Trammell Crow Family Ponies Up $23M To Develop New Museum At UTD

The Crow family has donated $23M to facilitate the development of a museum specializing in Asian art on the campus of the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson. 

At the same time, the billionaire family donated the entire collection of the Trammell and Margaret Crow Museum of Asian Art in the Dallas Arts District to the university.

UTD will continue to operate its existing museum, which opened in 1998, while the second location will allow a wider range of the full collection to be viewed by the public.

As yet, no plans for the size or design of the new museum on the UTD campus have been unveiled, nor a timetable for its completion.

"The museum on campus will drive a much deeper engagement with our community, and the original museum will provide UT Dallas with a distinguished presence in the Dallas Arts District," UTD President Richard Benson said in a statement.

The collection is a legacy of Trammell Crow's vast success as founder of the Trammell Crow Co. During business trips to Asia, Crow acquired a taste for the art of that part of the world, and beginning in the 1960s he and his wife assembled a distinguished collection of Asian art.

Among other works, the museum holds a six-foot Ming dynasty seated Vairocana Buddha and a renowned collection of later-period Chinese jades, including such works as the 18th-century Qing dynasty sculpture titled "Jade Mountain."

All together, the museum collection now includes more than 1,000 works, ancient to contemporary, from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam. The collection also includes a library of over 12,000 books, catalogs and journals.