CULTUREMAP - More than three years after it announced it was acquiring Ellsworth's Kelly's Austin, the Blanton Museum of Art will unveil the groundbreaking addition its permanent collection. On February 18, the 2,715-square-foot stone "chapel" perched near the Blanton on the University of Texas at Austin campus will open its doors.
The structure is constructed using Spanish limestone as well as special elements like redwoods milled in the 19th century and salvaged from a riverbed, native Texas live oak repurposed from the site of the Dell Medical School, and stained glass windows on three of the building's four facades. Inside the building is a totem built using the salvaged redwood, and 14 black and white panels that serve as the artist's version of the stations of the cross.
Despite its chapel-like feel and the stations of the cross, Kelly's surviving partner (the artist died in 2015, two months after construction on Austin began) told the New York Times' style bible T Magazine that Kelly purposefully kept it secular, even turning down an offer from a Catholic university because he didn't want the building consecrated.
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