Nasher Sculpture Center
Opened in 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas, that houses the Patsy and Raymond Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a 2.4-acre (9,700 m2) site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas Arts District.
Established
2003
M-Line: Olive & Flora, St Paul & Woodall Rodgers
Founding[edit]
Patsy and Raymond Nasher began collecting sculpture in the 1950s. Together they formed a comprehensive collection of 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, among others.
In 1997, Raymond Nasher acquired a plot of land in downtown Dallas across the street from the Dallas Museum of Art and hired architect Renzo Piano to design the Nasher Sculpture Center. The Nasher Foundation funded the entire $70 million cost of designing and constructing the museum, which includes indoor and outdoor galleries. The Sculpture Center opened in 2003 and features a regularly changing exhibition of works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection. By placing the facility on what was formerly part of the old Caruth family farm of c. 1850, Ray Nasher began the realization of the Arts District in Dallas, which has since been enhanced by the construction of the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theater.
Architecture and garden[edit]
Renzo Piano, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1998, is the architect of the Center's 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m2) building; he had been selected after Nasher met him at the opening of the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, in 1997. Piano has designed several critically acclaimed art museums; foremost among them are the Beyeler Museum in Basel, the Menil Collection in Houston, and Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris (in collaboration with Richard Rogers). He has been praised as an architect who has the genius to meld art, architecture, and advanced engineering to create some of the most remarkable museums in the world.
Piano worked in collaboration with landscape architect Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture on the design of the 2-acre (8,100 m2) Garden. Walker has exerted a significant impact on the field of landscape architecture over a four-decade career. The scope of Walker's landscape projects is expansive and varied. It ranges from small gardens to new cities, corporate headquarters and academic campuses to urban plazas.
The building was constructed by The Beck Group, which also served as associate architect.
The facility opened in 2003 in a 55,000-square-foot building on a 2.4-acre site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art. Reflective glare of the nearby Museum Tower, constructed in 2012, comes in through the glass roof, putting portions of the collection at risk of damage. Artist James Turrell considered his work Tending (Blue) to be effectively destroyed by the tower's intrusion on its view, and the museum closed the artwork's chamber to the public at his request.[1]
The museum has two levels: the ground level houses four galleries, institute offices, and a boardroom.[2] The garden terraces downward to the auditorium, creating an open-air theater.
The Nasher Prize was established in April 2015. The award is dedicated exclusively to a living artist who has proven excellence in contemporary sculpture.[27]
Doris Salcedo was born in 1958 in Bogotá, Colombia, her current residence. Salcedo has created sculptures and installations that transform familiar, everyday objects into moving and powerful testimonies of loss and remembrance.[28]
Huyghe was born in 1962 in Paris, he lives and works in Chile and New York. Huyghe has profoundly expanded the parameters of sculpture through artworks encompassing a variety of materials and disciplines, bringing music, cinema, and dance into contact with biology and philosophy and incorporating time-based elements as diverse as fog, ice, parades, rituals, automata, computer programs, games, dogs, bees, and microorganisms.[29][30]
Gates was born in 1973 in Chicago, Illinois, where he continues to live and work as a professor at the University of Chicago. His work explores the material aspects of memory, history, and place.
Genzken was born in 1948 in Germany. Genzken has continually reinvented the language of sculpture by creating objects inspired by popular culture and historical events that explore the complexities of contemporary realism.
Rakowitz was born in 1973 in Long Island, New York. He is Iraqi-American and much of his work explores his identity as an American artist of Iraqi Jewish descent. His work explores the complex history between the US and Middle East, as well as cultural heritage and humanitarian crisis.
Baghramian, born 1971, is an Iranian-born German visual artist. Baghramian takes the creation and presentation of sculpture as her de facto subject yet makes works highlighting the poignant, contradictory, and sometimes humorous circumstances that can suffuse both the artistic process as well as everyday life. Over the past three decades, she has explored elements of sculptural practice and installation to create works that challenge their settings and upend expected modes of presentation as well as the architectural, sociological, political, and historical contexts that inform them.[32]
Nengudi was born in 1943 in Chicago and is known for works exploring the body, as well as for combining sculpture and performance. Nengudi rose to prominence among the Black avant-garde of the 1970s and 80s.[33]
