Continued Excellence Over Time

Kay and Velma Kimbell saw British artist William Beechey’s painting of his children at an exhibition at the Carnegie Library in Fort Worth. They bought it from the dealer Bertram M. Newhouse on the last day of the show.

Kay and Velma Kimbell, along with Kay’s sister and brother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Coleman Carter, formed the Kimbell Art Foundation shortly after the Kimbells purchased their first paintings. In ensuing decades, the Kimbell Art Foundation would grow to 260 paintings and 86 other works of art, including Hals’s Rommel-Pot Player, Vigée Le Brun’s Self-Portrait, and a number of British works by artists such as Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Motivated by his wish “to encourage art in Fort Worth and Texas,” Mr. Kimbell left his estate to the Kimbell Art Foundation, charging it with the creation of a museum. Mr. Kimbell had made clear his desire that the future museum be “of the first class,” and to further that aim, within a week of his death, his widow, Velma, contributed her share of the community property to the Foundation.

Seven months after Kay Kimbell’s death, the board of directors of the Kimbell Art Foundation announced jointly with the mayor of Fort Worth the selection of a nine-and-a-half-acre site for the proposed museum to house the Kimbell collection and future acquisitions. It was land adjoining the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in the heart of what is now referred to as Fort Worth’s Cultural District.

After an extensive search, Richard F. “Ric” Brown was named the Kimbell Art Museum’s first director. Previously, he had been director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Richard F. Brown, the Kimbell’s first director, wanted a building that was not only functional, but also architecturally significant, “definitive of 20th-century style.” Though he and the board of directors considered several potential architects, including Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer, Brown and the board were persuaded that Louis I. Kahn should be the architect of the new museum. A formal contract for Kahn to design the building with the assistance of the local architectural firm Preston M. Geren and Associates was signed on October 5, 1966.

Velma Kimbell, in the presence of the Kimbell Art Foundation’s board of directors, broke ground on the Kimbell Art Museum’s building on June 27, 1969, just under three years after the hiring of Louis I. Kahn as the architect.

With the guidance of director Richard F. Brown, the Kimbell Art Foundation purchased over 100 new acquisitions before the Kimbell Art Museum even opened to the public. These ranged from Cycladic, Greek, and Roman sculpture to 15th-century Italian Renaissance painting and from early 20th-century French art to Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture, Chinese and Japanese ceramics and paintings, and the art of Ancient American Olmec and Maya cultures. Among these are some of the most celebrated works of the collection, including Giovanni Bellini’s Christ Blessing, François Boucher’s four monumental canvases of the loves of the gods, Francisco de Goya’s Portrait of the Matador Pedro Romero, Claude Monet’s La Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide and Pablo Picasso’s Man with a Pipe.

The Kimbell opened to the public on October 4, 1972. Director Richard F. Brown was incredibly pleased with the museum at the time of its opening, saying that it was “what every museum has been looking for ever since museums came into existence: a floor uninterrupted by piers, columns or windows, and perfect lighting, giving total freedom and flexibility to use the space and to install art exactly the way you want.” The Kimbell’s small but diverse collection was arranged informally and was accompanied in the galleries by specially designed furniture of oak and leather and richly patterned oriental rugs.

Not long after it opened, the Kimbell began a program of loan exhibitions to bring to the Southwest art that would otherwise be unavailable to the public. The first of these exhibitions was Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the U.S.S.R. It marked the first time many of the included works had traveled outside of the Soviet Union and was a great popular success, drawing record crowds from a five-state regional audience.

Mrs. Ben J. Fortson (Kay), beloved niece of Kay Kimbell, was appointed President of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, a leadership role many assumed she would one day have when she was elected to the Foundation Board at 21 in 1956.

Cézanne’s Man in a Blue Smock was acquired in memory of Richard F. Brown and his tremendous contributions to the Kimbell Art Museum.

After the death of Richard F. Brown, the Kimbell’s board of directors appointed as new museum director Dr. Edmund P. Pillsbury, who had been director of the Yale Center for British Art, a museum also designed by Louis I. Kahn. Soon after his arrival, he simplified the gallery furnishings and began expanding education and exhibition programs, as well as public services. During his tenure, which lasted until 1998, the collection greatly expanded in scope and importance.

In 1981, the Kimbell expanded its modest snack bar into a buffet restaurant under the management of Shelby Schafer. At its inception, the Buffet Restaurant served soup, salad, and dessert to around 25 to 30 customers a day. It wasn’t long before local patrons began to frequent the Buffet, however, and the restaurant soon increased its staff and its menu in order to accommodate around 150 people a day during popular exhibitions.

The first Kimbell Calendar magazine was published in September of 1981 to provide interested parties with information about museum news and upcoming events. It has been published biannually ever since and is one of the benefits of membership in the Kimbell.

The Kimbell received a Mellon Foundation endowment grant in 1981 for our conservation department. For over 40 years, the museum has been a leader in conservation science in our region.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun acquired considerable fame and renown for her portraits of Queen Marie-Antoinette and aristocratic women in late 18th-century France. The Kimbell's Self-Portrait, acquired in 1949, remains one of the most beloved works in the collection.

