The heart (and strategic mind) of the museum structure is its director, Simone Wicha, who for thirteen years has been working to consolidate the leading role of the Blanton on the cultural scene, also through collaboration with internationally renowned artists who have left a tangible mark here: such as Ellsworth Kelly, who gave the University the Austin lay chapel.

The building, which represents the pinnacle of the artist's work, stands out clearly to the north of the Campus with its immaculate cruciform volume and dotted with stained glass windows.

The Blanton is a place full of excitement that has however known various vicissitudes.

After the competition for the construction of new museum infrastructures announced over twenty years ago, whose winning project (by Herzog & de Meuron, considered not “conservative”) was replaced in 2006 by the more traditional one by the studio Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, the complex acquired its current configuration: two buildings – one for administrative use, the other for exhibitions – with terracotta roofs, loggias and pilasters with a neo-Renaissance flavour, set on a central courtyard.

Over time, the open spaces have lost character and unity, turning into anonymous and fragmented passage areas where it was difficult to orient oneself, the rest areas were unwelcoming and the spaces for outdoor activities were residual.

The recently completed Snøhetta project worked to mend and enhance the open spaces, with the aim of overcoming dysfunctions on the one hand and enhancing the University’s recognizable character as an public, inclusive and aggregating place on the urban scale on the other.

A design of clearly identifiable paths, articulated between gardens and squares for an extension of almost 20,000 square meters, invites you to enter and explore the works of art and the landscape.

The ticket office and information area have been relocated away from the gallery, in an easily visible annex building.

A bright yellow paints the access arches to the buildings, casting a joyful brushstroke on the stately structures and recalling the dominant colors of central and southern Texas.

The heart of the project is the courtyard overlooking Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, reconfigured as an “agora” in the most classical (and lofty) sense of the term: a space for contamination between life and culture, sociality and intellectual nourishment, leisure and reflection, which functions both as an open-air hall and distribution point, and as an urban hub between Congress Avenue (the city’s most important avenue in the north-south direction) and the main pedestrian spine of the Campus.