Texas’s first modern art museum, the McNay Art Museum brings together 23,000 works, a landmark Spanish Colonial estate, and deep community roots in the heart of San Antonio.
The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio is the first modern art museum in Texas. Built in the late 1920s by artist, educator, and collector Marion Koogler McNay, her iconic residence-turned-museum has kept its founder’s vision alive since opening in 1954.
The residence, referred to as “the greatest hit of Texas’s Spanish Colonial Revival style,” was home to hundreds of important works collected by McNay. She purchased one of her first modern oil paintings, Diego Rivera’s Delfina Flores, in 1927 and continued to collect 19th- and 20th-century European and American paintings and Southwest art from New Mexico throughout her life. Highlights from the collection include post-Impressionist and School of Paris paintings and iconic works on paper. Since her bequest of 700 works of art, her house and surrounding twenty-five acres, and an endowment to establish the museum, the McNay has continued a tradition of opening its doors wide to the community and bringing the very best of modern and contemporary art to San Antonio.
Today, the collection holds over 23,000 works, including Medieval and Renaissance art; 19th- through 21st-century European and American paintings, sculptures and photographs; one of the finest collections of prints and drawings in the Southwest; the exceptional Tobin Collection of Theatre Arts, the life’s work of the late philanthropist Robert L. B. Tobin; the Jeanne and Irving Mathews Collection of Art Glass; and art of New Mexico. The collection includes works by Vincent van Gogh, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Donald Judd, Joe Harjo, Vincent Valdez, as well as sculptures by Alice Aycock, Willie Cole, Luis A. Jiménez Jr., and others.
In 2008, the McNay opened the 45,000-square-foot Jane and Arthur Stieren Center for Exhibitions to expand the museum’s special exhibitions program and to showcase the collection without interruption in the main collection galleries.
Continuing its founder’s belief in the power of art to transform lives, the McNay offers an array of educational programs. McNay Summer Art Camp welcomes children to campus to experience the wonders of art; Hike the McNay and Sketch the McNay activate the grounds and collection galleries with impactful community engagement; Second Thursday and Family Day offer free access to galleries, activities, and live music. The annual McNay Print Fair, the only event of its kind in Texas and the region, welcomes the public to browse and buy works from more than a dozen distinguished dealers from across the United States. The Tobin Distinguished Lecture series features some of theater’s most renowned voices, including Oskar Eustis, Susan Hilferty, Caroline Hamilton, PhD, and Montana Levi Blanco.
The McNay continues to serve as San Antonio’s place of belonging, engaging a diverse community in the discovery and enjoyment of the visual arts. A visit to the McNay is filled with moments of inspiration and surprise inside and out, as artistic experiences unfold for visitors throughout the twenty-five-acre campus.
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