Adventures in and Around Fort Worth

If you're looking for something cool to do besides lie around your house on the weekend, check out the Lone Star Film Society's Silent Sundays at the Kimbell's new Piano Pavilion auditorium. While silent films seem like a hard sell, you can expect a unique experience as you watch history's first films that shaped the industry with the accompaniment of live music. Way Down East  will screen 2 p.m. March 16,  Strike  plays 2 p.m. Sunday, April 20, and first ever Academy Award for best picture,  Wings, plays 2 p.m. May 18. I'm a little late in the game writing about this—the series kicked off Feb. 16. Their first production F. W. Murnau's "cinematic masterpiece" Sunrise had an unexpectedly large turnout. Classical pianist Robert Edwards performed his interpretation of the film live as the audience went back in time. After all, this is how moviegoers experienced film in the 1920s. And if they saw the same film three times, there may be a differen...

West Wing After days of freezing rain, the sun comes out 11.26.2013 View of the original Kimbell building designed by L. Kahn from the new Piano Pavilion lobby Piano elegantly frames Fort Worth history—The Will Rogers Memorial Coliseum and its allée elms The Kimbell's Kahn Building the night of the Piano Pavilion Grand Opening Party 11.24.2013 What was once architectural silence, the lawn is now a space where Piano weaves the sacred (art viewing) with the profane (socializing). 

View of original Kimbell building from the new pavilion. I pulled my car into the Kimbell Art Museum's sparkling monochromatic underground parking garage. The museum's Renzo Piano Pavilion opened to members this morning, and after months of research I'm afire.  Talk about whether this building will complicate or take away from the original Kimbell Art Museum designed by Kahn have swirled internationally for years—whether the green space that once represented silence will be ruined, whether the jewel box masterpiece actually needed to grow, and why one should augment something that is considered a perfect work of architecture. I grew up close to this museum and was distraught when they erected the ugly tarp and dug into the sacred lawn I once sat by myself and sketched the allée elms or read philosophy texts.  After three years of digging the tarp is gone, and much of the green space intact. I jump into the transparent, glass elevator, float onto the lawn facin...

The Kimbell Art Museum Piano Pavilion will open to the public this week after three years of construction. As a father would do upon arrival of his newborn child, architect Renzo Piano rushed to Fort Worth to nurture, protect and proudly present his latest architectural feat. Piano said if the original Kimbell building designed by Louis Kahn was an introvert with its windows facing interior courtyards, then his new pavilion is an extrovert with its windows forming walls to the lawn and life buzzing outside. Hence the name, pavilion. A pavilion is traditionally a short distance from the main building where people escape and find relaxation. Piano said his building is an open and inviting building where people can meet, hear music, participate in classes or view art, in his talk A Conversation with Renzo Piano Nov. 19 in Fort Worth's Will Roger's Memorial Coliseum. Piano has a history if mixing the sacred and profane, which he does with this building. The profane are the ar...