General Overview
Open since 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is home to one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world, the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, featuring more than 300 masterpieces by Calder, de Kooning, di Suvero, Giacometti, Gormley, Hepworth, Kelly, Matisse, Miró, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, Serra, Shapiro, and Turrell, among others. The longtime dream of the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher, the museum is an urban oasis in the heart of the downtown Dallas Arts District.
Download
Collection Overview
Raymond (1921-2007) and Patsy (1928-1988) Nasher started their collection more than 60 years ago when they traveled to Mexico and became interested in pre-Columbian art. There, they bought the first works in what would become a sizable collection of objects from ancient Latin America. They soon purchased other ethnographic and archaeological works and also acquired a number of important American modernist works. Mr. Nasher often credited this early involvement with pre-Columbian and other tribal arts as having whetted their appetite for, and appreciation of, modern three-dimensional works.
Download
Raymond D. Nasher, 1921-2007
The late Raymond D. Nasher, founder of the Nasher Sculpture Center, will be remembered as one of Dallas’ most influential civic leaders and patrons of the arts. His passion for modern and contemporary sculpture and his tireless commitment to establish Dallas/Fort Worth as one of the finest cultural destinations in the world will carry his legacy for generations to come. His collection, which continuously rotates throughout the Nasher Sculpture Center, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and museums across the world, continues to be one of the most extensive and important collections of modern and contemporary sculpture.
Download
Architecture Team: Renzo Piano, Architect and Peter Walker, Landscape Architect
Renzo Piano, winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture in 1998, has designed several critically acclaimed art museums; foremost among them are the Beyeler Museum in Basel, the Menil Collection in Houston, and Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris (in collaboration with Richard Rogers).
Peter Walker has exerted a significant impact on the field of landscape architecture over a four-decade career. The scope of Mr. Walker’s landscape projects is expansive and varied. It ranges from small gardens to new cities, corporate headquarters and academic campuses to urban plazas.
Download
Chief Curator Jed Morse
Jed Morse joined the staff of the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2002 as Assistant Curator where he has organized, overseen, or assisted with numerous exhibitions, including Rodin to Calder: Masterworks of Modern Sculpture from the Nasher Collection (2003); Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier (2004); Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions (2004); Bodies Past and Present: The Figurative Tradition in the Nasher Collection (2004); an exhibition and corresponding international conference entitled Variable States: Appearance, Intention, and Interpretation in Modern Sculpture (2004); Frank Stella: Painting in Three Dimensions (2005); David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting (2005); Minimalism in the Nasher Collection (2005); The Women of Giacometti (2006) and more.
Download
Senior Curator Catherine Craft
Catherine Craft is senior curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center, which she joined in 2011. Since her arrival, she has organized the traveling surveys Melvin Edwards: Five Decades (2015) and The Nature of Arp (2018). She was also the curator for the Nasher exhibitions Samara Golden: if earth is the brain then where is the body (2024); Nairy Baghramian: Modèle vivant (2022), Magali Reus: A Sentence in Soil (2022), and Carol Bove: Collage Sculptures (2021), among others.
Download
Curator Leigh A. Arnold, PhD
Leigh Arnold is curator at the Nasher Sculpture Center and a scholar of Land art, Minimal, and Post-Minimal sculpture. Since joining the Nasher in 2013, Arnold has organized numerous exhibitions and presentations. Her 2023 exhibition Groundwell: Women of Land Art was a crucial reexamination of the important but under-recognized work of 12 women sculptors in the male-dominated field of Land art. Most recently, Arnold curated Hugh Hayden: Homecoming (2024) and Haegue Yang: Lost Lands and Sunken Fields (2025).
Download
Dallas Arts District Background
The Dallas Arts District—a unique, 68-acre, 19-block neighborhood in the heart of downtown Dallas—is the centerpiece of the city’s cultural life, as well as a neighborhood of businesses, residences, churches, schools, restaurants, and retail. The development of the Arts District began more than three decades ago, the vision of Dallas’ civic and cultural leaders. The opening of the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2003 sparked more than $1 billion in investments in construction of new cultural and commercial properties. Now the cornerstone and catalyst for creative vitality in the region, the Arts District is home to Dallas’ leading visual and performing arts institutions, whose range and depth make it a destination for the arts that is unparalleled in the world.
Download
Nasher Exhibition History
History of the Nasher Sculpture Center exhibitions.
Download