The world-class architects who designed these impressive Fort Worth museums provide yet another reason to visit.
A museum visit isn’t solely about experiencing current exhibits or viewing items in the permanent collection. In an effort to help build upon their artistic vision, museums also try to tap a skilled architect to design the building in which all of this takes place. At Fort Worth museums, this thoughtful, intentional decision-making regarding a museum’s inaugural building or subsequent extension has led to some incredible works by renowned architects.
Here are five Fort Worth museums in which the building’s architecture is just as important as the works inside. Read on to discover how architects blended these hubs, which hold amazing collections of art and other objects, with their natural surroundings.
1. Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Architect: Philip Johnson
The late Philip Johnson is best known for his Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, a private residence built in the late 1940s as his weekend retreat. Entirely encased in glass, that home is tucked into a forest setting.
In 1958, Johnson was commissioned by the Amon G. Carter Foundation to design this art museum’s first building. He was also hired for two subsequent expansions, in 1977 and 2001. What’s unique about the design is the site itself: Johnson chose to place the building up the hillside for a dramatic effect. From within, this creates a panoramic view that functions as its own work of art. Between 1999 and 2001, the museum was closed to the public in order to bring Johnson’s latest vision to life and make room for the additional 50,000 square feet. Now, there’s a double staircase in the atrium, which boasts a curved roof; a museum bookstore; an auditorium; and a dark Arabian granite exterior, which is a contrast to the first building’s lighter-hued shellstone exterior.
The museum’s core focus is collecting, preserving, and exhibiting 19th- and 20th-century American art, including sculptures, paintings, photographs, prints, and works on paper. Museum founder and newspaper publisher Amon Carter’s personal collection of 300-400 works by Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington was added to the permanent collection, too.
2. Fort Worth Museum of Science and Industry
Architect: Ricardo Legorreta
In creating a new home for this family-friendly museum, the Mexico City firm of Legorreta + Legorreta (led by Ricardo Legorreta, whose other projects in Mexico and the U.S. range from a winery to auto plants, as well as other family-friendly museums) designed a 76-foot-tall glass and stone tower that serves as its main entrance. It’s also eye-catching. This facility was unveiled in 2009, several decades after the museum’s founding, and in Fort Worth’s Cultural District.
With an eye on sustainability, some of the eco-friendly features folded into the design include harvesting rainwater for irrigation, reduced energy due to daylighting, and permeable hardscapes. Visitors can easily spend a half-day here, with not only exhibits to explore but also the Cattle Raisers Museum, the Noble Planetarium, Galaxy Park Playground, and Omni Theater.
3. Kimbell Art Museum
Architect: Louis Kahn
This art museum’s first building, built out of white oak, travertine, and concrete, was unveiled in 1972. Its architect, the late Louis Kahn, was born in Estonia and, after emigrating to the U.S. as a child, taught in architecture schools at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University. In fact, his first noteworthy commission was to design an art gallery for Yale University in 1951, followed by the Yale Center for British Art in 1969. Among his most famous commissions is the Salk Institute for Biologic Studies in La Jolla, California, a series of concrete structures overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Kahn designed the Kimbell Art Museum to capture light in every possible way, whether through grand arches, vaulted ceilings, or plexiglass skylights. There are also three courtyards, bridging the indoors with the outdoors in a seamless design technique. Today, visitors are treated to Old Masters paintings that rival those in the best museums in Europe, including the museum founders’ Kay and Velma Kimbell’s collection, as well as Michelangelo’s first known painting (The Torment of Saint Anthony). Also in the collection are works by French impressionist artists Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, plus decorative arts from Asia and Africa, for a well-rounded focus.
In 2013, a pavilion designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano was added to the site, featuring two sections connected by a glass passageway. Inside is a library, auditorium, galleries, and education studios.
4. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Architect: Tadao Ando
Although initially founded in 1892, the newest building for this art museum debuted in 2002. It’s housed within Fort Worth’s Cultural District, which is also home to two other art museums: the Kimbell Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum.
The museum defines its collection of modern art—which spans more than 3,000 works, across many different medias—as works that were created after World War II, so essentially between 1945 and present-day. Among its most wow-worthy works are those by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Takashi Murakami.
Japanese architect Tadao Ando devised a campus that features five glass-walled concrete pavilions—with flat, cantilevered roofs—clustered within a 1.5-acre reflecting pond, giving the impression that these are floating pavilions. Ando is a recipient of the Pritzker Prize (in 1995), one of the world’s most prestigious architectural awards. Another reason he’s well regarded in the architecture world is a 40,000-square-foot home he designed in 2003 in Malibu, California, for an art collector and heir to a soap opera fortune. Since 2023, that property has been owned by Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who bought it for $200 million.
5. National Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame
Architect: David Schwarz
Open since 2002, this 33,000-square-foot museum dedicated to women (not just cowgirls) in the American West was designed by David Schwarz of Washington, D.C. Both traveling exhibitions and permanent collections (of artifacts and photographs) are on view.
Its location in the Cultural District puts the museum shoulder-to-shoulder with Fort Worth’s other architectural marvels. The exterior features glazed terra cotta and light-brown brick, as well as terra-cotta finials in a wild-rose pattern (a running theme throughout the building), panels depicting cowgirl scenes, and a mural designed by Richard Haas that shows women riding horses. Visitors enter into a grand rotunda that’s home to the Hall of Fame honoree exhibits.
So far, 200 cowgirls have been honored, and not just as rodeo cowgirls: The late artist Georgia O’Keeffe as well as Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor are among the honorees. In late 2026, the museum will unveil a new expansion, which again shows how far it has come since it was founded in a local library in 1975.
