Exhibition Information

Events-Activities

Meadows Museum Hours of Operation:
Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Thursdays until 8:00 p.m.
Sunday 12:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
The Meadows Museum is closed on Mondays, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day.

Admission to Exhibitions and Upper Galleries:
$8 for adults, $6 for seniors 65 and over. Complimentary admission on Thursdays after 5 p.m. Meadows Museum members and children under the age of 12 are admitted free. SMU faculty, staff, and students receive free admission upon presentation of their University photo ID.

General Information:

• A limited number of wheelchairs are available upon request.
  Umbrellas, backpacks, or other bulky items are not allowed in the galleries.
• Photography is not permitted in the galleries.
• No food or drinks can be allowed in the galleries except for special programs.

Mission Statement:

The Meadows Museum is committed to the advancement of knowledge and understanding of art through the collection and interpretation of works of the greatest aesthetic and historical importance, as exemplified by the founding collection of Spanish art.The museum is a resource of Southern Methodist University that serves a broad and international audience as well as the university community through meaningful exhibitions, publications, workshops, and other educational programs and encourages public participation through a broad-based membership.

The Museum is located on the edge of the Southern Methodist University campus, on Bishop Blvd., one block north of Mockingbird Lane.

Tours:
The Meadows Museum offers guided tours of its outstanding permanent as well as temporary exhibitions. Tours are available for student and adult groups of 10 to 60 participants. Docent led tours cost $1.50 per person for student groups and $5 per person for adult groups. Reservations are required three weeks in advance. Tours are offered Tuesday through Saturday between 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

Please contact the Education Coordinator, at 214.768.2740 or tamytha@smu.edu, for more information and to schedule tours.

Free public tours are offered on Sundays at 2:00 p.m. with museum admission, and on Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. when museum admission is free.

To learn more about the Meadows Museum Docent Program, please click here.

K-12 TOURS

Docent Guided Visits
The Meadows Museum welcomes and highly values student groups visiting the permanent collection as well as special exhibitions. We require that reservations be made at least three weeks in advance. Please be advised that all requests are subject to availability.

Tours are conducted by experienced Docents who are passionate about art. They will facilitate the experience that the students have in the galleries by encouraging an exchange of ideas that might include the cultural, historical, or aesthetic aspects of art. Tours can be structured around permanent collection highlights or special exhibitions. Spanish speaking Docents are available upon request and are also subject to availability. All Docent-guided tours last one hour.

Self-Guided Visit
The Meadows Museum also welcomes self-guided student groups visiting our permanent collection as well as our special exhibitions. Reservations for self-guided tours are required two weeks in advance and are subject to availability.

Teachers who are scheduling self-guided tours for their students are required to schedule a time in order to prevent overcrowding in the galleries. The Museum asks that self-guided groups yield to tours being conducted by Museum Staff and Docents.

Guidelines for Docent Guided and Self-Guided Permanent collection and special exhibition tours for grades K-12

* Group Size: 10-50 students per hour; 1 chaperone for every 10 students
* Tour times: During regular business hours (depending on availability) Tuesday–Friday 10:30 a.m. -3:30 p.m.
* Fees: Docent-guided tours are $1.50 for everyone in the group
* There is no admission fee for self-guided groups
* Please visit the following link to download a pdf of our Faces of Spain Self-Guide Materials program, which will enable you to prepare your students for your visit via our website.

Museum History

The Meadows Museum, a division of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works dating from the tenth to the twentieth century. It includes masterpieces by some of the world's greatest painters: El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Miró, and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include Renaissance altarpieces, monumental Baroque canvases, exquisite rococo oil sketches, polychrome wood sculptures, Impressionist landscapes, modernist abstractions, a comprehensive collection of the graphic works of Goya, and a select group of sculptures by major twentieth-century masters - Rodin, Maillol, Giacometti, Moore, Smith, and Oldenburg - as well as works by leading artists of the region - Frank Reaugh, Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, Alexandre Hogue, and William Lester.

In 1965, the Meadows Museum opened its doors to the public for the first time. The museum's collection of Spanish art and the galleries for its display were a gift to Southern Methodist University from Algur Hurtle Meadows (1899-1978), a prominent Dallas businessman and founder of the General American Oil Company of Texas. During the 1950s business took Meadows frequently to Madrid, where repeated visits to the Prado Museum inspired what would become a lasting interest in the art of Spain's Golden Age. By 1962, Meadows had amassed his own distinguished holdings of Spanish paintings, which became the foundation of the Museum's collection.

The museum currently occupies a neo-Palladian structure with impressive naturally lit painting galleries and extensive exhibition space, underwritten by a generous grant from The Meadows Foundation. The Meadows Museum is located off North Central Expressway at 5900 Bishop Blvd., three blocks west of Mockingbird Station.

Since 1978, the museum's efforts to develop and care for the collection have continued with the support of The Meadows Foundation, a general purpose philanthropic institution created and incorporated by Algur Meadows in 1948. This fruitful partnership has resulted in a comprehensive campaign of conservation, the support of scholarly research of the collection, and a number of important acquisitions, particularly in the areas of medieval, Baroque, and twentieth century art.

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