By Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Michael Auping, Chief Curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth: [To technician] Can you try to pull the bottom out a little bit?
Suzanne Sprague, Reporter: This warm, late September day is the moment Michael Auping has been waiting for most of his professional life.
Auping: Switch that with that.
Sprague: After years of planning and a week of moving offices and artwork, Michael Auping, chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, gets to hang the Museum's collection on its virgin gallery walls.
Auping: I couldn't be happier. This is a total professional high. There isn't a drug that is better than this, that I have found.
Sprague: In some cases, Auping is working with pieces of art he's never handled before. Curators went shopping when the Museum broke ground on its new eleven-acre facility three years ago. They bought almost 50 works of art and received another 35 as gifts.
Auping: This is a piece that I don't want to say the title of the piece because I want it to be a surprise to everybody.
Sprague: The secret is out now. Auping is almost transfixed by a two-story ash and maple sculpture of a narrow, twisted ladder. The 1996 work, called "Ladder for Booker T. Washington," combines simple materials and design with a craft-like technique. It's mesmerizing, and also faintly reminiscent of something from a Dr. Seuss book. Chances are, you've never heard of the artist, the American post-minimalist Martin Puryear, but Texas Christian University Art Professor Mark Thistlethwaite says that's part of the beauty of the Modern's collection.
Mark Thistlethwaite, TCU Art Professor: There are a lot of different artists and some of them aren't going to be as familiar to the public at large, but it's a way for them to learn about those artists and engage with them and be upset with what they see, be provoked with what they see, fall in love with what they see and come back and look again and again.
Sprague: That's the message the Museum's education curator Terri Thorton hopes to convey on a tour of the Modern's new galleries. She pauses in a room that features the work of the post-War German artist Anselm Keifer.
Terri Thorton, MAMFW Education Curator: Anselm Keifer works beautifully I think within an architectural setting because his work is so architectural. He doesn't paint a painting. He builds a painting.
Sprague: Keifer's monumental painting of a Nazi reception room is an oil and acrylic composition covered in ashes with a giant dried sunflower affixed in the center. The meaning of the painting is as layered as its canvas. Thorton says much of Keifer's work is a response to the atrocities of the Third Reich and his own struggle with being German.
Thorton: And then of course within that psychological search he found out about humankind in general, the psychology of all of us, the fact that we are made up of both good and evil and that we are capable of horrible things at the same time we're capable of very beautiful things.
Sprague: Today, 150 pieces from the Fort Worth Modern's permanent collection line its new galleries. Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein are among the other artists featured. Organizers have also published a catalog of the collection. And TCU's Mark Thistlethwaite, who wrote part of the catalog, applauds the choice of cover art - Gerhard Richter's painting of a 1960's-era Ferrari magazine ad.
Thistlethwaite: It's such a contemporary image that we have and to link it with a modern art museum. It's sort of like the museum going 110 mph, like this car speeding through space. And it emphasizes the changeability of modern art and that as a museum of modern art, this is a collection that is constantly going to be changing and moving ahead.
Sprague: In contrast, the modern's new 153,000-ft building is a simple and serene design. The straightforward glass and concrete box construction is surrounded by a reflecting pond and quietly landscaped grounds. Just two shades of grey paint and one shade of white were used inside. Peter Arendt oversaw the building's design and construction.
Pepter Arendt, Director of Design and Construction: And there's a very, very limited palette of materials in the building's design. Obviously, concrete, which is the major portion of the building in the structure. Granite floors. Drywall. Oak and glass and the metal panels. And that's basically it.
Sprague: The poured concrete walls, while formidable, are also smooth and elegantly unadorned. Skylights in the galleries and stairwells offer a natural luminosity. But as Peter Arendt explains, they also can damage delicate works of art.
Arendt: So when you're introducing natural light into a space, and in Texas when the sunlight is so great compared to other parts of the world, we had to bring down the light level that was actually going to come through the ceiling to about 5%.
Sprague: Translucent ceiling panels made of a polyvinyl fabric were hung below the skylights. They block damaging sun rays, but let in enough diffused light that the galleries dim a bit when a cloud passes above the museum. The effect was part of internationally-acclaimed architect Tadao Ando's master plan for the new modern.
Ando's translator: Hello, my name's Tadao Ando and I am very happy to see you today.
Sprague: Ando is a native of Japan. He returned to his newest design last month to address the media, through a translator. He said he's attracted to architecture that helps children feel a part of their community. And, he told reporters he wants the Modern's new building to become a center of public life for all families in Fort Worth.
Ando: [speaking in Japanese with English translation] I feel in this age when technology and the computer have really involved in our everyday life and people seem to be isolated more and more that I place for people to come together is very important. It's like a church in the traditional society. That people gather there not physically, but spiritually, together. I think that cultural institutions more and more will place this role and I hope that the museum could be at least the heart and nucleus of Fort Worth.
Sprague: At the very least, the Fort Worth Modern rests in the heart of the city's cultural district. Its proximity to the Kimbell Museum and importance to the wider cultural district were among the thoughts dancing in Richard Serra's mind when he designed the Museum's first outdoor sculpture.
Artist Richard Serra: When the project presented itself, I thought the possibility in relation to both museums, in relation to this little urban context, was a real challenge and a real great potential to do something I hadn't been able to do before in a public space of this size.
Sprague: As a construction crew unloaded Serra's 230-ton sculpture, 'Vortex 2002,' that vision began to take shape. Its seven plates of Cor-ten steel stand 67-feet tall and have oxidized into a burnt orange color. They were arranged in a circle that's wide enough at the ground level to walk inside, but the plates twist and taper as they rise to form a smaller opening at the top. This is what it sounds like to stomp inside.
Sprague: 'Vortex' is something of an engineering feat. But, Richard Serra says that's not really the point of the sculpture.
Serra: The content of the piece will be one's experience inside and I don't think you have to know anything about math or engineering to be able to participate in the de-centering and sensate experience that you'll have.
Sprague: That experience begins Saturday when the new Modern opens its doors to the public. The occasion also marks the 110th anniversary of the Modern's charter, as the oldest museum in Texas. For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.
To contact Suzanne Sprague, please send emails to ssprague@kera.org.