Art in the Garden - Botanical Research Institute of Texas and the Fort Worth Botanical Garden

Outdoor Collection + Tours

FWBG | BRIT is a 120-acre living museum, containing plants from around the world as well as sculpture installed amidst the beauty of the 23 specialty gardens. We hold over thirty pieces of outdoor sculpture by artists such as Evaline Sellors, Gene Owens, Glenna Goodacre, Cameron Schoepp, Chris Powell, and Charles T. Williams. Many sculptures on our campus are part of the Legacy Collection of Fort Worth Public Art. We occasionally welcome contemporary sculptors to install large-scale artworks in our gardens for visitors to enjoy and reflect upon.

Monthly docent-guided tours of our outdoor sculpture collection are available the first Saturday of most months at 10 am. Admission to the Garden is free for members; non-members may purchase tickets here. Admission to the BRIT building is free.

Indoor Art Venues

There are several indoor art venues across our campus. The BRIT building features the Madeline R. Samples Exhibit Hall and the Upper Atrium Collections Gallery. The Samples Hall features a rotating selection of contemporary, nature-related art, while the Collections Gallery features botanical prints from our Library collection, including The Arader Natural History Collection of Art. Pieces from our permanent art collection are installed throughout the Garden Center.

Andre Harvey, Spring Ballet, 1981
Spring Ballet welcomes visitors with a sense of motion and energy. Harvey was an American sculptor whose highly realistic works are primarily cast in bronze. He is known for his larger-than-life sculptures of animals, from frogs to pigs.

Gene Owens, Runnels, 1986
Gene Owens is a Fort Worth sculptor working in a variety of media. Runnels, a piece made of two fountains, flanks the entry to the Deborah Beggs Moncrief Garden Center. The sound of water sets the tone for a tranquil garden experience.

Glenna Goodacre, Naiads, 1989
Glenna Goodacre was a self-taught sculptor and is best known for the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, DC. Just beyond the main entrance of the Garden Center are her three bronze mythological water nymphs, or naiads.

Cam Schoepp, Pollen, 2000
Pollen is a seven-piece sculpture made from Texas granite and terrazzo. These multi-sided objects suggest something many Texans are familiar with, pollen. These larger-than-life pollen grains are stylized and textured, inviting touch.

Charles T. Williams, Solar Disk, 1964
Charles T. Williams is known for abstract forms and inventive use of new materials. This piece was fabricated from steel tank heads on milk trucks. The sculpture’s reflective surface is an excellent foil to the surrounding landscape.

Chris Powell, to stand along beside you, 1989
Three totemic figures rise from the lawn in the intimate Beggs Courtyard. Made of stoneware, their surface has a rich and varied surface, almost as if it were a steel patina.

Sandi Stein, Celestial Jazz

A tsukubai
This is “chozubachi,” which includes a variety of other basin styles, is a crouching water basin. A “tsukubai chozubachi” is usually set low to the earth. Guests would kneel and cleanse there before entering a tea garden.

Three Wise Monkeys
Sanzaru, the ‘Three Wise Monkeys’. Mizaru (‘see no evil’), Kikazaru (‘hear no evil’), and Iwazaru (‘speak no evil’), advise us to be of good mind, speech, and action.

A karesansui exhibit
A memorial to Mrs. Billy Warila, this small karesansui exhibit is a composition suggestive of a temple standing along the shore of a woodland pond.

The Buddha’s Umbrella monument
This monument was created by a Connecticut statuary company and marketed in the ’60’s as a garden bird-feeder. This concrete ornament is the last of its kind. The name is part of a quaint local legend suggesting the Buddha, “passed this way”.

The Angel of Kyushu
A memorial monument

Kasuga Lantern
This carved stone lanter features a deer. The motif and name are references to the Kasuga Taisha shrine, an ancient Shinto site in the city of Nara. Herds of deer still frequent the shrine, begging food from guests. In centuries past, they were venerated as a link to heaven.

Hira-niwa
This ‘”Karesansui” Garden is a flat-style dry garden with a raked gravel pattern. Patterned after Kyoto’s “Garden of the Abbot’s Quarters” at the Ryoanji Zen temple, Fort Worth’s exhibit has several unique features. No plants are grown here other than wild lichens.

An Oribe lantern
This lantern is named after its creator, Furuta Oribe, a famous samurai tea master. Its legend tells us that the ornament was also used by Kakure Kirishitans (Hidden Christians of the Edo Period), as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. Some modern Japanese still refer to it as, the “Christian lantern.”

Michael Pavlovsky, Birth of Love
This large, totemic circular bronze features a light-green patina and is located on the lawn north of the Oval Rose Garden. This piece was commissioned by the Moncrief Endowment Fund.

Point of Contact

Ellen BrisendineOperations AssistantDirect (817) 332-4441

Program

FWBG | BRIT Art Exhibitions

FORT WORTH BOTANIC GARDEN

3220 Botanic Garden Blvd
Fort Worth, Texas 76107
(817) 463-4160
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BOTANICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF TEXAS

1700 University Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76107-3400
(817) 332-4441
(817) 332-4112 Fax

We respectfully acknowledge that the Fort Worth Botanic Garden is located on traditional lands of Indigenous Peoples. We honor the ancestry, heritage, and gifts of all Indigenous Peoples who were sustained by these lands and give thanks to them. We are grateful that these lands continue to provide enrichment for many people today. [More…]

Outdoor Collection + Tours

Indoor Art Venues

Point of Contact

Program

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