Cartoon #254: “Blanton Museum”

Less local than the previous cartoon, this is somewhat of a Texas story, from the standpoint of Texas’ status in the world of art museums.

This Saturday, April 29th, is the grand opening of the Blanton Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. It could have been a cutting-edge piece of architecture, but former Gov. Bill Clements, and other provincial Texans on the UT board of regents couldn’t get their minds around anything as radical as modern architecture. So much for keeping Austin weird.

So we ended up with a so-so art collection in a so-so building. In keeping with the rest of campus, the parking situation is best described as Byzantine. As the Blanton’s parking web page euphemistically puts it: “Here are a number of ways to easily park when visiting the Blanton.”