Blanton Museum of Art
A strong university collection, Ellsworth Kelly’s stone building, and a redesigned plaza bring old-master painting, Latin American art, prints, and postwar work into one compact campus visit.
Artwork inspired by Kelly Fearing
The Blanton’s breadth is most legible through three strengths: European painting, Latin American art, and works on paper. Rather than moving floor by floor, follow how religious authority, colonial exchange, portraiture, and modern identity are constructed differently across those collections. The prints and drawings reward close attention to process that large canvases can overpower.
Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin is a building-sized work, not a chapel and not simply an Instagram stop. Enter after your eyes have adjusted to the plaza, watch colored light move across the walls, and compare its proportions with the museum galleries. The redesigned grounds provide genuine shade, but special exhibitions and UT events can still change the practical rhythm of arrival.
- Collection
- European painting beneath Austin’s newest shade
- Setting
- Austin, Texas
- Plan for
- 2–3 hours
Quick guide
- Permanent-collection strength
- One permanent-collection strength
- Begin with
- Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin
Explore further
- Choose a lens
- Use track authority, devotion, identity, or exchange across two collections.
- Enter Austin slowly
- Let the colored glass and proportions unfold without treating the work as a photo set.
- Look on paper
- Compare a drawing or print with the finished monumentality of nearby painting.
- Check campus conditions
- Confirm uT events, construction, and heat can change parking and walking time.
Good to know
Austin by Ellsworth Kelly and all exhibitions are included in general admission. Tickets may be bought online or onsite but are nonrefundable, and all visitors check in. Public tours are included without reservation. Groups of eight or more must register two weeks ahead. Brazos and Trinity garages are unavailable to museum visitors on UT home-football days.
Notice these
- One permanent-collection strength
- Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin
- Latin American galleries