Notes

Kimbell Art Museum’s new building provides perfect accompaniment to Kahn’s classic


FORT WORTH — The Kimbell Art Museum, designed by the legendary architect Louis Kahn, is beloved like few other museums built in the past century. Opened in 1972, it finessed all of the design challenges that still plague museum architects today: how to be monumental but intimate, create a space apart from yet still connected to the world, and make an architectural statement without overwhelming the art. Its parallel arrangement of 16 cycloid concrete vaults, like some Iron Age mausoleum complex dug up on a Mediterranean isle, has elicited effusive praise: One prominent critic declared it the best American building of the second half of the 20th century, and many consider it Kahn’s masterpiece.

Now the Kahn building has a near neighbor, designed by Renzo Piano, who has amassed an astonishing number of museum design and expansion projects. He is deeply trusted by museum professionals, and one of the few living architects who would ever be invited to join a duet with something as revered as Kahn’s Kimbell. The result is a $135 million pavilion of glass and concrete, partially submerged in a low, earthen berm, yet presenting a robust face to the original Kimbell, with solid concrete pillars and a massive wooden beam running parallel to the original structure.