A DELICATE BALANCE.(architect Tadao Ando's new building for Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth is an architectural masterpiece. It was completed in 1972, just two years before its designer, Louis Kahn, died, and it has become probably the most revered museum design of the second half of the twentieth century. The Kimbell isn't very large, but a move to expand it a few years ago was beaten back by those who believe that Kahn's composition of travertine walls and concrete vaults washed by natural light is so close to perfect that it should be left alone.

In 1996, the trustees of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth acquired an eleven-acre site across the street from the Kimbell and commissioned the Japanese architect Tadao Ando to design a new building for them. This was a little like asking someone to put up a church next door to Chartres. The commission seemed even more daunting because Ando, who is sixty-one years old, had never taken on a major public building in the United States, although he had designed a small private museum for the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis, which was completed last year, and a house in Chicago. Ando's work is refined and restrained. It has an austere delicacy that seemed unsuited to a large-scale project.

In fact, Ando has much in common with Louis Kahn. Both are masters of concrete and know...

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