Renzo Piano designed the Nasher Sculpture Center in front of you to house Patsy and Raymond Nasher's modern and contemporary sculpture. Patsy and Raymond Nasher began collecting in the 1950s, assembling masterpieces by Harry Bertoia, Constantin Brâncuși, Alexander Calder, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Paul Gauguin, Willem de Kooning, Mark di Suvero, Alberto Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Ellsworth Kelly, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Richard Serra, and David Smith. In 1997 Raymond Nasher acquired the plot of land across the street from the Dallas Museum of Art and hired architect Renzo Piano to design this building.
The Nasher Foundation funded the entire $70 million cost of designing and constructing the museum, which opened in 2003. You’re standing on a 2.4-acre (9,700 m2) site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art, and the center includes both indoor and outdoor galleries with a regularly changing exhibition of works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection. Take a moment to feel how the art, the architecture by Renzo Piano, and the garden-scale outdoor spaces talk to one another.
Your walk continues across the 2.4-acre site, from outdoor galleries to indoor rooms, toward the Dallas Museum of Art next door.