"Three Museums in Search of a City?" Well, not quite ...
Written: May 03 '03 (Updated Jun 28 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great museums. Nice people. Great tourist traps if you like tourist traps.
Cons: The usual sprawl and neglect of the inner-city. Climate is an acquired taste.
The Bottom Line: See the review.
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Fort Worth |
In the brand-new Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth, a full-size, realist sculpture of an Etruscan man stands, hand outstretched in an uncertain gesture, directly in front of a mirror. The mirror is full length, perhaps three inches from his fingertips.
I glance over his shoulder at what he sees. There, out the window behind him, is the reflecting pool, and to the left, an outdoor patio where museum-goers and scavenger-birds nibble on biscotti. Then, in the middle distance, is the skyline of Fort Worth, about three miles away.
The man is Etruscan -- so says his little sign -- so he represents a civilization that fell in the face of Rome, that brief flash of republic that was consumed by dreams of empire. He gazes in the mirror at Fort Worth, wondering perhaps how many empires have fallen since the time machine deposited him here, and what strange new empire this is.
Not, certainly, an empire in its prime. Of the dozen or so buildings that form the Fort Worth skyline, two are abandoned. One of these is old, and it's not common to see these in many middle-American cities. But the other is a modernist glass block, about 20 storeys, no more than a few decades old. It was wrecked by a tornado and never repaired or torn down; today, its exterior is half glass, half plywood. It stands directly on "Sundance Square", the tourism term for the collection of retail and restaurants in this part of town. But your complementary map of Sundance Square, lavish in its description of parking and attractions, shows nothing on this block. Pay no attention to that 20-storey building. Look at all this parking, and all these cool restaurants and souvenirs. And the obedient tourist -- obedience being part of the definition of a tourist -- does just that.
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Mention Fort Worth to people who lightly know the city, and you're likely to hear about two clusters of attractions: the museums and the Stockyards.
The Stockyards are a tourist district in the north, centered on one intensely restored street, complete with cops on horseback and odd militialike clusters of men in 19th century uniforms slinging rifles about in an alarmingly undisciplined way. Mostly though, the stockyards area is about restaurants and souvenirs. The pungent smell of a true stockyard is absent, of course. You're more likely to catch those smells in the livestock exhibition halls in the "Cultural District", next to those museums.
"Fort Worth? Great Museums."
These were the first words that came to the mind of a worldly Dallas-based friend when I asked about the city. Fort Worth has three major art museums, all located close together -- though in typical Texas fashion, they've been arranged to ensure that you have to drive from each one to the next. You can take transit to them, but it's remarkably difficult to find their front doors from the street.
You've probably read recently about "The Modern", a supposedly great architectural achievement that will house a collection of post-WWII and contemporary art. I defer to the architectural elite to sing this buildings praises; certainly, if you like modernist architecture, The Modern has a certain grace. Of course, it would be nice if there were some art. The permanent collection is thin, and epiphanies -- such as the poor Etruscan reaching toward the mirror -- are rare.
So get in the car, drive about 1/4 mile, and you're at the Kimbell. Fort Worth's most famous museum, and the one devoted to all art before World War II, has two special exhibit galleries. When two special exhibits are on, the permanent collection has exactly one gallery, also known as the lobby, to show itself off. They do appear to have an interesting collection of Spanish art from the late Renaissance, but during my visit, most of the art for which the Kimbell is renowned was in a warehouse somewhere, as it often is.
So I got in the car and drove another 1/4 mile to the Amon Carter Museum. This museum of American Art is a triumph. The ground floor is full of tiresome 19th Century cowboys-and-indians paintings by Remington and Russell, but once upstairs, you find a marvelous collection of America's greatest artists in all media, including two contrasting Georgia O'Keeffees, a strong and characteristic Louise Nevelson sculpture, and a wonderful collection of American photography from both centuries of its history. Its collection, in short, is a fine survey of American art, especially Western and Southern, that seems to belong in Fort Worth.
Amon Carter's special exhibit also had an endearing angle: "Winslow Homer: Artist and Angler" brought together Homer's many paintings and drawings related to fishing, and was clearly meant to reach out to all those DFW-area fishermen who wouldn't normally be drawn to a museum. So long as the Kimbell keeps its collection in hiding, Amon Carter is by far the greatest of the three museums, and the only one that I'd recommend a trip to Fort Worth specifically to see.
Finally, when it comes to architecture, no major structure in Fort Worth is as heartwarming as the very tall Deco tower that is part of the cultural district's exhibit hall. Deco is one of the few styles that manages to feel both futuristic and warm, and this tower is one of the best examples anywhere.
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Fort-Worth-for-tourists, then, consists of Sundance Square, the Stockyards, and the Cultural District. Otherwise, Fort Worth is a poster-child for everything that went wrong with American cities in the mid-20th-Century. Once-vibrant neighborhoods have been shredded by massive freeways. Historic districts, which in Dallas would have been fixed up by now, still lie derelict. Meanwhile, sprawl continues to the horizon, as it does throughout Texas, promising a future of petroleum-dependence and choking smog.
Subcultures, though, are carving out areas with love. Just west of the Stockyards is the main Latino district, and while much of it looks squalid at first, this is where you will find Mexican restaurants that real Mexicans would eat at. The gay-and-lesbian culture is widespread but nearly invisible, as it is throughout most of Texas, though the Coffee House Gallery & Cafe at Pennsylvania & Jennings, just south of downtown, seems to be the beginning of the kind of neighborhood where gay people can be visible.
All across America, cities are rediscovering their centers, reclaiming their historic neighborhoods, and discovering alternatives to sprawl. Fort Worth is one of the relatively few places where this process has barely begun. There is much to work with -- the great museums, a fine network of parks, a Botanical Garden, some beautiful old architecture, and the long, continuous cycling paths that line the Trinity River. It would be easy to deride Fort Worth as "Three museums in search of a city," but with some local effort, they'll find that city soon.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb
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Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
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About Me:
Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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