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Driven by a love affair with art that has lasted over 50 years, Ray and Patsy Nasher have actualized notable achievements, including amassing one of the finest collections of modern sculpture in the world with over 300 pieces, including virtually all the great masters. But Ray Nasher’s recent vision–to vitalize the growing Dallas downtown art district by creating an enduring sculpture garden and gallery worthy to frame a rotating display of their collection of three-dimensional art by masters like Picasso, Moore and Matisse–required the talented collaboration of two additional artists, Italian architect, Renzo Piano and landscape architect, Peter Walker. The goal? To create a quiet retreat from the metropolitan hustle-bustle of the city, where fast-paced urban travelers would slow down and, not just view, but contemplate art.
Ray Nasher chose Piano to design the Sculpture Center after an exhaustive research and selection process that lasted over two years. Piano is well known for designing several renowned museum buildings including the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris (in collaboration with Richard Rogers), the Menil Collection in Houston, and the Museum Boweler in Basel, Switzerland.
Peter Walker?EUR??,,????'???s Berkeley, California firm, Peter Walker and Partners have worked on architectural projects throughout the world, including the redevelopment of the Millennium Park for the 2000 Olympics in Australia, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Toyota City, Japan, and recently for his winning design (collaborating with Michael Arad) of the ?EUR??,,????'??Reflecting Absence?EUR??,,????'?? World Trade Center memorial.
In spite of all this relevant experience, the Nasher Sculpture Center was ?EUR??,,????'??one of the most intense projects I?EUR??,,????'???ve ever been involved in,?EUR??,,????'?? reflects Walker who, with co-creator Piano, shaped thirteen models and literally hundreds of preliminary designs. ?EUR??,,????'??The problem was not the goal but how to achieve it; we had an extraordinary client and collection of art and also a wonderful site?EUR??,,????'??+we [designers] wanted to live up to all that.?EUR??,,????'??
The result? In rudimentary terms, the creation is a 54,000-square-foot museum complete with auditorium, conservation lab, caf????(C) and 10,000 square-feet of indoor gallery space that flows into a one and a half-acre garden, where 25 to 30 pieces of sculpture are displayed at any given time. But in more artistic term it?EUR??,,????'???s a street-side portal into an urban oasis, merging indoor and outdoor ?EUR??,,????'??roof-less?EUR??,,????'?? galleries, providing a garden ?EUR??,,????'??stage,?EUR??,,????'?? suitable for a Picasso one day and a Rodin the next.
To create a ?EUR??,,????'??seamless flow of space?EUR??,,????'?? between garden and gallery, designers, Piano and Walker collaborated to give the indoor gallery an ?EUR??,,????'??outdoor feel.?EUR??,,????'?? Inside, the gallery?EUR??,,????'???s long, parallel walls of smooth, Tuscan travertine divide five, equal-sized pavilions. Glass facades, enclosing each end of the pavilions, allow the galleries to visually extend, providing an unobstructed, continuous view from the street, through the building and into the garden. Warm sunlight seeps through a semi-transparent, barrel-vaulted ceiling built by supporting delicate panes of glass on narrow steel ribs held by thin, stainless rods. A custom designed cast-aluminum sunscreen floats above the glass allowing the bright sky to filter down into the gallery giving it a ?EUR??,,????'??roofless?EUR??,,????'?? effect.
Outside, a terrace of green granite paving stones leads down a few steps into the garden. A single, flat plane of grass, the garden is divided by hedges and groves of trees that define intimate viewing spaces and create virtual outdoor rooms for the display of sculpture, much like intimate rooms in a gallery display art. In order to give repeat visitors a broad view of the Nashers?EUR??,,????'??? extensive collection, sculptures will be periodically rotated, in both the indoor and outdoor gallery, adding another dynamic element to this unique public space.
