The Crow Museum of Asian Art is expanding into a second location.
The new museum, located on the campus of the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas, is part of a planned cultural district that will span 12 acres, NBC 5 reported. It will be a part of the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum.
The expansion was announced in an exhibit called Cast: Molding a New Museum for UT Dallas, according to NBC 5. It can be found at the Crow Museum’s Dallas Arts District location until March 5.
The museum’s senior director, Amy Lewis Hofland, told NBC 5 that this expansion will be the first of its kind in the country.
“It will be the first athenaeum in the United States with an art museum with a corpus of Asian art so that’s a really different way to think about these Greek ideas in a global context,” Hofland shared.
Future galleries will show work from the Horchow, Stevens, and Boeckman collections. There are also plans to display sculptures created by Xu Bing, an acclaimed Chinese artist.
The cultural district where the museum will be located is modeled after the Arts District in Fort Worth and the Dallas Arts District. It will feature a performance hall, a two-acre plaza, a 1200-space parking garage, and an additional museum building.
The museum is set to open in 2024, while the performance hall will not be completed until 2026.
The exhibit announcing the expansion shows how the concrete exterior of the museum was made. Hofland shared that multiple samples are used to showcase this. Dramatic renderings that show the museum’s interior are also being displayed.
The architecture and design firm Morphosis was chosen for the expansion project, NBC 5 reported. The firm also designed the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
Hofland shared that one thing Morphosis chose to do was put the galleries on the second level of the building.
“What I love about Morphosis is they elevated the galleries to the second level. If all the galleries were on the first level, it would be a solid wall at grade. This way, with them lifted, we can offer transparency on the first floor to the lobby, to the Brettell Reading Room … people can see people inside and one of the keys to magnetic building is that you can see people interacting and say, ‘I want to be part of that,’” Hofland said.
The Crow Museum of Asian Art currently has a lease in the Dallas Arts District for 35 years, according to NBC 5. Hofland shared that they have no plans to leave the area anytime soon.
The collection of the Crow Museum of Asian Art was donated to The University of Texas at Dallas in 2019. This donation included $23 million for the creation of a second museum on the UT Dallas campus in Richardson.