The Kimbell’s membership program was initiated in 1982 to provide twice-yearly programming information and invitations to exhibition openings to an expanding regional, national and international audience.

Around 1980, the great 20th-century stage designer, furniture maker, and sculptor Isamu Noguchi was inspired to create a sculptural ensemble for the grass courtyard on the south side of the Kimbell in honor of the architect Louis I. Kahn. The two men had been friends—they worked together in the early 1960s on a never-realized playground for Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Arranged on the Kimbell site in August 1983, Constellation makes a most successful addition to the building through allusion to one of Kahn’s favorite topics, the prehistory of architecture. In particular, it recalls the mysterious menhirs that are among the earliest structures made by humankind.

Caspar David Friedrich is among the greatest of those Romantic artists in whose work spiritual yearning is the dominant theme. His landscapes epitomized an international trend around 1800 to contemplate nature, as opposed to “civilization,” for revelations about basic and eternal truths. When the Kimbell acquired A Mountain Peak with Drifting Clouds in 1984, it became the first public collection outside of Europe to own a painting by Friedrich.

From the beginning, the founders of the Kimbell Art Museum envisioned a conservation program to “preserve for future generations what has been entrusted to its care,” and the museum was built with a professional paintings conservation studio. Perry Huston worked part time for the Kimbell until 1983, and in 1984, Claire Barry, a protégé of the Metropolitan Museum of Art conservator John Brealey, was appointed the Kimbell’s first full-time paintings conservator—and one of the first in a Texas museum.

One of the museum’s most groundbreaking exhibitions, The Blood of Kings penetrated the world and mind of the Maya as no previous show had. Making full use of the tremendous progress in deciphering Maya hieroglyphic script that took place after 1960, the exhibition revealed for the first time the specific ritualistic and dynastic meaning of Maya art and showcased 110 rare Ancient American masterpieces.

Caravaggio’s Cardsharps, one of the museum’s best-known works, had disappeared after an 1895 sale before reappearing in Zurich in 1987 and being acquired by the Kimbell. Though skeptics at first thought it was merely a copy, the discovery on the reverse of the canvas of the wax seal of Caravaggio’s patron Cardinal del Monte, as well as evidence of pentimenti (artist’s changes), provided conclusive proof that the painting was Caravaggio’s original, influential masterpiece.

Nicolas Poussin occupies a central place in the history of art. His paintings provided the foundation for the great French tradition of classical art and nurtured the neoclassicism of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Kimbell had acquired the artist's Venus and Adonis four years before the exhibition, in 1985.

Not surprisingly, the Kimbell’s exhibition of Impressionist works from the extraordinary collection assembled by Dr. Albert C. Barnes was one of the museum’s most successful shows ever. The Kimbell was part of an international tour of the collection that was on display outside of its permanent home in the suburbs of Philadelphia; in fact, since the death of Dr. Barnes in 1951, none of the works had been reproduced in color or lent until the advent of this exhibition. The once-in-a-lifetime show—called “just about perfect” by Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times—featured 20 works by Cézanne, 16 by Renoir, 16 by Matisse, seven by Picasso, and significant paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Monet, Manet, Braque, Modigliani, and others.

Miró’s huge fantasy Woman Addressing the Public dominates the east entrance of the Kimbell and is often the first artwork a visitor sees upon arriving at the museum. The artist first realized its design in 1971 as a 20-inch plaster maquette. He planned to place the statue at the entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, then in New York City’s Central Park or at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington, but none of these projects materialized. It would be nearly a quarter of a century before his playful “monster” would finally have a place of honor outside an important museum, the Kimbell. The final work, cast in an edition of four when the artist was 87, weighs roughly three tons.

Dr. Timothy Potts was appointed director of the Kimbell Art Museum in 1998. An archaeologist, Potts would oversee the acquisition of significant works of sculpture for the Kimbell collection.

Louis I. Kahn’s masterpiece is given the American Institute of Architecture’s highest honor.

Incredibly popular, this spectacular landmark exhibition explored the 20-year reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, the first great female ruler known to history. One of the most intriguing figures in ancient Egypt, she oversaw an artistic renewal that produced some of the greatest masterpieces of the magnificent civilization, some of which were featured in this exhibition. Fort Worth was the last of only three venues to showcase the statuary, ceremonial objects, finely crafted furniture, dazzling jewelry, and exquisite personal items that told the compelling story of Hatshepsut—woman, queen, and pharaoh.

The Renzo Piano Building Workshop was selected as architect for the new Kimbell building in April of 2007. Renzo Piano seemed a perfect choice—winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize and honored for buildings that are celebrated for their sensitivity to site and surroundings and the quality of their light; he also worked as a young architect in the office of Louis I. Kahn. More recently, he had favored Texas with several museums of great distinction, including the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and the Menil Collection in Houston.

