Combining a gallery and walled garden, both displaying works in its collection, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas joins Tadao Ando's recent Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (AR August 2003) in further consolidating the neighbouring cities as a major art destination within the US. The Nasher is also the latest of a family of museums the Renzo Piano Building Workshop has built so that the public might enjoy exceptional private collections of modern art. Like the Menil Collection (AR March 1987) and Beyeler Museum (AR December 1997), its galleries are lit through an all-glass roof, although here all sun-control devices are above the glass that is also the gallery ceilings. Also, while the Menil's external walls are the same grey clapboard as the surrounding bungalows, and the Beyeler's are clad in a stone resembling the streaky red sandstone of Basle, the Nasher does not adopt a material found in its immediate locality. Instead it is clad inside and out in travertine, as is Louis Kahn's Kimbell Museum of Art in Fort Worth (AR November 1978). This, and the top-lit vaulted galleries, suggest a deliberate dialogue with what many deem the last unarguably great American work of architecture, a dialogue set up by a new building that, despite evoking a mythic past, is as light and contemporary in feel as the Kimbell is heavy and archaic.
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