To maintain continuity, the same southern Tuscan travertine used in the indoor gallery walls form the outdoor garden?EUR??,,????'???s perimeter walls. But while the interior walls have been smoothed and honed to a creamy perfection, the outdoor stone remains naturally rough and pitted. ?EUR??,,????'??The walls hold the garden on three sides forming a cull de sac in the same sense that an indoor gallery is a cull de sac,?EUR??,,????'?? says Walker. ?EUR??,,????'??People don?EUR??,,????'???t just walk through and walk out, they spend time?EUR??,,????'??+which is what every museum hopes for.?EUR??,,????'?? The walls also keep out urban distractions by reducing street noise and limiting the view.
Walker creates other extensions of the interior gallery by building a walkway that leaves the indoor gallery steps flowing all the way down to the water feature at the lower portion of the garden. ?EUR??,,????'??The idea came from Ray?EUR??,,????'???s [Nasher?EUR??,,????'???s] house, Ray had a porch that was lifted above his gardens and formed a bridge between the interior art and the large pieces he had underneath the trees outside.?EUR??,,????'?? So the walkway was created as a ?EUR??,,????'??bridge?EUR??,,????'?? beckoning indoor viewers outside.
To provide an appropriate outdoor ?EUR??,,????'??theater?EUR??,,????'?? for sculpture, Walker had to create the right mix of architectural quality within the landscape while not distracting the visitors from the greater view-the art. Walker designed everything from the walls to plantings to the water features with this in mind. Even the simple planning of hedges or benches form a subtle organizing element–?EUR??,,????'??pieces can be set on them, beside them, relate to them or operate against them,?EUR??,,????'?? instructs Walker. This flexible design element can be witnessed in the bone-like bronze sculpture of Working Model for Three Piece No. 3: Vertebrae, by Henry Moore, which sits on a ledge of verde fontaine (green granite) cobbles overlooking one of the two fountain pools in the north end of the garden.
To quiet the hubbub of the city, Walker used water elements to mask the surrounding downtown noise. A small rain fountain, placed near the outdoor dining terrace of the gallery caf????(C), creates subtle auditory caresses as fine jets of water land in the surrounding basin. The two larger fountains, at the north end of the garden, are partly planted and partly aerated. Using long lines of slightly louder jets, shooting four to five feet high, these fountains subtly buffer any permeating noise from the busy downtown streets.
All the ancillary structures like fountains, steps or benches have been designed as architectonic-as a piece of architecture rather than a piece of sculpture-keeping them humbly within in the proper hierarchy of elements. In these ways, says Walker, designing outdoor galleries is very similar to designing an interior gallery space-by using a purposeful blend of subordinating structures.
While it?EUR??,,????'???s one thing to create an outdoor gallery worthy of Matisse, yet subtle enough not to detract from the view, moving the goliath-like sculptures over pristine terra-firma pose their own unique design challenges. To address the practical issue of moving installations, Walker designed a three-layer soil mixture using different grades of sand and gravel and broken stone to produce a very firm upper layer capable of supporting heavy structures while also allowing water to drain through it.
?EUR??,,????'??There are no catch basins or drains,?EUR??,,????'?? Walker advises. ?EUR??,,????'??The garden is basically a flat surface like a golf putting green-but unlike a putting green which drains off the side-the water all drains down through the soil.?EUR??,,????'?? The soil structure can hold heavy pieces and can tolerate trucks and various lifting equipment that bring pieces in and out, with a minimum of damage. But small turf repairs are expected, says Walker, which he likens to an indoor gallery that would repaint or slightly reconstruct between one show and another.
Other unique design challenges include the unrelentingly dynamic faculties of nature.
?EUR??,,????'??A gallery?EUR??,,????'???s inside space is inert, you can modify it, but once you put it in, there it is,?EUR??,,????'?? states Walker. An outdoor gallery has to operate within the framework of the seasons and the weather and the growth of the trees. ?EUR??,,????'??The landscape literally has a life of its own, enthuses Walker, you must predict how these changing elements will relate to the basic goals of the garden.?EUR??,,????'?? Walker?EUR??,,????'???s design anticipates the outdoor gallery?EUR??,,????'???s needs, from the seasonal changes of light filtering through the downtown sky, through rising lines of live oak or willows, reflecting off three-dimensional structures of bronze, rust, and granite, to providing an enduring foundation for the tread of visitors and traveling sculptures.
