The Crow Museum’s permanent collection consists of more than 1,000 works from Asia that the Crows had amassed since the 1960s. Since the death of Trammell Crow in 2009 and Margaret Crow in 2014, the museum’s staff members had been planning how to better sustain their legacy.
“Part of our secret is that 85 percent of our collection is in storage,” Amy Hofland, the executive director of the Crow Museum, said. “There are works that have never been shown.”
Those works will find a new home in the campus museum, where the majority of the collection will live. The current, smaller museum will remain in Dallas’ arts district.
The funding will help build a larger university complex that will include not only the Asian art museum, but also a museum of Swiss art, a library, and shared spaces for events and exhibitions.
Many details are still in the works. The university will focus first on securing gifts and long-term loans before considering the design of the space, which will stand near the entrance of the campus so it can be accessible to students, faculty members and the public.
Rick Brettell, founding director of the university’s Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, says the donation could give the campus “a major presence in the arts” that would help set it apart from other science and technology universities in the country.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.