Tadao Ando of Osaka, Japan, was selected in an invited competition held in 1997 to design a museum to replace the small museum (see FW30) on Gendy Street. The cast-in-place concrete construction, Ando’s signature, was strongly influenced by the work of Louis I. Kahn, whose Kimbell Art Museum (FW33) stood across the street. The museum was Ando’s first major public building outside Japan and his first large project in the United States. The museum consists of five parallel, forty-foot-wide rectangular units. The two longer southern units house the two-story entrance space, library, auditorium, café, other support spaces, and offices. The entrance is centered in the south unit and provides views through the building to the ends of the three gallery units. These are externally braced by distinctive Y-profiled structural stanchions set in a shallow reflecting pool. The museum’s exterior is faced with aluminum panels, surfaced by bead blasting. Floors are paved with dark grey granite in the major entrance spaces and white oak planks in the galleries. The museum contains an international collection of modern and contemporary art.