Museum of Modern Art_Forth Worth_Texas_by_Tadao Ando

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is the oldest art museum in Texas and one of the oldest museums in the western United States. The Modern was chartered in 1892 as the Fort Worth Public Library and Art Gallery, but the name and mission have evolved over the years. A new home for the Museum, designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, opened in Fort Worth’s Cultural District on December 14, 2002. The new Modern features 53,000 square feet (+- 5.000 square meters) of gallery space, a 5,600-square-foot education center, and a state-of-the-art auditorium. The Modern is located in Fort Worth's celebrated Cultural District, directly opposite the Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Louis I. Kahn, and near the Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson. Ando's design, which embodies the pure, unadorned elements of a modern work of art, is comprised of five long, flat-roofed pavilions situated on a 1.5 acre pond. Forty-foot-high (+- 12 meters) transparent walls of glass framed in metal surround the concrete envelope, providing magnificent public circulation areas from which to view the surrounding building, the large reflecting pond, outdoor sculpture, and the landscaped grounds. The desire to use diffused and reflected natural light within the gallery spaces was a major influence on the building's design. The Modern maintains one of the foremost collections of postwar art in the central United States, consisting of nearly 3,000 significant works of modern and contemporary international art. The majority of works in the collection are dated between 1945 and the present. All major, international movements are represented, including Abstract Expressionism; British, German, French, and American Pop; Color Field Painting; Minimalism; Conceptualism; Post-Minimalism; New Image Painting, and Neo-Expressionism. Pop and Minimalism are particularly strong, as is German art of the 1970s and 1980s. A variety of gallery spaces are accommodated throughout the two levels of the Modern by the simple modularity of the building's design, combined with three double-height volumes that allow dramatic presentation of sculpture. | photos by Martin Grossmann, May 2014 | URL: https://www.themodern.org/