Meadows Museum Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids
Meadows Museum

Museum entrance along Bishop Boulevard
Established	1965; 60 years ago (1965)
Location	Southern Methodist University 5900 Bishop Boulevard Dallas, Texas 75205
Type	Art museum
Key holdings	Sibyl with Tabula Rasa (1648) Yard with Lunatics (1794)
Visitors	50,000+ annually (as of 2015)
Founder	Algur H. Meadows
Owner	Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University
Public transit access	DART light rail: Blue Line Orange Line Red Line (via Mockingbird station)

The Meadows Museum is a fantastic art museum located in Dallas, Texas. It's on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU). People sometimes call it the "Prado on the Prairie" because it has so much amazing Spanish art.

The museum is part of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts. It holds one of the biggest collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. You can see artworks from the 10th century all the way to the 21st century!

Amazing Art Collections
- What You'll See
The Museum Building
A Look at History
- How the Collection Started
- Continued Growth and Support
Selected Paintings
See also

Amazing Art Collections

The Meadows Museum has a main collection filled with famous paintings. You can see works by incredible artists like El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Miró, Sorolla, Dalí, and Picasso.

What You'll See

The museum also features many other types of art:

Beautiful altarpieces from the Renaissance period.
Huge Baroque paintings.
Small, detailed Rococo oil sketches.
Colorful wooden sculptures.
Impressionist landscapes.
Modern abstract art.
A large collection of drawings and prints by Goya.
Sculptures by famous 20th-century artists. These include Rodin, Maillol, Giacometti, Moore, Smith, and Oldenburg.

The Meadows Museum also takes care of SMU's University Art Collection. This collection includes art by important artists from the North Texas area. Some of these artists are Frank Reaugh, Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, Alexandre Hogue, and William Lester.

The Museum Building

The Gene and Jerry Jones Great Hall of the Meadows Museum

The museum building is designed in a style called neo-Palladian. It was finished in 2001. The design allows natural light to fill the painting galleries. This helps you see the artworks clearly.

The building was officially opened in a special ceremony. Even King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía of Spain were there!

A Look at History

The Meadows Museum first opened its doors in 1965. The art collection and the galleries were a gift to Southern Methodist University. This gift came from Algur H. Meadows, a businessman from Dallas.

How the Collection Started

In the 1950s, Mr. Meadows often traveled to Madrid, Spain, for business. He visited the Prado Museum many times. These visits made him very interested in Spanish art, especially from the Spanish Golden Age. By 1962, he had gathered his own collection of Spanish paintings. This collection became the start of the Meadows Museum.

At first, some of the artworks in the collection were found not to be original. So, SMU brought in a professional director, William B. Jordan, in 1967. He worked hard to build a truly great collection. Mr. Meadows supported the museum until he passed away in 1978. During this time, the museum added many important artworks that form the core of its collection today.

Continued Growth and Support

Since 1978, The Meadows Foundation has continued to support the museum. This foundation was created by Algur Meadows in 1948. Their help has allowed the museum to:

Care for and restore its artworks.
Support research about the collection.
Buy many new and important pieces of art. This includes medieval, Baroque, and 20th-century art.

In 2013, the museum hosted a special exhibition called Sorolla & America. It showed paintings by the Spanish Impressionist artist Joaquin Sorolla. This exhibit explored Sorolla's connection with the United States. It started at the Meadows Museum and then traveled to other museums.

The Meadows Museum is also part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network. This network was started in 2021.