Here at the edge of the University of Texas at Austin campus sits one of the largest university art museums in the country, its collection built to match the school's own ambitions. The Blanton's permanent holdings span more than 17,000 works — European paintings from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, modern and contemporary American art, one of the finest collections of Latin American art in the country, and an extraordinary collection of prints and drawings. The current building, designed by Kallmann McKinnell and Wood and opened in 2006, occupies a prominent position at the edge of the UT campus, signaling that Austin takes its cultural aspirations as seriously as its football program.
But the Blanton's most quietly extraordinary treasure arrived in 2018 when Ellsworth Kelly's 'Austin' was finally opened — a freestanding stone building Kelly designed in the last years of his life as a permanent artwork, filled with colored glass windows that transform natural light throughout the day. It is simultaneously a chapel, a sculpture, and a meditation space. Kelly died before it opened, but 'Austin' may be his greatest work.
If you visit one thing at the Blanton, let it be that.