Update:
This story has been updated with additional information about the Athenaeum project and the opening of the Crow museum.
Crow Museum of Asian Art set to open second location at UT Dallas
The new museum will be unveiled in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 24.
The Crow Museum of Asian Art will soon unveil a new location at UT Dallas in Richardson.
The facility, which cost $63.5 million to build, is an addition to the museum’s downtown Flora Street location, which opened in 1998.
The 58,000-square-foot building represents the first phase in a three-pronged plan for an on-campus arts district called the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum. A ribbon-cutting ceremony for Phase 1 is planned for Sept. 24, followed by a groundbreaking for Phase 2, which includes a performing arts center that is expected to open in the fall of 2026. A second museum for traditional arts of the Americas (Phase 3 of the project) does not have a projected completion date. Designed by Morphosis Architects, the firm also behind the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in downtown Dallas, the Athenaeum project was projected to cost $158 million in 2022.
The Crow had “always looked north,” says Amy Lewis Hofland, the museum’s senior director, because of the Asian enclaves in the suburbs. So when Richard Brettell, the late art scholar and founding director of the university’s Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, called Hofland in 2017 to discuss a satellite outpost of the Crow, the location was a significant factor in the museum’s decision to come on board.
Brettell, who died in 2020, has been credited by university officials with developing the vision for the Athenaeum. A former art critic at The Dallas Morning News, he also engineered UTD’s 2019 acquisition of the museum and its collection, which was started by Trammell and Margaret Crow in the 1960s. The Crow family also donated $23.5 million for the Richardson museum.
The downtown and Richardson locations will rotate galleries and operate as two branches of one museum, Hofland said. The new space will serve as a kind of “love letter” to North Texas’ Asian communities, hosting events for holidays such as the Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
To help with educational efforts, the Crow’s collection will be incorporated into the curriculum for some art classes.
“I had always thought it was really important to introduce students to our collections at the college age, because that’s when you really make your decisions about what you’re going to be interested in,” said Hofland, who teaches an art history course for nonmajors at UTD.
Located at the southeast corner of campus, the building is designed to draw students in.
“Oftentimes, [with] buildings we look at, you’re not quite sure what it is or what’s going on,” said Arne Emerson, a design partner with Morphosis. “And so one of the things that we were interested in was making it visually accessible.”
That meant using large expanses of glass, so viewers could see what’s happening inside, he explained.
In addition to gallery space, the building contains classrooms, the Brettell Reading Room, a conservation lab and office space. The Crow has moved some of its downtown offices to the new building, Hofland said.
The museum’s opening will be the latest step in the university’s efforts toward becoming a major player in the North Texas arts scene. Since its founding in the 1960s, UTD has become known for its STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs.
“The S, T, E and M in our STEAM are just as big as before, but so now is the A,” the university’s outgoing president, Richard Benson, said in an email statement, referring to the arts. Benson, who came to UTD in 2016, will step down once a successor is found, likely by the end of the academic year.
“I have often observed that no one comes to UTD to take in a football game,” he added. “But they will come (and have been coming) for the art and for the music.”
Details
The Crow Museum of Asian Art will be open to the public starting Sept. 25 at UT Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Free admission. 972-883-6430, oda.utdallas.edu.
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