The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts an art collection as well as traveling art exhibitions, educational programs and an extensive research library. Its initial artwork came from the private collection of Kay and Velma Kimbell, who also provided funds for a new building to house it.
The building was designed by architect Louis I. Kahn and is widely recognized as one of the most significant works of architecture of recent times. It is especially noted for the wash of silvery natural light across its vaulted gallery ceilings.
History Kay Kimbell was a wealthy Fort Worth businessman who built an empire of over 70 companies in a variety of industries. He married Velma Fuller, who kindled his interest in art collecting by taking him to an art show in Fort Worth in 1931, where he bought a British painting. They set up the Kimbell Art Foundation in 1935 to establish an art institute, and by the time of his death in 1964, the couple had amassed what was considered to be the best selection of old masters in the Southwest. Kay left much of his estate to the Kimbell Art Foundation, and Velma bequeathed her share of the estate to the foundation as well, with the key directive to "build a museum of the first class."
The foundation's board of trustees hired Richard Fargo Brown, then director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as the founding director of the museum with the task of constructing a building to house the Kimbell's art collection. Upon accepting the post, Brown declared that the new building should itself be a work of art, "as much a gem as one of the Rembrandts or Van Dycks housed within it." The proposed museum was given space in a 9.5 acre (3.8 hectare) site in Fort Worth's Cultural District, which was already home to three other museums, including the Fort Worth Art Museum-Center (now the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) and the Amon Carter Museum, specializing in art of the American West.
Brown discussed the goals of the institution and its new building with the trustees and summarized them in a four-page "Policy Statement" and a nineteen-page "Pre-Architectural Program" in June 1966. After interviewing a number of prominent architects, the museum hired Louis Kahn in October 1966. Brown issued specific requests, encouraging Kahn to deliver his best. Brown wanted Kahn to build a museum that could exhibit art that had been seen by polite society so that a visit to the museum would expand the opportunities of ordinary citizens. Kahn's previous works included such acclaimed structures as the Salk Institute in California, and he had recently been honored by being chosen to design the National Assembly Building for what would become the capital of the new nation of Bangladesh. Construction for the Kimbell Art Museum began in the summer of 1969. The new building opened in October 1972 and quickly achieved an international reputation for architectural excellence.
Brown also expanded the Kimbell collection by acquiring several works of significant quality by artists like Duccio, El Greco, Rubens, and Rembrandt.
After Richard Fargo Brown's death in 1979, Edmund "Ted" Pillsbury was appointed director of the museum. Previously he had been the director of the newly opened Yale Center for British Art, which, coincidentally, was also designed by Louis Kahn. He had also been a curator at the Yale Art Gallery, Kahn's first art museum. Pillsbury continued the art acquisition program in an aggressive but disciplined fashion. Richard Brettell, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, "He was, in some ways, single-handedly responsible for turning the Kimbell from an institution with a great building into one whose collection matched its architecture in quality".
In 1989, Pillsbury announced plans to expand the museum's building to accommodate its enlarged collection, but the plan was dropped because of strong opposition to any major alteration of the original Louis Kahn structure. In 2007, the Kimbell solved that problem by announcing plans to construct an additional, separate building across the street from the original building. While this did not alter the Kahn structure, it did significantly alter Kahn's work. Kahn had designed the building to be approached from the lawn, and the new structure significantly altered that plan. Designed by Renzo Piano, and relocated to the west lawn, the new structure opened to the public in November 2013.
The museum is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.
Collection
In 1966, before the museum even had a building, founding director Brown included this directive in his Policy Statement: "The goal shall be definitive excellence, not size of collection." Accordingly, the museum's collection today consists of only about 350 works of art, but they are of notably high quality.
The European collection is the most extensive in the museum and includes Michelangelo's first known painting, The Torment of Saint Anthony, the only painting by Michelangelo on exhibit in the Americas. It also includes works by Duccio, Fra Angelico, Mantegna, El Greco, Carracci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Guercino, La Tour, Poussin, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Boucher, Gainsborough, Vigée-Lebrun, Friedrich (the first painting by the artist acquired by a public collection outside of Europe),Timothy Potts, ed. Kimbell Art Museum Handbook of the Collection. Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2003 Cézanne, Monet, Caillebotte, Matisse, Bonnard, Mondrian, Braque, Miró and Picasso. Works from the classical period include antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. The Asian collection comprises sculptures, paintings, bronzes, ceramics, and works of decorative art from China, Korea, Japan, India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, and Thailand. Precolumbian art is represented by Maya works in ceramic, stone, shell, and jade, Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec sculpture, as well as pieces from the Conte and Huari cultures. The African collection consists primarily of bronze, wood, and terracotta sculpture from West and Central Africa, including examples from Nigeria, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Oceanic art is represented by a Maori figure.
