Allyson Johnson

Freeway Free in Texas: Ft. Worth Culture is not an Oxymoron

When I was growing up in East Texas the idea of “Fort Worth Culture” would have sent most of the folks I knew into paroxysms of laughter. Ft. Worth was proudly “where the West begins” ; museums were for Dallas, the effete business-suited metropolis on the other side of the county line.

That was then.

Fort Worth today has skyscrapers. It has gourmet restaurants that don’t rely on barbecue. And it has some museums that are world class, worth making Fort Worth a destination, not just a detour from the freeway.

W and I spent the morning at the Kimbell.  The building itself is architecturally significant, a series of half cylinders lined up next to each other, enclosing two wings, one devoted to art from around the world and a thousand years of time, the other focusing on Impressionists and their successors. The museum is beautifully curated, with the art arranged thematically as well as sequentially. A sinuous Hindu goddess clad in flowing draperies is placed near an elegantly posed Reynolds portrait of a society belle; a Chinese pottery horse from the Tang Dynasty faces a portrait of Lord Grosvenor’s prize Arabian stallion. The juxtaposition helped me to see each piece in a new way.

Like most museums, the Kimball offers a pleasant alternative for lunch. In with pandemic restrictions, we we happy with a box lunch of soup, salad, quiche, and fruit eaten in an outdoor atrium next to a Maillol stature of “Air” under a trellis whose wisteria vine will be beautiful in a few more weeks with lavender pendants, and will give welcome shade in the summer.

After lunch we moseyed across the avenue to “The Modern”, which lacks the architectural moxie of the Kimball, but makes up for it with some striking outdoor sculptures, some reflected in a large pool which half-surrounds the building. Inside on the main floor, the permanent collection includes some Rothko, a Jackson Pollock, and some Donald Judd of Marfa fame.

The second floor was devoted largely to an exhibit of photography and cinema by an Iranian/Azaerjibian woman, Shirin Neshat. Gripping, but after watching a half hour of black and white cinema and then walking through three rooms of large portraits in black and white, I began to feel I was trapped in someone’s somber senior yearbook. A quick visit to the sculpture garden off the second floor refreshed my color receptors.

A final visit to the gift shop (none of the artwork I admired was available on post cards, alas!) and we were off to our change of pace destination: Shelter camping at Meridian State Park. Tune in next week!