Kimball Art Museum in Fort

¶ … Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Specifically it will contain a descriptive essay about museum at its collection. Kay and Velma Fuller Kimball, and Mr. And Mrs. Colman Carter founded the Kimball Art Museum in 1966. The initial collection featured works of arts the four founders collected, and the collection has mushroomed today into the large and impressive collection visitors can view today.

The tour of this impressive museum begins on the outside with the building itself. Designed by Louis Kahn, the building is magnificent, a clue to the artwork that lies inside. The building looks like a series of arches all joined together to form an undulating roof that seems to float over the building. Inside, the visitor can view just about any type of world art, from Asian to African and Renaissance to Impressionism. It is hard to know where to start viewing art in this building, but the Syrian collection is intriguing, so there is where this tour begins. All the Syrian pieces are done in mosaic tiles from a material called "tesserae." Using mosaic tiles creates intricate details in the artworks, and most of them depict common animals of the area, such as peacocks and parrots. The colors are muted rather than vivid, but this does not take away from the art, rather it adds to the three-dimensional quality of these pieces. They beg the viewer to touch them, but touching the artwork is not allowed at the museum.

The Greek and Roman collection are made up of complicated sculpture and pottery, indicating the depth of their decorating and artistic skills. The sculpture of the "Young Female Attendant" catches the eye because of the excellent detail in the statue. The head is missing, but the body is made up of a long, flowing gown that flows gracefully along the attendant's body. The sculpture is so realistic that the folds of the dress really look like soft fabric, and it is difficult to remember this is a sculpture.

The Asian art section is so vast it is impossible to view the entire collection in one visit, and that holds for the European collection, too. There are many famous European artists represented, from the childlike, crayon-colored Edvard Munch work "Girls on a Bridge" to the dark, brooding portrait "Bust of a Jew" by Rembrandt. There are many impressionist works in the collection, including Camille Pissarro's pastoral "Near Sydenham Hill." This dreamy work has a calming effect on the viewer, and represents a bucolic country scene with large, bare trees in the foreground and green pastures in the distance. It is a beautiful rendition of the English countryside, and the blues and greens of the work are muted, as if the viewer is looking at the painting through a soft, gentle mist.

There is also quite a remarkable collection of Renaissance Art, mostly from Italy, which includes sculpture and other works. It is quite interesting to view the changes in art through the ages. Renaissance Art was extremely detailed, and usually religious in nature, while later art took on a dark, shadowy effect, such as Rembrandt's work. Impressionism took art in new directions, making the works more light, vivid, and realistic, rather than detailed and dark. It is good to see all these works side by side, to see intensely the differences in color, texture, light, and shadow.