Countdown to the Blanton opening

Their artful vision for UT resulted in a masterpiece

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Saturday, April 08, 2006

Jack S. Blanton: the modest-mannered yet generous alumnus determined to share a gift with the whole state of Texas.

Larry Faulkner: the resolute collegiate president with a vision to take the University of Texas beyond its historical achievements.

Together, the two men starred in major — though sometimes behind-the-scenes — roles in the unfolding drama whose grand finale is the Blanton Museum of Art.

Opening in three weeks, the Blanton — the largest university art museum in the country — means different things to each man.

Yet it clearly holds powerful sway over both.

Visiting the $83.5 million institution bearing his name, Blanton, a native Texan and Houston oilman, looked to be fighting back tears.

"Imagine a youngster coming to campus from a small Texas town and getting their first art museum experience at UT," he says, looking around a gallery filled with 17th-century European paintings. "We owe them that."

"I'm not an art expert, just someone that has enjoyed what art has had to offer me: enjoyment, learning, beauty," he says, noting that it was his first wife, the late Laura Lee Scurlock Blanton, who initiated the couple's involvement in art.

Even after he finished his law degree in 1950 and moved back to Houston, where he was raised, Blanton stayed close to UT. By the 1960s, he was president of the Ex-Students' Association. He rose to chairman of the UT System Board of Regents in 1987. At the time, Texas higher education faced 26 percent budget reductions, and Blanton spent considerable time persuading the Legislature not to cut its support, he says, his ears still open to the chatter about the need for a major new museum.

"It was like I heard little voices coming from various places around campus," he says. "And it became very clear that we needed to have a program that let young people have an important exposure to art during their university years."

By 1997, UT had begun its campaign for a new museum, and Blanton was no longer a regent. But he was the chairman of the Houston Endowment, Texas' largest charitable foundation with more than $1 billion in assets. That year, the endowment gave $12 million toward the project, and UT christened the museum in Blanton's honor. The following year, he and Laura Lee ponied up $5 million of their own money.

As for Faulkner, the museum remains one of the high points of his eight-year career as UT president, which ended in January. "So many times as a university president, you walk into a story a that's already well-advanced," he says by phone from his office at the Houston Endowment, of which he is now executive director. "The new facility pretty completely happened entirely within my presidency."

When Faulkner took the helm at UT in 1998, the university was engaged in a $1 billion fundraising effort. Law, engineering, business, among other areas, were renowned academic strengths. Faulkner thought the arts should be, too. "We needed for the arts to take major steps forward and advance on a broad front," he says, speaking of UT in the first person with obvious fondness. "And the museum turned out to be focus of that effort."

That was music to some ears.

"Larry Faulkner came to UT knowing it," Blanton director Jessie Otto Hite says. "Nobody had to tell him why we needed a major new museum and why it was important."

Of course, the ride wasn't easy. When regents and Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron bickered over progressive designs for the new building, Faulkner jumped on a plane and headed to Zurich to try to smooth the architects' feathers and work out a solution. After regents rejected the Herzog and de Meuron design and the architects quit the projects, Faulkner didn't stop. "We needed to keep moving ahead," he says. "We had too much at stake."

When Kallman McKinnell Wood Architects of Boston were chosen as the museum designers, Faulkner remained close to the project, scheduling regular dinner meetings at his home whenever architect Michael McKinnell came to town. A tree-filled public plaza and the interior organization of space were among the topics of conversation. "It was important to me that building always be inviting and accessible," Faulkner say.

With the doors set to open, Faulkner shrugs off the past controversies.

"There is this serenity that comes with knowing you've created well," he says. "And a part of that is not caring anymore what people think because you know it's good."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699