AUSTIN, TX.- The Blanton closed its doors at the current location in the Art Building on The University of Texas at Austin campus on Sunday, May 22, 2005 in order to begin installing the museum's distinguished collection in the new Michener Gallery Building, which is nearing completion.

The Blanton's collections, programs, and temporary exhibitions will be presented in a brand new 180,000 square-foot museum complex at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Avenue. Designed by Kallmann McKinnell & Wood Architects, Inc., the complex is being built in two phases. It will include: the Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building that will house the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions, which will open to the public in February 2006; the Education and Visitor Pavilion, featuring a café, museum shop, classrooms, and auditorium, which will open in late 2006/early 2007; and a public plaza and garden that will connect the two buildings designed by internationally-recognized landscape architect Peter Walker.

On February 12, 2006, the Blanton will unveil the Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building, the first of the Blanton's new two-building complex, and the public plaza with a very special Grand Opening. An entire day of festivities is being planned in celebration of the occasion.

The Education and Visitor Pavilion, the second of the Blanton's new two-building complex, is expected to open to the public in late 2006/early 2007. Currently, the Blanton is in the final phases of fundraising, but the university has given the museum permission to proceed with its construction.

Located at the edge of the university campus in downtown Austin, the new museum complex will frame dramatic views of the State Capitol to the south and the university to the north, building a gateway between the university and the city. The new site will occupy an additional 100,000 square feet, dramatically increasing its facilities and gallery space, and provide much-needed space for the Blanton's rapidly growing collection of more than 17,000 works of art, including the renowned Suida-Manning Collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, and the recently acquired Leo Steinberg Collection of 15th-20th-century prints and drawings. Encompassing state-of-the-art spaces for permanent and temporary exhibitions, teaching, research, and public programs, the new facility will unite for the first time the Blanton's collections, programs, and other resources in one location especially designed for presenting, researching, and enjoying art. The new museum complex will make the Blanton the largest university art museum in the country and will strengthen the Blanton's position as a cultural cornerstone in Central Texas.

Blanton History - In 1927, philanthropist Archer M. Huntington donated more than 4,000 acres of land along Galveston Bay to The University of Texas at Austin to fund an art museum. In 1938, the university established the College of Fine Arts, and funds from the Huntington endowment supported art exhibitions held in buildings throughout the campus. In 1963, the University Art Museum, with a modest collection of only a few hundred works of art, opened to the public in the newly constructed Art Building. Rapid growth, most notably the gift of the Mari and James A. Michener Collection of 20th-century American paintings, resulted in further expansion in 1972. At this time the museum moved its permanent collection to the first two floors of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and maintained its Print Study Room and galleries for temporary exhibitions in the Art Building.

In 1980, the University Art Museum was renamed the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, and a decade of growth and achievement followed with the acquisition of a number of important antiquities and European works from the Renaissance and Baroque. The museum also continued to build upon its strengths in the fields of modern and contemporary American art, contemporary Latin-American art, and prints and drawings. By the mid-1990s, with growing collections and expanded programs serving university students and the general public, the Blanton had outgrown its current facilities. In 1997, a campaign was announced to build a major new facility, renamed the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art after the former Chairman of the UT Board of Regents and longtime advocate and patron of the arts in Texas. To date, the Blanton has raised over $73 million in public and private funds, which is more than three-quarters of the museum's goal of $83.5 million for the new museum complex.