The museum owns only a few pieces created after the mid-20th century (believing that era to be the province of its neighbor, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) and no American art (believing that to be the province of its other neighbor, the Amon Carter Museum).
The museum also houses a substantial library with over 59,000 books, periodicals and auction catalogs that are available as a resource to art historians and to faculty and graduate students from surrounding universities.
Building
Preparation
Brown's "Policy Statement" set a clear architectural direction by calling for the new building to be "a work of art", It was augmented by his "Pre-Architectural Program", which specified that "natural light should play a vital part" in the design and that "the form of the building should be so complete in its beauty that additions would spoil that form." Brown called for a building of modest scale that would not overwhelm either the artwork or the viewer.
After an extensive search that included interviews with such noted architects as Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Pier Luigi Nervi, Gordon Bunshaft and Edward Larrabee Barnes, the commission was awarded to Louis Kahn in October 1966. From Kahn's point of view, Brown was an ideal client. Brown had been an admirer of Kahn's work for some time, and the approach he specified for the building was very much in line with Kahn's, particularly its emphasis on natural light.
Because Kahn had a reputation for significant time and cost overruns, a local engineering and architectural firm owned by Preston M. Geren was made associate architect, a practice followed in Fort Worth for out-of-state architects. Frank Sherwood served as their project coordinator. The Geren organization had a solid reputation for bringing in projects on time and within budget, but by their own admission they were not especially innovative. The contract called for control over construction to be turned over to Geren when Kahn had finished the design, a provision that eventually led to conflict because Kahn felt that a design was never finished until the building was constructed. Kahn once said, "the building gives you answers as it grows and becomes itself." The museum trustees settled the issue by deciding that Geren would report directly to them instead of to Kahn, but that Kahn would have final say over the design, except that any changes would have to be approved by Brown.
The new museum was to be built on a gentle slope below the Amon Carter Museum, whose entrance and terrace faced the Fort Worth skyline. Kahn was asked to build the Kimbell museum no more than 40 feet (12 m) high so it would not interfere with the view from the Carter Museum. Kahn initially proposed a low but very spacious building 450 feet (137 m) square, but Brown rejected that proposal and insisted that Kahn design a much smaller structure, a decision that would have repercussions several years later when a proposal to expand the building created a storm of controversy.
Architecture
The museum is composed of 16 parallel vaults that are each 100 feet (30.6 m) long, 20 feet (6 m) high and 20 feet (6 m) wide (internal measurements). Intervening low channels separate the vaults. The vaults are grouped into three wings. The north and south wings each have six vaults, with the western one open as a portico. The central space has four vaults, with the western one open as an entry porch facing a courtyard partially enclosed by the two outside wings.
With one exception, the art galleries are located on the upper floor of the museum to allow access to natural light. Service and curatorial spaces as well as an additional gallery occupy the ground floor. Each interior vault has a slot along its apex to allow natural light into the galleries. Air ducts and other mechanical services are located in the flat channels between the vaults.
Kahn used several techniques to give the galleries an inviting atmosphere. The ends of the vaults, which are made of concrete block, are faced with travertine inside and out. The steel handrails were "blasted" with ground pecan shells to create a matte surface texture. The museum has three glass-walled courtyards that bring natural light to the gallery spaces. One of them penetrates the gallery floor to bring natural light to the conservation studio on the ground floor.
The landscape has been described as "Kahn's most elegant built example of landscape planning" by Philadelphia landscape architect George Patton. Approaching the main entrance past a lawn edged by pools with running water, the visitor enters a courtyard through a grove of Yaupon Holly trees. The sound of footsteps on the gravel walkway echoes from the walls on either side of the courtyard and is magnified under the curved ceiling of the entry porch. After that subtle preparation, the visitor enters the hushed museum with silvery light spread across its ceiling. Harriet Pattison played the lead role in the landscape design and is also the person who suggested that open porches flanking the entrance would create a good transition from the lawn and courtyard to the galleries inside. Pattison, who had also worked with Kahn on other projects, was an employee of Patton. She is the mother of film director Nathaniel Kahn, Louis Kahn's son who made the film "My Architect" about his father.
Vaults