A major loan exhibition, The Impressionists brought to Fort Worth the crème-de-la-crème of one of the most celebrated and iconic collections of Impressionist paintings in the world, that of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition featured 92 masterpieces by artists including Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. On display were works that define the Impressionist achievement—Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge, late works by Monet executed at Giverny, some of Renoir’s most beloved portraits, and more.

Dr. Eric M. Lee was appointed the fourth director of the Kimbell Art Museum in 2009.

The Kimbell acquired Michelangelo’s Torment of Saint Anthony—the first known painting by the artist, believed to have been created when he was only 12 years old—in 2009. It is the first painting by the famous Italian master to enter an American collection and one of only four easel paintings generally regarded as having come from his hand.

Kay Fortson, president of the Board of Directors of the Kimbell Art Foundation, delivered remarks and broke ground at a groundbreaking ceremony attended by other members of the board, Fort Worth mayor Mike Moncrief, Kimbell director Eric M. Lee, and other members of the Kimbell staff and community.

On January 8, 2012, the Kimbell welcomed its 10 millionth visitor, Anna Chaney. She arrived less than two hours before the close of the exhibition Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome and at the beginning of the museum’s 40th anniversary year. Greeted with fanfare, the delighted Chaney received a lifetime Kimbell Family Membership, a collection of Kimbell books and gifts and a weekend at the Omni Fort Worth Hotel.

Kay Fortson, president of the Board of Directors of the Kimbell Art Foundation, delivered remarks and cut the ribbon at the Renzo Piano Pavilion ribbon cutting ceremony, attended by members of the board, Fort Worth mayor Betsy Price, Kimbell director Eric M. Lee and other members of the Kimbell staff and community.

The museum debuted its first special exhibition in the new Piano Pavilion, Samurai: Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection. It featured more than 140 remarkable objects of extraordinary artistry that were used by samurai—the military elite led by the shoguns, or warlords, of Japan from the 12th through 19th centuries.

This exhibition was the first ever devoted to the young genius of Claude Monet. Monet: The Early Years featured approximately 60 paintings from the first phase of the artist’s career, from his Normandy debut in 1858 until 1872, when he settled in Argenteuil, on the River Seine near Paris.

The Kimbell Art Foundation announced the election of Kimbell Fortson Wynne as the incoming president of the Board of Directors. Wynne has served on the Foundation’s board since 1990 and is the eldest daughter of Kay Kimbell Carter Fortson, the chairman and former president, and Ben J. Fortson, the executive vice president and chief investment officer.

The Kimbell received a $1 million endowment gift in support of the museum’s education programs. The Lowe Foundation Endowment for Kimbell Kids funded in perpetuity outstanding programs established by previous Lowe Foundation grants, Family Fun in Studio A and Kimbell Teens. The endowment also supports the robust and ever-growing Kimbell Kids education programs including drop-in studio programs, school field-trips and tours, and family festivals and activities. Philanthropist Mary Ralph Lowe, a long-time Kimbell patron, recommended the gift in honor of Kimbell Art Foundation Chairman Kay Fortson.

The important gift of a carved limestone Head (c. 1913), by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), is a masterpiece of modern art and one of about 27 surviving sculptures by the artist. This work is among his finest. It was given in honor of Ted and Lucile Weiner by their daughter, Gwendolyn Weiner.

The new Kimbell East Parking area provides an additional 227 parking spaces, including 11 accessible spots, plus enhanced bicycle parking and lush, drought-resistant landscaping with recreation areas and pedestrian walkways. Its completion marked the final stage of development of the campus, including the Kimbell’s Renzo Piano Pavilion, completed in 2013, which is situated directly across the lawn from the Kimbell’s landmark 1972 building by Louis I. Kahn.

This exhibition was the first exhibition in more than 20 years dedicated to the final phase of Monet’s career. Monet: The Late Years was the most attended exhibition since the 1990s with 137,650 visitors to the exhibition. The exhibition included more than 20 examples of Monet’s beloved water-lily paintings.

When Texas business legend Kay Kimbell died in 1964, he left behind a sizable art collection and a vague but imposing mandate: to “build a museum of the first class.” No one could have foreseen the extent to which his dream would be accomplished. In October of 2019, a new book by Tim Madigan titled Of the First Class: A History of the Kimbell Art Museum, featuring the intimate, behind-the-scenes story of how the Kimbell became what it is today, was released.

The Global Nexus Award is granted annually “to recognize organizations that have made a significant contribution to global understanding, world political stability and international trade or cooperative efforts to solve international health, economic, social or environmental challenges.” The Kimbell’s permanent collection and critically acclaimed exhibitions provide unparalleled opportunities for visitors to explore different perspectives and cultures through paintings, sculptures and other artworks of superlative quality and excellence. The two buildings by architects Louis I. Kahn and Renzo Piano make the Kimbell a premier destination for architects and architecture lovers worldwide. Education and outreach programs encourage visitors to connect with artistic traditions representing diverse cultures, religions and histories, while also fostering dialogue and creative expression.