Peachy the Magazine October/November 2013 | Page 35

ART + ARCHITECTURE

Gallery in Washington and the Guggenheim in Manhattan, in hopes
that the philanthropist would grant
his sculpture collection to an existing museum. But Nasher ultimately
decided to keep his collection in his
beloved Dallas and build his own
museum to house it. He ultimately
granted Piano the commission after
meeting him in Basel at the opening of
the Beyeler Foundation. Piano collaborated with landscape architect Peter
Walker to create a sculpture center
that has few rivals for the presentation

Exterior detail of the Nasher Sculpture
Center. Photo by Jeff Stvan, Diorama Sky.
2008. Via Flickr.

of three-dimensional art. Located in
downtown Dallas adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art, the building is
comprised of a series of parallel stone
walls that create individual gallery
pavilions. Each pavilion has a glass
front, making the sculpture within visible from the garden.
An arched glass roof with a perforated
aluminum screen covers the building and accommodates the southeast
to southwest path of the sun over the
space, always allowing natural light to
flood the space, but never in a direct
fashion. The roof is an engineering
coup that came about after Nasher
requested a “museum without a roof”,
and the elaborately engineered system
worked brilliantly until the erection
of the Museum Tower next door. The
reflective glass shell of the Tower has
intensified the light pouring into the
museum, generating concern that
the collection may be damaged by
excessive UV exposure. Needless to
say, there has been a hullabaloo surrounding this issue, and the situation
has yet to be resolved. Nonetheless,
the Nasher continues to show its own
superb collection and mount interesting shows on such artists as Jaume
Plensa, Frank Stella, Elliot Hundley
and “The Women of Giocometti.”
OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2013

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