UT Austin: Art on the Forty Acres

Since 2008 UT's Landmarks program has scattered contemporary art across the campus, beginning with a long-term loan of works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and growing to roughly 50 pieces. This loop strings together the program's showpieces with two free campus galleries. You'll lie back under a Turrell skyspace, stand beneath a tower of stacked boats, and finish under a building-sized news ticker honoring Walter Cronkite. Most of it is outdoors and free; check gallery hours before you go.

Most visitors come to the Forty Acres for the Tower and the stadium. This walk is for everyone else. Since 2008, UT's Landmarks program has placed contemporary art across campus, starting with a long-term loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and growing to roughly 50 works, and this loop links several of its standouts with two free galleries.

The scale keeps shifting. Nancy Rubins's Monochrome for Austin gathers about 70 aluminum canoes and small boats into a 50-foot burst, the largest piece in the collection. Mark di Suvero's Clock Knot, one of the program's earliest arrivals, twists 41 feet of painted steel above a grassy berm.

Other moments are more contemplative. James Turrell's skyspace The Color Inside frames an open oculus, and during its sunset sequence the shifting light inside makes the sky itself seem to change color. After dark, Walter Cronkite Plaza comes alive as quotations from the newsman's broadcasts drift across a building facade while fragments of current headlines race past. Along the way you'll also find gallery shows of contemporary and African American and Caribbean diaspora art, plus more work tucked inside campus buildings.

Mostly outdoors and almost entirely free, it's one of the best ways to take in Austin's art scene in a single afternoon and evening.