Deep in The Art Of Texas

摘要

Back in the spring of 1999, Dallas real-estate developer Ray Nasher paid a visit to the Italian architect Renzo Piano at Piano's spectacular studio high above the Mediterranean outside Genoa. With his late wife, Patsy, Nasher had assembled what is arguably the greatest collection of modern sculpture in private hands: 350 indoor and outdoor pieces by the likes of Rodin and Giacometti, Picasso and Matisse, Henry Moore and Joan Miro. Museums had shamelessly courted him for his legacy―the National Gallery in Washington was one suitor, as were the Guggenheim in New York and the Dallas Museum of Art―but in the end, Nasher decided to build his own space. By that spring, Piano had begun to plot out a private urban garden and small museum. A simple project, it would seem―glass and travertine, grass and trees, a backdrop for great art.