Nasher Sculpture Center opens in Dallas - Front Page - Texas

upon Oct. 19, the long-awaited Nasher plastic art Center will open in Dallas upon a 2.4-acre site directly across the way from the Dallas Museum of Art. The brainchild of real-estate developer philanthropist and collector Raymond D Nasher--whose private foundation also stocked the $70-million project--the center consists of a one-and-a-half-acre statuary garden and a 54,000-square-foot building designed by dint of Italian architect Renzo Piano. Works from the collection of Nasher and his late wife, Patsy, will be shown upon a rotating basis, along with touring exhibitions and special exhibits organized by the center. Since 2001 the center has been below the direction of Steven Nash, who was associate director and chief curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for 15 years, allowing Dallas is familiar territory to him. From 1980 to '88 he was representative director and chief curator at the Dallas Museum.

The building is essentially made up of glass panels and six parallel walls clad in Italian travertine. sum of two units rough-hewn walls form the structure's exterior sides; the others, evenly finished, evenly divide the interior space of the main floor into five plays with views onto the garden. The glass facades at either extremity provide an open, airy feeling that is further enhanced through the barrel-vaulted glass ceiling. Floating above the ceiling is an egg-crate-like shield of white aluminum designed by the agency of Piano to tame the intense Texas day-star and bathe the interior in indirect natural light. The building's main floor contains three central galleries with above 10,000 square feet of exhibition space for the display of weather-sensitive statuarys as well as paintings, prints and drawings that relate to works in the collection. A cafe and store hold the outer spaces on the main floor. The building's lower horizontal houses a small gallery, a conservation lab, educational and research facilities, and an auditorium.

Renzo designed the garden in conjunction with landscape architect Peter Walker. It features stone pathways, lakes fountains and more than 170 tree to provide respite from the heat. a certain quantity of 25 large-scale sculptures can be displayed in the garden at any single time. Incorporated into the landscape is a specially commissioned "skyspace" piece by dint of James Turrell.

The Nasher Collection consists of a certain quantity of 300 works by 19th- and 20th-century artists, including Rodin, Calder, Miro, Brancusi, Giacometti, Picasso, de Kooning, di Suvero Serra, Judd Lichtenstein, Hepworth, Abakanowicz, David Smith, Tony Smith, and Beverly Pepper above the years, works from Nasher's holdings have been shown at various venue greatest in quantity notably at the Guggenheim Museum in the 1997 exhibition "A hundred of Sculpture: The Nasher Collection."

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