You could earn a couple of doctorate degrees at the University of Texas in Austin without ever running into the Texas Memorial Museum. Regardless, it’s one of my favorite quiet spots in Austin. This art deco-style building sits atop a bluff in the northwest corner of the 40 Acres, surrounded by thick oaks and lost among more modern and functional campus structures.
When it was built in 1936, Texas was celebrating it’s 100th birthday. The men who ran the state back then wanted monuments and museums to lure tourists. But Texas being Texas, the government didn’t want to front construction costs. UT and its student body kicked in funding and the federal government picked up the rest. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in town for the ground-breaking (it was an election year) and the TMM was to be the state’s official natural history museum. Planned as a much larger building with multiple wings, only the main exhibit hall was ever built. The great state of Texas had to stuff it’s treasures into a modest-sized limestone box, lest it have to spend more ducats to expand.
Architecturally, the TMM is no prize-winner. There are some nice WPA-era decorative features that fix it’s time in history. Inside, there are meteorites, bones and precious stones; the standard variety of exhibits for museums of that time. For decades, the skeleton of an enormous flying dinosaur called Quetzalcoatlus has hung suspended from the high ceiling of the main hall. Even if prehistoric creatures are not your thing, Quetzalcoaltus is just a fun word to say.
When it was built in 1936, Texas was celebrating it’s 100th birthday. The men who ran the state back then wanted monuments and museums to lure tourists. But Texas being Texas, the government didn’t want to front construction costs. UT and its student body kicked in funding and the federal government picked up the rest. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in town for the ground-breaking (it was an election year) and the TMM was to be the state’s official natural history museum. Planned as a much larger building with multiple wings, only the main exhibit hall was ever built. The great state of Texas had to stuff it’s treasures into a modest-sized limestone box, lest it have to spend more ducats to expand.
Architecturally, the TMM is no prize-winner. There are some nice WPA-era decorative features that fix it’s time in history. Inside, there are meteorites, bones and precious stones; the standard variety of exhibits for museums of that time. For decades, the skeleton of an enormous flying dinosaur called Quetzalcoatlus has hung suspended from the high ceiling of the main hall. Even if prehistoric creatures are not your thing, Quetzalcoaltus is just a fun word to say.
The little museum is long past its prime and has been outclassed by bigger, better, more self-sustaining museums on the UT campus and beyond. A few years ago, the state put the TMM on a starvation budget and carried away some of its coolest stuff to a big, new state history museum with better parking and an IMAX theater. Like many museums, the TMM is closed indefinitely due to COVID-19.When I went there Saturday morning to paint, I felt like I was visiting a terminally-ill old friend in the hospital. Being there still put a smile in my heart. The weather forecast was for sunny skies and I looked forward to catching the dramatic shadows and angles on the walls. But the morning was overcast and damp, with a lead-colored sky and few shadows. I did my best with 6 colors and 4 brushes as the squirrels bickered. Just as I was packing up to leave, the sun popped out. The TMM caught the dramatic lighting it has enjoyed for nearly 100 years. For a moment, the bright light obscured the flaws of the stained and pitted limestone and the TMM was ready for her closeup. Sadly, I was already done.
Want to see how the tiny painting turned out? You can check it out here. For more Texas paintings by an Austin artist (that’s me), take a look at my gallery.
