Meadows Musem

Building Description

The Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University houses the most comprehensive and one of the largest collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. With works dating from the 10th to the 20th centuries, the internationally renowned collection presents a broad spectrum of art covering a thousand years of Spanish heritage.
The museum is a unique resource for local schools, colleges, the Dallas-Fort Worth community, and visitors from around the world. With an active program of tours, educational outreach, weekend family days and a summer art program for young people, the Meadows Museum plays an important role as an educational and cultural center in North Texas. Throughout the year, the Meadows Museum presents an exciting series of special exhibitions, public lectures, symposia and gallery talks featuring university professors, visiting scholars and artists. The museum also hosts film series and concerts by local and international musicians.
The Meadows Museum collection includes masterpieces by some of Europe's greatest painters: Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán, El Greco, Murillo, Goya, Miró and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include Renaissance altarpieces, monumental Baroque canvases, exquisite rococo oil sketches, polychrome wood sculptures, Impressionist landscapes, modernist abstractions, a comprehensive collection of the graphic works of Goya, and a select group of sculpture by major 20th-century masters.

History

During business trips to Spain in the 1950s, Texas philanthropist and oil financier Algur H. Meadows spent many hours at the Prado Museum in Madrid. The Prado's spectacular collection of Spanish masterpieces inspired Meadows to begin his own collection of Spanish art. In 1962, through The Meadows Foundation, he gave SMU funds for the construction and endowment of a museum to house his Spanish collection. The Meadows Museum opened in 1965 as part of a new arts center at SMU. In the years that followed, Algur Meadows provided the impetus and funds for an aggressive but highly selective acquisitions program through which an extraordinary collection was developed in a remarkably short period of time. Since his death in 1978, The Meadows Foundation has provided ongoing support for continued development of the museum's permanent collection.