PAST EXHIBITIONS

Algur H. Meadows pursued art with the same tenacious ambition he applied to his oil business. A journalist in 1968 wrote that “when Algur decided to enter the world of art, all of him did so.” Mr. Meadows’s dream to create Texas’s own version of Spain’s legendary Museo del Prado has culminated with the Meadows Museum’s collection, which features Spanish art spanning from the tenth to the twenty-first centuries.

In March 2001, a new building for the Meadows Museum on SMU’s campus was dedicated. This new edifice, constructed to house the expanding permanent collection and provide more space for exhibitions and education initiatives, was funded in great part by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation. The Meadows’s new building features an outdoor plaza and sculpture garden, comprising a permanent installation of both modern and contemporary sculptures complete with a vantage point to Santiago Calatrava’s kinetic Wave below. The installation of Sho, a thirteen-foot tall sculpture by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, marked the plaza’s dedication in October 2009.

To celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the inauguration of the Meadows Museum’s new home, this fall we will host an installation featuring ten significant works of art acquired by the Meadows over the past ten years. This display will feature selections from our holding of portraits–a strength of the museum’s collection – such as Richard Worsam Meade by Vicente López y Portaña and King Charles II by Juan Carreño de Miranda. Nineteenth-century landscapes by artists such as Joaquín Sorolla and Aureliano de Beruete will also be included in the installation.

In prior decades, the museum’s collection was built up greatly by bequests from museum patrons. Within the last ten years, many works of art have entered the Meadows collection from the generosity of private donors as well as from the Challenge Grant, which was developed by The Meadows Foundation.

The Challenge Grant matches one-to-one all monetary donations contributed toward the purchase of museum acquisitions or for funding other museum initiatives, up to five million dollars.

This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum and has been funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.