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June 6, 2008 ·"Hi, I'm Vikki Carr. Welcome to the McNay Art Museum," begins the new audio tour for the McNay Art Museum.
The new tour is just one of the many new features art lovers can expect as the museum opens its doors to the public this weekend after many months of construction.
Also added to the McNay is a state-of-the-art auditorium, a student center for hands-on learning and of course the new Jane and Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibition.
The new center adds 45-thousand square feet of exhibition space, nearly doubling the area of the museum. World-reknowned architect Jean-Paul Viguier was chosen to build the new center. He wanted to use the abundant South Texas sun to showcase the art while still protecting it
So for that we have to come up with a quite sophisticated system of different layers that in fact constitute the roof of the new facility," he states.
The result is six feet of layered filters that can be rearranged to catch the light perfectly, depending on the needs of the exhibit.
"Architecture is about you and the space and your life and your happiness and the function – and here in Texas, it's also about landscape and climate."
Viguier was inspired not only by the sunlight but by the by the landscape, which was used to develop a two-story indoor-outdoor sculpture gallery made up of three different spaces divided by a glass curtain – just another innovative addition to the museum.
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