Big upgrade for Texas museum

The first thing that stands out about the new Blanton Museum is the space -- more than 100,000 square feet with soaring ceilings and windows on the University of Texas campus.

Not by Louvre standards, of course. But considering the small, dark gallery where its collection of Renaissance, Baroque, American and Latin American art used to hang, the new museum is a Texas-sized upgrade.

“It’s wonderful,” Blanton Director Jessie Otto Hite said. “We needed this building to show off the collection we have.”

The Blanton is among the largest university art museums in the country, adding a new cultural centerpiece for the state’s capital city. Grand opening events last month -- including a 24-hour open house -- drew an estimated 22,000 visitors with lines wrapping around the building.

The Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building, named after the bestselling author and his wife who donated 141 paintings in 1968, is the first of two for the $83.5-million museum. Still under construction is a smaller building that will house a cafe, gift shop, classrooms, auditorium and offices. It is set to open next year.

The sheer size of the completed building, with a huge atrium, allows the museum to show off its extensive 17,000-piece collection, including works by Durer, Rubens, Manet and Picasso.

In temporary galleries on the first floor, the “New Now Next” exhibit showcases new paintings, drawings, sculpture, video and other works by established and emerging American and Latin American artists. Animation artist Paul Chan and his collection exploring religious beliefs in politics makes up the current display.

Upstairs galleries house the permanent collection, with its Renaissance and Baroque paintings, many of which have never been publicly displayed, and sculpture, prints and drawings from the 15th century to the present.

British-born architect Michael McKinnell, who designed the new museum after two Swiss architects quit over artistic differences with the university, said he accepted the project because he likes the challenge of creating architecture “that can induce love and study of the arts.”