blanton’s grounds by the Oslo-based architecture firm Snohetta, which includes bright new entryways, energetic public art, diverse planted spaces, and casual lounging and performance spots, all highlighted by a series of 39-foot-tall fiberglass “petals,” providing invaluable shade (particularly during the city’s scorching-hot summers). And more than a little noticeability.
