Blanton Museum of Art
Blanton Museum of Art
LOCATION
Austin, TX
CLIENT
University of Texas at Austin
Completion Date
2007
architect
Kallman McKinnell and Wood
Description
The Jack S. Blanton Museum occupies an important place in the city of Austin and serves as a symbolic gateway to the campus. It is across the street from the Texas State History Museum and lies on the southern edge of the University of Texas at Austin campus adjacent to Martin Luther King Boulevard. The landscape links South Congress Road to Speedway, a primary north-south spine of campus circulation, by an ordered symmetrical allée that passes through a randomly planted grove of cedar elm trees extending from Martin Luther King Boulevard at the south to Speedway at the north. The design includes a variety of landscape experiences: at the northwest of the grove and allée lies an expanse of lawn called The Beach; just to the north a rectangular space running the full width of the site is planted with buffalo grass and native wildflowers; at the south edge of the site along Martin Luther King Boulevard a flowering grove of trees partially screens the street and provides a transition between the civic and human scales.
