How Austin Got A Museum Matching Its Cultural Vitality

For every year during an astonishing 12-year period ending in 2022-2023, Austin, TX was the fastest growing large metro area in the country. In 2022-2023, it was the second fastest. The population of Texas’ capital city has more than doubled since 1990, increased by more than a third since 2010, and now sits at a million residents.

Prior to this runaway growth, Austin felt more like other small southern capitals–Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Tallahassee–and less like a hip, happening, center for global commerce akin to San Francisco or Chicago.

Austin’s Big Bang can be traced to 1983 and its selection as homebase for a massive collaborative effort among U.S. computer companies to up their game in face of competition from Japan. Cities nationwide pitched Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. From the group of 57, Austin was eventually chosen.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Favorable corporate and personal tax rates, a mild climate, and a major research university–the University of Texas at Austin–all contributed to the decision, and the decisions of an unending sequence of businesses and individuals to call Austin home ever since.

Dell Computers was founded in Austin not long after. Boom, boom.

Today, Austin even has an F1 race–the super luxe, Ferrari-charged, open-wheel racing spectacle best known for its signature event in Monaco. Las Vegas and Miami are the only other cities in America to host the celebrity drivers. Montreal and Mexico City in North America.

When thinking about Austin–the live music capital of the world previously best known for cowboy boots, Longhorn football, Waylon, Willie, and “Austin City Limits”–that’s the global community the city now exists in.

An Art Museum For Austin

All that growth over such a short period of time left the city playing catch up. Roads, airports, parks, schools, museums. Austin didn’t have a signature, civic art museum. It had the Blanton Museum of Art aligned with the University of Texas, which was a fine college art museum, but the Blanton was scaled to Austin circa 1983.

At least it was until Simone Wicha took over as executive director in 2011. During her tenure, she’s scaled the Blanton to Austin circa 2024, the latest leap forward a $35 million total redesign of the museum’s grounds completed in June of 2024 by Snøhetta, a globally premiere architecture firm.

The Blanton’s footprint contains two buildings and Ellsworth Kelly’s, Austin, the only freestanding building in the modernist icon’s oeuvre. That was a $23 million project opened in 2018. Austin would have been a big deal if it were located in New York. Huge artist. Huge project. Nothing else like it in the world.

It took the Blanton from good college art museum to global arts pilgrimage site in an instant.

“Places of excellence, (a) commitment to growing collections, a place to bring world class exhibitions, having a statement of our values as both a university and city, that the arts are celebrated, they’re part of our culture, they’re part of our lives,” Wicha told Forbes.com of the factors motivating her tremendous ambition while leading the Blanton. “Many major universities have the benefit for their students, for their faculty, for their staff, or their community, to go to the major museum down the street, we lack that. We have some really wonderful, important programs, but you don’t have that art museum with the collection that plays that role of the civic museum in your community.”

The Blanton has taken on that role. The art museum both for the University of Texas and the art museum for Austin.

“Having a great cultural center is a point of attraction, having great parks and having great schools, having a good medical center. All these things matter for a city as it develops,” Wicha said. “Not having a great museum is literally a pillar missing for what makes a great city. Being aspirational, building Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin was part of a larger commitment of we’re going to do things here that are unique, that transcend, that aren’t even just about this community because Austin is a place that people watch around the world today. It wasn’t before, but it is today; certainly, the University of Texas is a place that intends to have an impact and does around the world, so what is the museum equivalent for that?”

Wicha’s background gives her unique insight and experiences specific to developing a world class art museum in Austin. She’s a native Texan who grew up in Mexico City with her Mexican-born mother who’s now an American citizen. Mexico City, one of the great museum cities in the world. She’s a UT grad. She’s lived and worked in the arts in New York and London. New York and London, two of the great museum cities in the world.

“I’ve always been interested about the world, yet also interested in where we are as a community, and who we are, and what we can do,” she said. “I care about this university and about this community and the city–I care deeply about Texas–but I also grew up in Mexico. If you want to be aspirational, having markers of what else is happening around the world (can guide you) as you are also sensitive to your own community.”

She speaks the language. All of them: Texan, Longhorn, and leader of a global arts institution.

That facility has helped allow her grandiose visions to become reality. So has an institutional knowledge covering the university, the city, the state, and the museum, where she also worked prior to becoming director. Her longevity and passion for the Blanton signifies the directorship isn’t a steppingstone, creating trust among patrons, government officials (Austin is Texas’ capital city), and superiors at the school. Her results, especially Austin, proves she can get the job done in a big way.

Inside Out

Wicha’s initial priority at the Blanton was building the program inside. One of her first big projects was reinstalling the entire permanent collection and altering the architecture of the gallery spaces. She hired an entire curatorial team. She oversaw the build-out of a K-12 education program and a nationally recognized university education program. The exhibition program was beefed up.

Then came Austin.

In 2023, the museum acquired over 5,000 works by Latino artists and created the Associate Curator of Latino Art position while establishing two new Latino art galleries. Wicha’s background also provided her unusual fluency with Latino art and Austin’s growing Hispanic community.

Even before work was completed on Austin, however, Wicha knew the Blanton’s exterior would need an upgrade if the museum was going to meet her ambitions.

“It’s wonderful to build a great program, but if people don’t know you’re there and can’t find the front door, and just want to get in the building and then get out as quickly as they can because the in-between experience outside of the galleries isn’t one that supports that visit, that’s going to always hold you back,” she said. “It wasn’t just (upgrading) the grounds. It included having art and having that museum experience start the moment you see us, the moment you go through the door.”

The centerpiece of the project is the Moody Patio, a gathering space between the museum’s two main buildings that is framed by 15 elegant, petal-shaped structures, creating a shade canopy at the southern edge of the Blanton’s campus. Their curving outlines, inspired by the arched vaults of the loggia that outline the museum, help highlight views of Austin and the Texas State Capitol. The structures will generate a dappled light effect during the day and will be illuminated at night, creating a one-of-a-kind visual marker for the Blanton.

Also included in the Snøhetta design are an outdoor sound art gallery, new, more welcoming lobby spaces connecting to the upstairs galleries, more outside programming spaces and art. Highlighting that last effort is a major, site-specific mural from Cuban American artist Carmen Herrera (1915-2022), the only public work she’s ever created.

As with Kelly (1923-2015) and Austin, Herrera passed months before her project was completed.

“I like the beauty and clarity that get combined,” Wicha said when asked about her favorite aspect of the outdoor renovation. “It’s so obvious where you need to walk. This is such a tiny little thing, but it’s such an enormous thing. It’s like somebody is walking you through by the hand in this most graceful way. It’s a beautiful experience, and such a subtle thing. We had a lot of complicated architectural challenges. We had our back to the garage, we had our back to the community, we had our back to the university, and now, somehow, we have a hand held out to every direction.”

The museum as more than storehouse. More than a refrigerator for artwork. A museum prioritizing the human experience akin to a park or garden or library or stadium.

“You want a place where people want to hang out and just be; that’s the life that a museum should be building, the energy,” Wicha added.

That’s what’s next for Wicha. Letting Austin know the Blanton is a place to “hang out and just be.” Along with continuing to bolster the special exhibition program and the addition of a new café in partnership with a local restaurant, Wicha wants to make sure everyone knows all are welcome at the new Blanton.

“Making this even more realized in our community. Making sure that we’re even more seen. We’re not secret,” she said. “Being part of the university is such a point of pride, but you then also have this, ‘Well, that’s on a campus, it’s not for me;’ really pushing back against that. (I want to) communicate ‘easy,’ and ‘this is your place.’”

Your place, whether a UT student, an Austin resident, or a citizen of the world.

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