In the end, Piano, Walker and the Nashers have created an enduring gallery likely to place among the nation?EUR??,,????'???s greatest public structures, while placing Dallas firmly on the map as one of the most esteemed art venues in the world. With their ambitious progeny weighing in at a total project cost of around $70 million (entirely funded by Ray Nasher), you might wonder how the newly opened (October 2003) gallery is affecting visitors. ?EUR??,,????'??We had a huge response with more than 20,000 people the first weekend,?EUR??,,????'?? asserts Walker. ?EUR??,,????'??People have visited many, many more times than we expected?EUR??,,????'??+they just keep coming back.?EUR??,,????'?? And most importantly, says Walker, ?EUR??,,????'??People don?EUR??,,????'???t just walk through, they spend time–which is what every museum hopes.?EUR??,,????'??
On one hand, the opening of the Nasher Sculpture Center is a public event of international significance, putting Dallas on the map as one of the world?EUR??,,????'???s most prestigious venues of modern sculpture. But the sculpture center is also an intensely personal, living symbol of the love affair between Patsy and Raymond Nasher, as a tribute to their lifelong collecting partnership that ended prematurely with Patsy?EUR??,,????'???s death from cancer in 1988 at age 59.
Born in the Great Depression days of 1921, Ray Nasher was the only child of Russian immigrants turned Boston garment-makers. His parents struggled through horrific economic times but still managed to take their son to a museum once a month, beginning an infatuation with art that Ray Nasher would later share with Patsy Rabinowitz, daughter of a Dallas businessman, who would later become his wife.
Ray was graduating from Duke University, where he was captain of the tennis team, president of the student body, graduating with an underraduate degree in art and later from Boston University with a masters in economics. Patsy graduated at the top of her class from Smith College, a very prestigious women?EUR??,,????'???s school in Northampton, Massachusetts, after taking several art history courses. She had developed a reputation as a zealous collector of anything from political buttons to gypsy jewelry.
The couple married in 1949, and immediately decided that with any extra money ?EUR??,,????'??the first thing we?EUR??,,????'???d do is buy art,?EUR??,,????'?? Raymond Nasher recently said in an interview. After settling in Texas, Ray borrowed funds to build warehouses and residential properties. By the mid-1960s, he began building shopping centers, including NorthPark Center, an enormous mall just north of downtown Dallas. Unlike most developers, he didn?EUR??,,????'???t see the mall as just a place to shop, he saw it as a regal, public space with beautiful common areas filled with water fountains and sculpture.
In addition to his development interests, Ray Nasher served as a United Nations delegate in the 1960s and later as executive director of the White House Conference on International Cooperation. In the mid-1970s, he invested in the Texas Rangers baseball team and also became a highly sought-after college lecturer.
While Ray was busy with the business side of things, Patsy searched for magnificent art finds, quickly capturing pieces by major artists like Moore, Alexander Calder and Joan Miro. The growing collection was displayed at their home or at NorthPark Center and later at their first formal exhibition at the campus gallery of the Southern Methodist University where the curator, William Jordan, called it ?EUR??,,????'??one of the most important collections of modern art in the Southwest.?EUR??,,????'??
Patsy Nasher?EUR??,,????'???s breast cancer had been diagnosed in 1976, but returned, despite surgery and treatment, in the early 1980s. Their collection was finally being recognized as among the finest in the world, just as her life was coming to an end.
After Patsy?EUR??,,????'???s death, some assumed that Ray Nasher?EUR??,,????'???s collecting would slow or subside altogether. But instead, Ray?EUR??,,????'???s passion intensified as he sought out integral pieces to fill any stylistic or historical gaps in the collection. Soon many institutions, like the Guggenheim in New York and the Tate Museum in London, courted Ray, seeking to become the permanent home for the collection.
In the end, Ray Nasher decided–he would use his own money, hire the finest architects, employ only the finest materials–he would build his own personal, enduring monument to Patsy and to the art and love they shared.
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
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