The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is dedicated to collecting, presenting, and interpreting international art developments…post–World War II art in all media and creating a welcoming environment for its public appreciation. The Modern promotes understanding and interest in art and artists through curatorial research and publications, and a variety of educational programs, including lectures, guided tours, classes, and workshops.
Jan 27, 2018 – Mar 18, 2018
Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings are visually frenetic, reflecting the fast-paced energy of life today. Her imagery refers to such diverse subjects as pop culture, world events, and art history in compositions with flattened, simplified forms. Abney’s works commonly incorporate snippets of text, disembodied figures and silhouettes, and geometric abstract shapes. Themes that relate to American society, including celebrity culture, race, sexuality, and police brutality, are broached in her paintings.
Feb 16, 2018 – May 06, 2018
In 2007, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth hosted Ron Mueck, featuring the artist’s figures that are extraordinarily realistic, except in scale – they are always depicted much smaller or larger than life. The exhibition broke attendance records for the Museum as Mueck’s stunning works became a must-see for visitors from across the region. Now a decade later, Ron Mueck returns to the Modern from February 16 to May 6, 2018, for a special project showcasing six major sculptures created between 2008 and 2018, including two sculptures making their North American debut.
TAKASHI MURAKAMI: THE OCTOPUS EATS ITS OWN LEG
Jun 10, 2018 – Sep 16, 2018
Known for his collaborations with pop icon Kanye West and fashion house Louis Vuitton, and for vibrant anime-inspired characters, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) has blurred the boundaries throughout his career between high and low culture, ancient and modern, East and West. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the exhibition is a major retrospective of his paintings, featuring fifty works that span three decades of his career, from the artist’s earliest mature works to his recent, monumentally scaled paintings.
PERMANENT COLLECTION
The collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is comprised of nearly 3,000 objects, including paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and prints. The majority of works in the collection are dated between 1945 and the present. All major, international movements are represented, including Abstract Expressionism; British, German, French, and American Pop; Color Field Painting; Minimalism; Conceptualism; Post-Minimalism; New Image Painting, and Neo-Expressionism. Pop and Minimalism are particularly strong, as is German art of the 1970s and 1980s.
Named one of the “World’s Most Beautiful Art Museums” by Travel + Leisure magazine. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s building was designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
A new home for the Museum, designed by the world-renowned architect Tadao Ando, opened in Fort Worth’s Cultural District on December 14, 2002. The new Modern features 53,000 square feet of gallery space, a 5,600-square-foot education center, and a state-of-the-art auditorium.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s building was designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The Modern is located in Fort Worth’s celebrated Cultural District, directly opposite the Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Louis I. Kahn, and near the Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson. Ando’s design, which embodies the pure, unadorned elements of a modern work of art, is comprised of five long, flat-roofed pavilions situated on a 1.5 acre pond.
Massive planar walls of architectural concrete boldly express the Modern’s basic structure while protecting the collection within. Forty-foot-high transparent walls of glass framed in metal surround the concrete envelope, providing magnificent public circulation areas from which to view the surrounding building, the large reflecting pond, outdoor sculpture, and the landscaped grounds. The desire to use diffused and reflected natural light within the gallery spaces was a major influence on the building’s design. Immense cantilevered cast concrete roofs shade the building’s exterior and accommodate the introduction of natural light into the gallery spaces by supporting sophisticated systems of continuous linear skylights and clerestory windows. Supporting the concrete roof slabs are five forty-foot-tall concrete Y-shaped columns. By day, the Modern’s setting on eleven naturally landscaped acres—including an outdoor sculpture garden and terrace and a large reflecting pond at the building’s edge—provides a restful complement to the building’s architectural strength. By night, with the concrete walls bathed in an even glow of light, the transparent glass-and-steel galleries appear as large lanterns floating on and reflected in the pond.
