Meadows Museum

The Meadows Museum, often called the Prado on the Prairie, is a two-story, 66,000-square-foot art museum located on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. Operating as a division of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, the museum houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works spanning from the 10th to the 21st centuries. Since its inception in 1965, it has become a significant center for Spanish art scholarship and exhibition in the United States, distinguished by its commitment to conservation, research, and public engagement with Hispanic visual culture.

The Meadows Museum opened to the public on 3 April 1965, the result of a gift from Algur Hurtle Meadows (1899-1978), a Dallas businessman and founder of the General American Oil Company of Texas. During the 1950s, frequent business trips to Madrid brought Meadows repeatedly to the Museo Nacional del Prado, where he developed a passion for Spanish Golden Age art. With assistance from Jerónimo Seisdedos, a retired Prado employee, and later from José López Jiménez, who worked under the pseudonym Bernardino de Pantorba, Meadows acquired over sixty paintings by the early 1960s. He announced his intention to donate his collection to SMU following the death of his wife Virginia Stuart Garrison in 1961, and in 1962 committed funds through the Meadows Foundation for a museum building and endowment.

The opening was marred by a forgery scandal: most of Meadows's original acquisitions proved to be fakes, many by the notorious forger Elmyr de Hory. In response, SMU appointed William B. Jordan as the museum's first professional director in 1967; he served until 1981 and oversaw the formation of the collection's present core. After Algur Meadows's death in 1978, The Meadows Foundation, which he had established in 1948, continued to support the institution. Major capital campaigns followed: $18.5 million for the current building in 1998, $33 million to the Meadows School of the Arts in 2006 (with $25 million designated for the museum), and a historic $45 million gift in 2015 for the museum's 50th anniversary, of which $25 million supported museum programs.

The museum has also developed significant exhibition programming, as with the 2013-2015 traveling exhibition Sorolla & America, which explored Joaquín Sorolla's relationship with the United States and opened at the Meadows before traveling to San Diego and Madrid. In 2021, the museum joined the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.

The museum's primary collection encompasses Spanish art from the 10th through the 21st centuries, making it one of the most comprehensive assemblies of its kind outside Spain. Its holdings include Renaissance altarpieces, monumental Baroque canvases, rococo oil sketches, polychrome wood sculptures, Impressionist landscapes, and modernist abstractions. A particular strength is the comprehensive collection of graphic works by Francisco de Goya, including complete first editions of his four major print series: La Tauromaquia, Los Disparates, Los Caprichos, and Los Desastres de la Guerra.

Beyond Spanish painting, the museum maintains a significant sculpture collection featuring modern works by non-Spanish masters, originally known as the Elizabeth Meadows Sculpture Garden. The museum also administers SMU's University Art Collection, which documents leading artists of the North Texas region including Frank Reaugh, Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, Alexandre Hogue, and William Lester.

The painting collection features major works by El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Ribera, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Goya, Joan Miró, Joaquín Sorolla, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. Specific documented works include Goya's Yard with Madmen (1794) and his Portrait of Mariano Goya, the artist's grandson (1827); Velázquez's Philip IV (c. 1623-1624), Figure of a Woman (1648), and Queen Mariana of Austria (1655-1656); Miró's Portrait of the Queen Louise of Prussia (1929); Dalí's The Merman (1930); and the cubist painter María Blanchard.

The sculpture collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, David Smith, and Claes Oldenburg, whose Geometric Mouse II (1969-1970) is held by the museum. The outdoor sculpture plaza features Jaume Plensa's four-meter-high Sho (2007) and Santiago Calatrava's kinetic sculpture Wave, measuring approximately 12 by 27 meters.

The museum occupies a neo-Palladian building designed by the Chicago-based architectural firm Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge, with Thomas H. Beeby as lead architect. Completed and opened in March 2001, the structure encompasses approximately 6,130 square meters (66,000 square feet) across two stories, featuring naturally lit painting galleries and extensive exhibition space. The dedication ceremony included King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía of Spain.

In October 2009, the museum inaugurated its plaza and sculpture garden, designed by Swiss architect Thomas Krähenbühl of Dallas-based TKTR Architects. The entrance area incorporates fountains and access stairways from Bishop Boulevard leading to the sculpture plaza, which serves as the outdoor setting for the museum's sculptural holdings.

The Meadows Museum is located on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, on Bishop Boulevard. It is owned by Southern Methodist University and operates as a division of the Meadows School of the Arts. The museum is open to the public daily except Monday, with hours from 10:00 to 17:00. Its official website is www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org. As a member of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network since 2021, the museum continues to fulfill its dual mission of public access and scholarly stewardship of one of the foremost collections of Spanish art in the United States.